Perhaps it’s the ever increasing price of seafood but I almost never see shrimp cocktail or crab claws offered as appetizers in nicer restaurants these days. They used to be ubiquitous.
I realize Chicago isn’t known for seafood, but I’ve spent a lot of time in other cities as well, both in the USA and the U.K. and Canada. I’m going to Boston which is known for seafood, next month, perhaps it’ll be different there.
What say you dopers? Do you often see any seafood (pun intended) as an appetizer?
I rarely go out, but when I toss a shin-dig, shrimp are one of the apps I serve. No crab, though. Too messy.
No, dammit, and real shrimp cocktails are expensive now. And those frozen things in the supermarkets dont taste the same.
I loves me some nice blanched shrimp, in cocktail sauce, with fresh lemon slices and a pile of saltines.
I think it might actually be the opposite. I admit I wasn’t actually alive then, but my impression is that shrimp cocktail was considered a very fancy thing to serve back in the 1960s and 70s. Then as the price of shrimp dropped to the point where it was an affordable everyday food for most people, shrimp cocktail as an appetizer became passé.
So in other words, I think it’s just changing tastes and changing ideas of what foods are fancy.
I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, and as I recall shrimp wasn’t an extraordinary luxury but pretty common. We weren’t well off, but we had fried shrimp at home regularly and shrimp cocktail has always been our appetizer at Thanksgiving.
The local bar, Tony’s, used to offer a huge bowl of iced shrimp as an appetizer in the 1970s which wasn’t all that expensive. Of course, Tony was supposedly connected to the mob so maybe the shrimp “fell off a dock” somewhere, if you know what I mean.
Doesn’t answer the OP, but I worked at a restaurant in college that served shrimp cocktails. The shrimp would be placed around the rim of an ice-filled goblet with cocktail sauce. We had a new hostess who was, let’s say, not the sharpest person. The first time she saw one being served, she asked: “Ohh! What drink comes with shrimp?”
Hope you just told her: cocktail.
I attended a Christmas Party at The Palm in Las Vegas just last night- one of the appetizers was similar- shrimp cocktail & lobster served cold with cocktail sauce and fresh horseradish. Though tbh, Shrimp Cocktail is everywhere in Vegas .
I do remember peel and eat cold shrimp also being a common appetizer although this would have been probably early 1990s.
I attended a staff potluck in a prison just 3 days ago, and shrimp with cocktail sauce were served. They were quite delicious.
Did that little guard attend?
Is he still a pain in the ass? Did they ever do something about him?
You’re still on paper. Quote me again and your PO will be notified. You know the rules.
I see shrimp cocktail at steak joints and old timey places here in Chicago (plenty of places here on the Southwest Side and SW suburbs where you can find shrimp cocktail.)
Crab claws I don’t ever remember coming across. If they were ubiquitous here, it was before my time (I’m mid-40s.)
I rarely see shrimp cocktails offered as an appetizer anymore. I think one restaurant around here does, and it’s a bit pricey.
I admit, I think it’s wrong where the appetizers are priced almost as much as the main course, they’d better give us enough to share for at least two people.
Oh, and to the larger question of “do you see seafood as an appetizer,” not restricted to shrimp cocktail, yes, quite commonly, especially fried shrimp and calamari. Once again, maybe not at super high-end restaurants, but at your average neighborhood joint and bars, it seems to be fairly usual in at least my part of town, but I see it at bars up north as well. For fancier restaurants, I think the cuisine has become more focused, so unless you’re going to a place that specializes in American steakhouse or American standards like that, you’re not going to see it so much. You’ll certainly see seafood apps at Italian places, at many Mexican places in the form of ceviche, and at all sorts of other ethnic restaurants where seafood is common.
It’s been a few years since I’ve gone to Blues on the Fox in Aurora, but they had a booth that sold Mexican Shrimp Cocktail. Very yummy.
Once in a great while I’ll see a shrimp cocktail appetizer on a menu in a restaurant for some ridiculous price, like 3 -6 shrimp for $10. I’ve never seen a crab cocktail. I do see canned crab in the fish section for $30-$40 a can, but that is picked over shrimp, not claws.
I buy frozen cooked peeled shrimp at major grocery stores and think they are just fine.
The thing is you have to thaw them and then roll them up in a clean dishtowel to dry them out some. Serve very cold. Nothing worse than a soggy, wet flabby shrimp.
Dead Lobster has shrimp cocktail, they eff it up like they do everything else
Appetizers in general have changed being much larger than they used to be, often with notes ‘enough to share’ - and often are a substitute for a full meal, sometimes for 2 or more people (speaking mainly fo nachos on that last part). I think that has something to do with it, shrimp cocktails just don’t fit that image.