By Mickey Dunaway

Reprinted with Permission by Currents Magazine | Nov 5, 2024| Cornelius, NC.

I recently saw a Charlotte Chef on a local TV Morning Show demonstrating—although not from the Low Country—how to make Charleston Shrimp and Grits. Admittedly, his final product looked tasty, except the grits were  runny, and the “chef,” when asked by the host, said, “I use simple, instant quick grits because that is what I was raised on.” Stop my seafood-and-grits-loving heart! One NEVER uses quick grits paired with seafood. Good stone ground grits bring a unique taste to the table. 

I heard the story of how shrimp and grits on a trip to Charleston. The story goes like this. Shrimpers often stay out for days at a time, pulling nets all night long, and look forward to a hearty breakfast. So, that means three ingredients most likely found on every overnight shrimp boat are grits, shrimp, and likely a slab of bacon. And when the shrimpers come in for breakfast, they get a serving of grits dressed with a half-dozen or more shrimp sauteed in bacon drippings. The story of how grits and shrimp became a gastric phenomenon has taken over restaurants from fancy to food trucks across the country. 

Now for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used on his syndicated radio shows. As most of my readers know, I am from Lower Alabama. The Dunaway families from that neck of the state of Alabama had a different take on grits. We ate them with fried fish—usually bream with an occasional catfish or bass. Family reunions were fish-fries and fried fish were served with grits.

From as far back as I can remember—from a sepia-tinted picture from around 1950—it appears I was about four years old. Eating fish had three rules in all Alabama branches of the Dunaways. First, the fish was to be fried. The Second tenet was—the only side dish served with fried fish or occasionally oysters since was grits. The Third rule of a fish fry was that there had to be hushpuppies made with cornmeal, chopped onion, and often whole-kernel corn. Coleslaw was Optional.

That was the meal: fried fish, stone ground grits, hushpuppies, and coleslaw.

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As a high school principal, I often had an end-of-the-year celebration at my house after graduation. One year, I had saved up the crappie and bass that I caught all year, and I had enough to feed my faculty of 70. I set up a propane fish fryer on the deck overlooking Lake Martin, and the wife cooked a big ol’ pot of grits and a big bowl of coleslaw. The looks on the teachers’ faces when they saw the grits as the main accompaniment to the fried fish, were priceless!

The looks on the faces of my faculty confounded me for years after that night. For the Lower Alabama Dunaways, grits with fish was like turkey at Thanksgiving—they were joined in culinary marriage. I wondered, “Why just the Dunaways?” 

When we moved to Charlotte in 2005, part of the mystery of the importance of grits with fish was solved when I had that first bowl of shrimp and grits! So, our family’s affinity for grits and fish likely began in South Carolina.

I figure a long-ago relative passed through the low country on his journey from Virginia to Alabama and stayed long enough to taste grits with seafood. When the Dunaway ancestors settled in Alabama, they did not live close to the coast, so shrimp were only sometimes available. However, fish caught from abundant creeks, rivers, and lakes has always been a strong Dunaway family tradition. Perhaps, great, great, great grandfather Dunaway, while frying fish for supper in his home in Canoe, Alabama, suggested to his wife that she cook up a pot of grits. 

I don’t know the name of the relative who started the tradition by name, but bless his heart for starting the wonderful tradition in the Dunaway family of FISH and Grits— even if it was stolen from South Carolina. 

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If I don’t love you, baby 

Grits ain’t Groceries

Eggs ain’t poultry 

And Mona Lisa was a man

—Lyrics from Little Milton