St. Simons Seafood

WORDS BY TAYLOR COOPER | PHOTOS BY DERRICK DAVIS

Certainly, a noticeable trend is fewer people staying in hotels and eating out. She gets plenty of customers now who want to buy a big to-go order from her — St. Simons Seafood does not have a dine-in option — to take back to their Airbnb rental.

And when you’re vacationing on the coast, what are you going to eat but seafood? That’s especially true when it comes to shrimp, Georgia’s aquatic cash crop. No matter the season, shrimp has always been the big seller by a mile, both cooked and uncooked.

She’s no stranger to it. Originally from Galveston, Texas, she’s quite familiar with seafood. What Georgia’s got is much better, though.

There’s a reason for that — Georgia is known nationally for its wild-caught shrimp, not farm-raised. “Wild Georgia Shrimp” is a recognized branding slogan across the country due in no small part to a concerted effort with fishers, retailers, restaurants, the Georgia Shrimp Association, and the state government to bring attention to the state’s No. 1 seafood delicacy.

The GSA certifies producers as selling the genuine article, which possesses a taste and texture unlike any others, largely because of the state’s geographical features — particularly the marshland — and the strong Atlantic tides.

Nearly 80% of Georgia’s seafood revenue comes from shrimp alone, in the estimation of the state Department of Agriculture.

In 2022, Georgia had 214 licensed shrimping vessels by the time shrimp season closed in December, per the state Department of Natural Resources. They collectively reported 1.75 million pounds of shrimp caught from St. Marys to Savannah, bringing in a total dockside sale value of $10.5 million by the time the season closed, an 11.3% increase over the five-year average

It’s from that 1.75 million pounds that Egeland gets her product, fresh off the Brunswick and Darien waterfronts, from her brother-in-law who runs a shrimping boat.

A “slow day” in food service is a relative term. It’s different for a drive-thru or pickup place than for a sit-down establishment. At St. Simons Seafood, which sells both prepared meals and raw seafood at retail, it’s a term that doesn’t really apply during the summer.

St. Simons Island doesn’t have an offseason anymore, it’s said by some in the tourism industry, but there’s a distinct difference in those coming to St. Simons Seafood in the summer compared to other seasons, says BJ Egeland, the business’s owner.

“Sometimes we go through 100 pounds, and that’s just cooked, I’m not talking about the shell,” she says. That’s not an isolated occurrence. Ask any restaurant owner, general manager, or head chef about the best-selling food any time of year, and it’s going to be shrimp by a long shot.

Shrimp season is well underway in Georgia by now, typically starting around the end of March, but it was just rounding the corner when Egeland spoke to Golden Isles Mag for an interview about her niche in the area’s bustling food business.

“They’re supposed to be greenish looking,” she explained, holding up a fresh-caught shrimp by way of example. “If they’re orangish, no.”

The darker they are, the longer they’ve been sitting on a boat without ice, she says.

Being from Galveston, Egeland is very familiar with the shrimping industry. On the surface, there’s not much difference between Georgia shrimp and those caught in the Gulf of Mexico. But she feels that Georgia shrimp are much better than anything caught in the Gulf. While growing in popularity, Georgia’s shrimp are still something of a sleeper hit in the culinary world. It’s never been much a of secret to her or her husband though.

The spot off Demere Road opened in 1997, an extension of the business her husband had started in Brunswick, Altama Seafood. He’d worked at Poor Steven’s — a longtime St. Simons Island staple near the intersection of Frederica and Demere roads — for several years. He decided he wanted to be the one selling to the restaurants, rather than working them. That suited Egeland just fine, although she maintains that selling wholesale is a cutthroat business. She much prefers a retail environment, selling straight to the public, which is exactly what she does now.

St. Simons Seafood isn’t a restaurant, but along with raw shrimp, Egeland sells cooked seafood meals for families both local and vacationing in the area that want something quick to put on the table for dinner. Those are kind of the people she likes to serve.

“I have the best customers in the world,” she says.

On St. Simons Island, you also get a sense of community not found in a lot of other places, another reason Egeland is happy to remain.

One of those customers brought her a recipe he wanted to try, but he also wanted the master to try her hand at making it. Any readers who want to taste something she offers in his or her own kitchen can try out the old Sea Island recipe her customer asked her to make. He provided the recipe and she does the rest, Egeland says. She didn’t ask any questions, but got a great menu item out of the deal.

• St. Simons Seafood is located at 2463 Demere Road. For questions or to make an order, call 912634-2646.

Sea Island Shrimp Salad

2 cups apple cider vinegar

2 lemons, sliced (squeeze juice from end pieces)

3.75 oz capers, undrained

1 large Vidalia onion or other sweet onion, julienned

1½ pounds cooked shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails on

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: mix together vinegar, lemons, capers, and onion into a bowl. Add shrimp, season to taste. Allow to marinate in the refrigerator for several hours, stirring a few times, before serving.

White-water lilies bask sunlit

Peat conglomerates into prairies where grasses emerge from seedlings cypress towers the canal where history beckons today from the ancient way nature has a penetrating reach to the rekindling summer flames where sandhill cranes screech ibis flock in the morning rise alligators bellow & lie flies swarm in the warm afternoon air barred owls who-who, who-who in the unpolluted star-illuminated nights and cannot forget the swallow-tailed kites times soon may change at a crossroads the Okefenokee lays the landscape is still the stage