I was just going to post about this! I think we saved them to use as juice glasses until Welch’s Flintstone jelly glasses supplanted them.
I don’t remember the last time I saw a shrimp cocktail on a menu and I don’t think I have ever seen crab claws offered as an appetizer. There was a place I was at recently that had a seafood tower as an appetizer and it had shrimp, crab, lobster and oysters - it was for sure a ‘whole table’ item.
I don’t eat out too often at restaurants that would have shrimp cocktail (steak house, supper clubs, higher-end seafood) but my impression is that it’s a lot less common now than it once was. I heard some NFL commentators discussing the famous shrimp cocktail at St Elmo’s in Indianapolis earlier today. Crab claws are even more seldom seen and pretty much exclusively offered at seafood places. Here’s a local place with a typical, high-end menu (check those oyster prices!):
A four shrimp cocktail is $21, claws app are $9-30 (small, med, jumbo).
A slightly more affordable, suburban menu (click ‘Dinner menu,’ pdf opens in new window):
https://www.bobchinns.com/food
Jumbo cocktail is $16, claws are $13 (Jonah)- to $26 for stone claws.
However, I’d expect a cold shrimp appetizer at a private gathering in a home with more than, say, a dozen people. For example, Christmas dinner or a Superbowl party would have a ring-o-shrimp next to the cheeseboard and crockpot meatballs.
Given the joints that I still find them at, I just get the sense that they’ve sort of gone out of style (which means somewhere down the line, they’ll probably come back in style). I don’t really think it has anything to do with prices or availability. (I’m specifically talking shrimp cocktail–other kinds of shrimp I can very commonly find on all sorts of menus.) To me, it’s old-fashioned steak house/supper club food, as you mention. I mean, when was the last time you saw a Baked Alaska on a menu? I seem to remember that being high-falutin’ dessert back in the day (I remember the only time I had one was dining at The Pump Room here in Chicago with my high school girlfriend back in the early 90s. That was my first foray into the world of fine dining.) And now I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen it on any menu (though I wouldn’t be surprised if it made a comeback–I have a feeling I read an article about it a couple years back with some restaurant’s updated take on it.)
Actually, quickly doing a Google search on shrimp cocktail and baked Alaska yields this article on retro foods the author wishes would make a comeback. So it is decidedly “retro,” though the article posits no theory as to why.
Food is hugely influenced by fashion and it’s my impression that shrimp (what I would call prawn) cocktail is just really old hat.
Of course it also depends on what kind of restaurants you frequent. I don’t think price of seafood has anything to do with it.
Why so crabby?
It also seems like shrimp cocktail was once a expensive dish, however at least around the NYC area, a popular restaurant at the time, Beefsteak Charlie’s, offered unlimited shrimp cocktail at their AYCE salad buffet. It is also not uncommon for other buffets today to sport shrimp cna cocktail sauce. So it may be seen as low brow now instead of a delicacy.
Adding, I do remember shrimp cocktail seeming tastier back then than it is today. It may be do to the above mentioned perception of the dish, but also maybe do to the factory farming of the shrimp or at least the ‘fresh frozen’ aspect instead of the fresh caught to table of the past in finer restaurants.
Are you certain that they were talking about Christmas dinner and not Christmas Eve? There’s an Italian tradition of a seafood dinner on Christmas Eve.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have been to that party, too.
Polish tradition, too. I think it’s a Catholic thing, since fast days = no meat.
Christmas Eve isn’t a fast day.
Not anymore - I think it changed in the ‘50s
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You were right.
IME it flies right by.
Yep, Christmas Eve among all my Polish family and friends is still traditionally observed as a meat-less meal. Stuffed cabbage rolls are filled with rice (or other grain) and mushroom (or sometimes sauerkraut and mushroom), borscht is made on a vegetable broth and served with mushroom uszka (tortellini), there’s a mess of fish: cooked, pickled, and in salads, pierogi are cheese, cheese and/or potato, sauerkraut, mushroom, etc… Basically, lots of fish, pasta/dumplings, mushrooms, and cabbage.
Fish is also the feature of Christmas Eve in Spain - another uber-Catholic country.
Could be. I didn’t talk to them about it, I’m just going by what I overheard, which was a bit ambiguous. I wasn’t about to go butting into other people’s business. And it was before I even read this thread, so I didn’t even know about the question at the time, even if I had been willing to ask them.
I was (essentially) born Catholic in 1951. Went to Catholic school through 8th grade. Never heard any mention of Christmas Eve being a fast day or meatless day at all.
As for shrimp cocktail and crab claws, the last time I saw them as a big feature was at an engagement party for a couple that have been divorced for over 20 years now. But, man, that was a memorable party for all the seafood. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
I believe it changed with Vatican II. Here’s what I could find about the rules of abstinence in the US for Catholics in November 1958:
From a post here.
Vatican II was 1962, and that changed by then, but this is all before my time.