Shrimp and Grits

Once a popular morning meal throughout the South, shrimp and grits is no longer restricted to breakfast tables below the Mason-Dixon line. Variations of the dish now appear on breakfast, lunch and dinner menus across the country from Maine to Oregon. This recipe is an adaptation of one that Julia Reed discovered at Pearl’s Café, a restaurant in landlocked Sewanee, Tenn., that evokes shrimp cardinale, a dish found in New Orleans. It is “a superb version, a highly seasoned, creamy concoction with chunks of tomatoes” that is served over a pile of grits enriched with plenty of butter, salt and Cheddar. —Julia Reed