100 Southern Foods

SEAFOOD

BBQ Crabs
Sartin’s Seafood
Nederland, Texas
Think barbecue shrimp, that odd New Orleans neologism. But sub blue crabs for pink crescents. Sprinkle carapaces with a barbecue rub. Fry in deep oil until the meat is sweet and the rub turns caramel. That’s how they do it. (sartinsnederland.com; 409-721-9420)

Boiled Crawfish
Hawk’s Restaurant
Rayne, Louisiana
Purge is the word. At Hawk’s, set among sinewy rice fields and glassine crawfish ponds of Cajun country, they run extra-large specimens through a water bath. A quick boil follows. And soon, a waitress arrives with a plastic beer tray, piled high with steaming crimson beauts. (337-788-3266)

Campechana Extra
Goode Company Seafood 1
Houston, Texas
A riff on the traditional Mexican flotilla of tomato, onion, cilantro, lime, and shellfish, served in a pedestal glass, this kissing cousin to escabeche comes chunked with sweet lumps of crab, emerald hunks of avocado, and pink commas of crisp shrimp. (goodecompany.com; 713-523-7154)

Crawfish Fried Rice
Hank’s Cajun Crawfish
Houston, Texas
This low-rent café turns out Chinese-American fried rice chock-full of Louisiana-raised crawfish as cooked by recent Vietnamese immigrants. On each table are lazy Susans, spinning with chili sauce, Tabasco, and panda-blazoned bottles of soy. (281-988-8974)

Deviled Crabs
Wall’s Bar-B-Que Restaurant
Savannah, Georgia
At this back-of-the-lane lean-to, the deviled crabs, stuffed into aluminum shells, are textbook lessons in the stretching of precious resources by stirring in all manner of filler, from celery to cracker meal.(912-232-9754)

Fish and Chips
Avenue Sea
Apalachicola, Florida
For the fish in his fish and chips, David Carrier uses grouper cheeks and collars. The former are the size of Oreos; the latter recall winged creatures from the Cretaceous era. Both are great battered and fried and served nestled in yesterday’s newspaper. (gibsoninn.com; 850-653-2193)

Fried Mullet Gizzards
Chet’s Catering and Seafood Restaurant
Pensacola, Florida
Springy nubs of cubed calamari. That’s what they resemble. Don’t be dissuaded. Since catfish swam upstream, mullet may be the last of the so-called trash fish. And nothing’s trashier than mullet gizzards. (chetsseafood.com; 850-456-0165)

Fried Red Snapper Throats
The Bright Star
Bessemer, Alabama
There’s an old saying—something about the sweetest meat lying closest to the bone. Or, in this case, the fin. I’m talking about that arc of flesh suspended between a red snapper’s gills and ventral fins. Battered and deep-fried, it’s an angler’s treat that shows up on too few menus. (thebrightstar.com; 205-426-1861)

Fried Shrimp
O’Steen’s Restaurant
St. Augustine, Florida
Reverse-butterflied local shrimp, cosseted in a thin batter, fried to a vellum crisp. At O’Steen’s, a working man’s grub hall run by Minorcan descendants, those shrimp outshine a pilau that would be the pride of any restaurant in the South. (904-829-6974)

Grouper Sandwich
Seagrove Village Market Café
Seagrove Beach, Florida
Open for more than fifty years, which makes it a beach fossil, Seagrove fries a perfect fish sandwich and mixes a keen side of horseradish-spiked slaw. You eat on a screened back porch, stalked by feral kittens. (villagemarketcafe.com; 850-231-5736)

Hot Fish Sandwich
Bolton’s Spicy Chicken and Fish
Nashville, Tennessee
Most hot-fish vendors fry whiting fillets, stack them on mustard-swabbed white bread, pile on pickle and onion slices, and dribble hot sauce. But Bolton Matthews and Dollye Ingram drag their fish through a hail of “secret” spices that taste suspiciously like straight-up cayenne. Sniff before you bite, and a six-sneeze fit follows. (615-254-8015)

Oyster Po’Boy
Bozo’s Seafood Restaurant
Metairie, Louisiana
The family relies upon Leidenheimer French bread. And oysters, trucked up from the crow’s food delta below New Orleans. When you order a loaf, Chris Vodanovich shucks before he fries, which is what God, the original po’boy maker, intended. (504-831-8666)

Oyster Stew
Speed’s Kitchen
Shellman Bluff, Georgia
A collision of three house trailers south of Savannah, this is among the most rudimentary of restaurants. Same formula applies to its oyster stew, a simple—but not simplistic— complement of milk, butter, and brackish bivalve. (912-832-4763)

Pan-Fried Trout and Scrambled Eggs
The Greenbrier, Main Dining Room
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
Few cooks get the eggs fluffy enough. Or they stint on the butter. Not so at this grand old resort, where they know how to pan-fry trout, harvested from nearby streams, until the flesh goes from quiveringly fresh to pink and firm and sublime. (greenbrier.com; 800-453-4858)

Roasted Oysters
Bowens Island
Charleston, South Carolina
Clusters of diminutive oysters snatched from the pluff mud that encircles the island, tossed atop a gas-fired flattop, smothered in a seawater-soaked croaker sack—that’s what Robert Barber and company serve to pilgrims who make the trek to this marsh-side locale. (bowensislandrestaurant.com; 843-795-2757)

Rolled Oysters
Mazzoni’s Café
Louisville, Kentucky
It’s a croquette. But no local would call it that. Louisville oyster rolls are barroom food. Although Greg Haner’s long-lived saloon now fries in the suburbs, its stewardship of these beloved hunks of dough and bivalve remains stalwart. (502-451-3586)

Salmon Croquettes
Watershed
Decatur, Georgia
Canned red salmon has long been the standard. But not for Scott Peacock. He uses the fresh stuff, which makes for a better croquette. Especially when mixed with chopped onions. And fresh bread crumbs. And bound with melted butter (watershedrestaurant.com; 404-378-4900)

Shrimp Buster
Herby-K’s
Shreveport, Louisiana
It’s a long way from the Gulf, but they know what to do with shrimp: Pound thin, until the tails splay flat and the heads resemble tennis racket heads. Fry hard. Serve open-faced, on a crusty roll, with a side of house-made tartar sauce. (herbyks.net; 318-424-2724)

Smoked Mullet Dip
The Wheelhouse Café
Apalachicola, Florida
Bottom-dwelling mullet is oily. Which means it takes well to smoke. Which means it takes well to being flaked and mixed with mayo or cream cheese. The Wheelhouse Café, set on Scipio Creek within sight of a flotilla of gutbucket fishing boats, is a rough and randy bar where, for the most part, food is fuel for drinking. But the mullet dip calls to mind a puree of piscine foie gras. Or a froth of alder-smoked trout. Pick your metaphor. And be sure to bring a cooler to lug home a quart or three. (wheelhousetours.com; 850-653-2177)

Thick Fried Catfish
Taylor Grocery & Restaurant
Taylor, Mississippi
The fillets that swim from Lynn Hewlett’s fryer baskets are sandy brown, strafed with salt, black pepper, and cayenne. Eating them is a sacrament in the conversion of the great unwashed to the gospel of catfish. (taylorgrocery.com; 662-236-1716)

Thin Fried Catfish
Middendorf’s
Manchac, Louisiana
Conjure the love child of a salt-lick potato chip and a white-flake catfish fillet, dished at a water-girded roadhouse. Now pile slice after slice of that papyrus-cut deep-fried fish on a platter. Sprinkle hot sauce. Spritz half a lemon. Bliss. (middendorfsrestaurant.com; 985-386-6666)

Trout Caviar
Sunburst Trout Farm
Canton, North Carolina
The pop is audible. Bite into one of these golden orange eggs, and you’ll hear it. What’s more, you’ll taste the sweet and delicate brine of the fish it came from and, by extension, the rock-strewn rivers in which the fish swam. (sunbursttrout.com; 828-648-3010)