The Best I Ever Had: Shrimp and Grits, Marfa, Texas, January 2012
And Chef Rocky Barnette, born and raised near Asheville, North Carolina
The following piece appeared first on “Old Ones Dream” in February, 2013 as “The Best I Ever Had: Shrimp and Grits,” and updated as a piece in “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” April 14, 2022.
Tanne and I rode into Marfa, Texas, in the late afternoon on a Monday in January 2012. We came down from Fort Davis, Texas, after a walking tour of Fort Davis National Historic Site and a ridge line hike in Davis Mountains State Park on the Skyline Drive Trail.
We stopped off at the Marfa Information Center for info on the “Marfa Lights” and headed for the Hotel Paisano where the cast of the 1956 film “Giant” (including James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson) were lodged while on location. We toured the gift shops and “Giant” exhibition area, and I photographed Tanne with a life-size cutout of James Dean.
We were rubbing elbows with a young woman who was also shopping for gifts. We moved on to Jett’s Grill in the hotel, sat at the bar, and had a very good supper. The same young woman came up to the bar and asked us where we were from, etc. She was there with Rocky Barnette, born and raised near Asheville, North Carolina, and she introduced us. Rocky is a well-schooled chef, and he and a friend ran a restaurant in Marfa that closed on Mondays, and he was enjoying his night off at Jett’s. We visited about Asheville and the food scene there, and he and the lady left on bicycles after inviting us to come to his restaurant the next time we were in Marfa. We headed back to Alpine for the night and stopped off at the Marfa Lights viewing area but the storied ethereal lights did not show themselves that night.
The next time we were in Marfa—the next evening—when we walked into The Miniature Rooster, Rocky was not surprised to see us and rolled out the “red carpet.” The culinary background and credentials of Rocky and his business partner Uday Huja, as detailed on the web site at the time, are pretty impressive. Since arriving in West Texas, I had not found any grits, cooked or not, and decided to have the shrimp and grits even though we were almost a mile above sea level.
Tanne had an Indian Curry dish, Chole Puri Tamarind Chickpea Curry, that she thought was delicious. The place was full of happy people and the service was superb.
I spent much of my life in the low country, within an hour or two of Charleston, South Carolina, and I thought I had already had the best that Shrimp and Grits could be; but I was wrong. The shrimp were arranged on the bed of grits, topped with a soft-cooked, poached local egg, and garnished with red Rio Grande chiles. Rocky said that, in West Texas, he had not been able to find the stone-ground grits called for in all the recipes, so he used polenta instead (to memorable effect). I learned from that. Often, I have not been able to find organic grits but organic yellow polenta (Bob’s Red Mill) is often available, and I have used it when necessary.
Conventional wisdom would tell me not to order shrimp and grits on the high desert of the Big Bend. Conventional wisdom would have caused me to miss “the best I ever had.”
The Miniature Rooster closed in April 2012. Word on the street indicated that the landlord may have jacked up the rent to an unsustainable level. Rocky Barnette is still an acclaimed chef living at Marfa and most recently had The Capri with Virginia Lebermann, which closed for COVID in March 2020. Rocky and Virginia have produced the cookbook “Cooking in Marfa: Welcome We’ve Been Expecting You.”
