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A keen consumer of shellfish, Tanya Sichynsky hosts an annual shrimp cocktail party.
The shrimp cocktail at the comically exclusive Polo Bar in Manhattan is an imposing specimen, the crustaceans arriving tightly shingled on a steeple of ice accented by a celery spire. To devour one in a single bite would be gluttonous. Each requires at least three bites to enjoy — and to ensure the tail meat is excavated.
The hefty Gulf shrimp at the Polo Bar appear to be “U-10s,” a size classification that indicates there are fewer than 10 to a pound. Each bite will run you $2.83, roughly the price of the MetroCard swipe to get there (though Polo Bar patrons seem unlikely to arrive by subway). But at $34 for four shrimp, this is hardly the most expensive shrimp cocktail in the United States.
At heritage steakhouses, beachside dining rooms and birthday-destination chains, diners are sparing no expense to indulge in a little midcentury hedonism by the coupe glass.
At the Scottsdale, Ariz., location of Maple & Ash, a steakhouse with an outpost in Chicago and another opening soon in Miami, $35 gets you four wild blue prawns. At Thomas Keller’s Michelin-starred Surf Club Restaurant in Miami, $34 buys you three U-10s from the Gulf of Mexico. For $32 you get three jumbo shrimp at BLVD Steak in Los Angeles. And $30 buys four jumbo shrimp at the Boston, Denver and Phoenix locations of Ocean Prime.
Just two years ago, Bon Appétit lamented that shrimp cocktail had entered “its $30 era.” At Old Homestead Steakhouse in the meatpacking district of Manhattan, four jumbo shrimp will run you a nice, round $40.
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