Savor Scout › Food guides › Shrimp and grits
How to find good shrimp and grits
Shrimp and grits started as a Lowcountry fisherman's breakfast and became a Southern restaurant standard. Its quality depends almost entirely on the grits.
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What separates a good one from a bad one
- Stone-ground grits, slow-cooked — Coarse, creamy and full of corn flavour, cooked for close to an hour with butter. Instant grits are gluey and bland.
- Shrimp cooked just through — Fresh local shrimp, ideally, sautéed until snappy.
- A gravy with depth — Bacon or tasso ham, garlic, scallions and a pan sauce. Should coat, not swamp.
- Cheese, used carefully — Some versions use cheddar in the grits. It should enrich, not overwhelm.
- Available at breakfast — Places that serve it in the morning are closer to its roots.
What to order
- Shrimp and grits — The classic, with tasso or bacon gravy.
- A side of biscuits — For the gravy.
- Fried green tomatoes — As a starter.
- She-crab soup — In Charleston.
- Pecan pie — To finish.
Where to find Shrimp and grits
Shrimp and grits is mostly found at Southern restaurants and Cajun and Creole restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 7,190 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New Orleans, LA 249 Houston, TX 138 Atlanta, GA 91 Baton Rouge, LA 77 Nashville, TN 58 Lafayette, LA 58 New York, NY 56 Chicago, IL 54
Campuses with the most within a mile
College of Charleston 21 Georgia State University 18 UAB 15 SCAD 15 NYU 15 UL Lafayette 14
A few to start with
- Public Service — New Orleans, LA
311 Baronne St, New Orleans - Ragin Cajun — Houston, TX
930 Main St, Houston - Fred's Country Kitchen — Atlanta, GA
132 Mitchell St SW, Atlanta - Cork's Cajun Fried Fish and Shrimp — Baton Rouge, LA
5131 Government St, Baton Rouge - 417 Union — Nashville, TN
417 Union St, Nashville - Pat's Downtown — Lafayette, LA
107 E Main St, Lafayette
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for stone-ground, Lowcountry and fresh shrimp, and favours Southern kitchens and brunch spots where reviewers praise the grits specifically.
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Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
Related food guides
Southern food, brunch, seafood
When you might want this
- Where to eat on a Sunday night
- Where to take friends visiting from out of town
- Where to eat on Mother's Day