The Price of Shrimp Cocktail

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.

Restaurant operators described the cost of shrimp as steadily increasing. It is always more expensive to buy shrimp fished off U.S. coasts, and prices fluctuate sometimes daily by a couple of dollars depending on demand. The number of shrimp dishes served in restaurants rose in 2024, according to Darren Seifer, an industry adviser for consumer goods and food-service insights at Circana, a market research firm.

While it is hard to compare when size, type, origin and transport vary, once you’re talking about $10 a shrimp, America’s most consumed seafood, the differences may be academic.

When such a formulaic appetizer costs as much as some entrees on the menu, it’s easy to wonder if there is a wood-paneled ceiling for shrimp cocktail prices.

At the Surf Club Restaurant, a silver ramekin of three plump shrimp is the same price as the crab cake, and a dollar more than a half-dozen oysters Rockefeller. Tom Mackenzie, the general manager, said the dish is undoubtedly having a comeback. It’s popular because it’s familiar: “It’s a habit. It’s ingrained.” When he sees a shrimp cocktail order on a ticket, he knows the table is there to celebrate.

“You’re in our world, forget about everything else that’s happening outside of it,” he said. “I think people are seeking that escape more than ever. The shrimp cocktail is really one of those dishes. It just pops. The crab cake is delicious, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a crab cake on a plate.”

Diners are savvier than ever when it comes to identifying quality, he said, and they’re more than willing to splurge when they find it.

“It’s like a Mercedes or a Toyota, right?” he said. “You can charge me for a Mercedes, but it has to be Mercedes quality.”

Joshua Pinsky, the chef and an owner of Penny, a seafood bar in the East Village of Manhattan, will order the appetizer almost anywhere that sells it. “I think shrimp cocktail might actually be one of those things where it’s maybe not a price focus,” he said. “It’s like you want it or you don’t.”

The price point can be what piques his curiosity — like $36 for two shrimp at a steakhouse he declined to name. How good could it be?

“They’re, like, comically big shrimp,” he said. “And I just don’t get why they even need to do that. I’d rather eat six small ones and feel like I’m getting a little more value than two — that I had to split with a four-top.”

At Penny, Mr. Pinsky serves five 16- to 20-count Argentine red shrimp, priced at $24.

“If you’re going to serve something that everyone has a point of reference and a favorite version of, you kind of have to hit it out of the park and beat every level of expectation,” he said.

Shrimp cocktail has been around since at least the 1890s, when it first appeared in Creole cookbooks documenting the culinary traditions of the Gulf Coast. While many Americans reserved it for restaurant special occasions, by the mid-20th century the dish had become more mass-market. To get gamblers through its doors, the Golden Gate Casino in Las Vegas began running a 50-cent shrimp cocktail promotion in 1959, a loss leader that signaled affordable abundance.

“We see food trends come and go, especially luxury ones,” said Sarah Lohman, a food historian and a co-host of the City Cast Las Vegas podcast. “But if it’s not delicious, it doesn’t stick around.”

This month, Leo and Yolanda Garcia tucked into a booth at the Hillstone in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan after a bit of shopping. The couple, visiting from Mexico City, were in town to celebrate Ms. Garcia’s 55th birthday. When at a Hillstone — or Morton’s, or the Palm — they always order a shrimp cocktail, with two cocktail sauces. They did not know the cost of the dish.

“Thank God, usually we don’t check the prices,” said Mr. Garcia, 57.

Over at the bar, Alice Eaton hadn’t looked, either. The shrimp were a vehicle for cocktail sauce, she admitted. “I’ve never seen anything this big,” said Ms. Eaton, 41. “They’re almost a little too big.”

At Hillstone locations across the country, five U-10 Blue Diamond shrimp from the Gulf hover just beneath the $30 threshold, ranging from $25 at the Bal Harbour, Fla., location to $28 in Manhattan.

“Because there is elasticity in something like the shrimp cocktail, we are very conscious of the fact that we do not want to be on the high end of what people offer,” said Steve Crompton, vice president of the Hillstone Restaurant Group.

At Queen Street, a raw bar in Los Angeles, Ari Kolender has laid eyes on the elusive shrimp cocktail price ceiling. As the chef and a partner of the restaurant, he said it looks a lot like $27.

There, they’ve actually marked down the cost of their four-piece, 10- to 20-count Gulf shrimp cocktail to build a bit more flexibility into the menu and to encourage diners to try more dishes. They’ll make up the difference on, say, a crudo.

They’ve prepared the dish several ways to test how best to indicate value: fully peeled shrimp, peel-and-eat shrimp, and peeled with the heads intact. (Mr. Kolender decided to leave the heads on because “that, to me, denotes ‘fresh.’ ”)

“We’re kind of hitting a threshold right now of how expensive shrimp are,” he said, “and what we think people will pay for them.”