For many people, Labor Day marks the end of summer. But ours ended a couple weeks back, when we returned home from our annual beach vacation.
Soon after we rolled into town, I began working my way through a daunting mess of emails, two of which were rewrite requests from pesky editors. My wife began rethinking her college course syllabi and facing down the reality that she would be teaching freshmen this fall. My son Jess girded himself for the second grade, which means not only a new teacher but a new school.
But that Sunday evening, at the dinner table, we tried our darnedest to hold onto our summer, to rekindle the spirit of our just-completed vacation, down on the Georgia coast. I rehashed stories of days of indolence, spent in a circuit between beach and pool, bar and snack bar. Jess riffled through his shell collection. Blair pondered her tan lines. We all grew a little anxious.
Fried shrimp saved us. Or I should say, the memory of fried shrimp saved us.
On the way south from the Savannah airport, to Sea Island, we had taken a detour to Shellman’s Bluff, Georgia, an end-of-a-sandy-lane sort of community on the Broro River where Speed’s Kitchen, set in mobile home compound, fries snap-crackle-and-pop local shrimp that taste sweet and briny and righteous. They also dish simple bowls of oyster stew, cooked to order, and containing nothing but milk, butter, and oysters.
On the way back to the airport we hit B&J’s in Darien. The tabby-sided building, set hard by Highway 17, lacked the countrified charm of Speed’s. Which is to say, the dining room was dominated by a steam table. But the menu promised “wild American shrimp” and that’s what the waitress soon delivered: a mound of straight-off-the-dock pink commas, cloaked in sandy brown mantles.
We spent the week between shrimp binges eating haute cuisine at the Cloister, Sea Island’s grand beach resort. That meant a deconstructed Caesar salad, bound by two cheese straws that encircled it like a corset. And truffled scones. That meant scallops in a froth of local corn. And a stool for my wife’s clutch purse.
Those meals were pure indulgence. They were beautifully executed and flawlessly served. And I would kill to be back at table in the Georgian Room right now, drinking the Slovenian Sauvignon that our price-sensitive sommelier suggested. But as the weeks pass and we settle into the rhythms of school and work, as tan lines fade and the credit card bills arrive, it’s fried shrimp that we will conjure. I can taste the tartar sauce now.
Speed’s Kitchen Rural Route 2, Shellman’s Bluff, GA (912-832-4763)
Directions: From I-95, exit 67 onto U.S. 17 south (left). Turn left onto Minton Road. Turn left at stop sign. Turn right at next stop sign. Speed’s Kitchen Road is the one before the church.
B&J’s 901 Northway St., Darien, GA (912-437-2122)
Directions: From I-95, exit 49 toward Darien. Turn left onto Ga. 251. Turn right onto U.S. 17/Ocean Highway and follow to restaurant on right.
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