Best I’ve ever had were Speckled Heart Grits. Hearty and flavorful… if you have the time to make non-instant stuff. Unfortunately, it looks like Callaway Gardens (GA) doesn’t sell them online. But they still have a Grits ‘n’ Preserves shop.
Road trip!
Where I live (Chicago), it’s generally mail order if I want something fancy, but most grocery stores I go to will have Bob’s Red Mill (I prefer the white corn grits, not the yellow grits that are also labeled as polenta), but you can also just find regular Quaker grits: those come in instant, 5-minute, and “Old Fashioned” varieties. I find the Old Fashioned tasty enough for my purposes. Oh, and in my main store, the Bob’s stuff is in the baking section near the flours (as most of their products are some type of flour or grain or another). In other stores, it seems more arbitrarily placed, so it never hurts to ask.
The Giant Eagle stores near me list the following types of Quaker grits:
Old Fashioned Grits
Smooth and Creamy Enriched White Hominy
Instant, Original
Instant Grits, Butter Flavored
and Freshie Shrimp & Grits, w/ Bacon, Garlic, featuring locally caught fresh shrimp.
I would just like to take this moment to to express my sympathy for those who spent any part of their life without knowing hush puppies. I kind of can’t imagine eating fried seafood without them.
No, not really. Lived in Texas my whole life, was never served or offered grits at anyone’s home, and never saw them on a menu until I was a teenager eating at a diner in a different state. I had no idea what “grits” was referring to. My mother asked me if I wanted to try them. She described it as being like malt-o-meal, said they were a deep south thing and she wasn’t really a fan. So I passed on them, and I still haven’t had them for breakfast.
I found out loved shrimp and grits much later - in Las Vegas, of all places.
Heh, totally a thing in Texas. My mother loved leftover rice as a breakfast cereal.
For the OP: hush puppies can be found among the sides on the menu at City Barbecue locations in NE Ohio. It wouldn’t be surprising if other barbecue joints in the region offered them.
Other than “fish&chips” I would never eat seafood fried. Baked, steamed, broiled, grilled, poached, raw, I can see. Fried? Not so much.
Calabash style all the way, baby.
I make it down to the Carolina coast about once a year, for about a week each time. While there, I must eat:
-A ton of boiled shrimp
-Seafood pasta (linguini with lemon, garlic, parsley, asparagus, shrimp, and scallops)
-Calabash-fried flounder and shrimp with hush puppies
Other meals fill in the blanks, but consist of lots of leftovers from the required meals.
Other than sushi, I don’t each much seafood for the rest of the year.
Heh, had to look that up. Sounds interesting. Anytime I buy flounder fillets I end up doing crab meat stuffed flounder.
Yeah, sorry–I realized it’s probably not as famous outside of NC as it is locally, despite their claim to be the seafood capital of the world.
I’m having trouble finding a cite for Calabash-style that’s not from a restaurant or tourism site. Here’s one link:
Basically it’s a light cornmeal batter, and the food is lightly fried. For my money it’s the best way to eat fried anything, but of course I may be biased.
I dunno, man. Fried shrimp or scallops are awesome. Had a half pound fried shrimp for lunch yesterday, in fact. But it’s a once in a couple months treat for me, as I always feel so guilty packing on those calories and turning something so light and healthy into something that will kill me.
Calabash style sounds interesting. Every time I think I’ve got most regional foods down, a new one pops up. The most recent one before this was Altoona style pizza. Google if you dare.
Don’t many seafood restaurants sell Hushpuppies. That’s really the only context where I hear that word, related to seafood. Otherwise, it’s just cornbread I guess.
That’s my Mama!
Dig this: My mother takes a half (maybe whole) stick of butter and mashes it up into a large amount of molasses; mix, mix, mix until it looks like baby shit, then slather on a biscuit. Sometimes, when she’s hurting for molasses, she’ll substitute the real dark King syrup.
I gotta go lie down – there’s a fair chance I inherited that particular gene. 
What is even wrong with people.
I think Calabash seafood would seem pretty unremarkable to most people. I mean, have you had seafood fried in a cornmeal/flour mix, maybe dredged in buttermilk? That seems very normal to me, and while it’s not the same as beer-battered cod, it’s pretty close; the fried coating is just a little lighter IMO, and has a little bit of cornmeal sweet/crunch to it. It’s real good, and you should try it if you make it to the Carolina coast, but it’s not an arcane delicacy like fugu is, nor is it part of an eldritch horror summoning ritual like Altoona pizza apparently is.
I’ve definitely had cornmeal coated shrimp and fish before, some more thickly with a batter and others just dusted with the stuff. Isn’t that where the idea of hush puppies comes from? Like to use the leftover batter or breading or is that just something I’ve assumed but isn’t borne out by history/evidence?
Indeed. Also, just about anything that lives in water: catfish, crawdads, frog’s legs, oysters. If they don’t come with fries and hush puppies, I’m going to mutter “What kind of joint do they think they’re running?” and not be back.
Don’t people have fish fries during Lent? Living on Lake Erie every little bar and restaurant has perch dinners during Lent and most of them have them on fridays all year long. Pike/walleye also but the perch are the perfect size to eat whole. Some of the best ones are held at places like Amvets or Polish, Hungarian or Slovac clubs. All the grandmas get together and cook and man is it good.
@romansperson linked to this article earlier, but I’m afraid I didn’t read it. (Thanks discourse for the nag!)`
It dismisses the “hush the dogs” theory, preferring a more metaphorical take: the “dogs growling in your stomach” get hushed by this appetizer. Which, honestly, I’m not sure about: on the few occasions when I’ve fried fish this way, there are definitely bits of slodgy batter left behind in the dredging dish, and I can easily see throwing those into the fryer to make treats to throw to dogs. I’ve tried that myself (only I ate them), and they weren’t nearly risen enough to be actual hush puppies; but I can see someone doing that, and then thinking, “if I added some eggs and baking powder to this it’d be awesome,” and doing so.
But apparently “hush puppy” also meant “corrupt behavior by British officials” and “pot liquor” before it meant tasty corn treats. Weird.
On that note, I noticed Palmetto Farms sells both a cornbread mix and a hush puppy mix. And I wonder if there’s any actual difference between the two. Obviously the method of cooking is different, but is there any appreciable difference between cornbread batter and hush puppy batter? Particularly regarding the dry ingredients. I almost wonder if the cornbread mix and hush puppy mix are basically the same thing with different labeling and cooking instructions. Unfortunately they don’t seem to list ingredients on their web site, so I can’t be entirely sure.
To me, the fried breading is unnecessary, especially with scallops which are so delicately flavored. Plus, in order to cook the breading, the scallops will be overdone (beyond medium rare).
To each his own. Plenty of fish in the se……
All the hush puppy recipes I’m seeing have either finely-chopped onions or onion powder in them.