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.
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 five-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.”