Loved by Connecticut ’s Chefs

Stonington Reds are a delicate, sweet, buttery shrimp coveted by culinarians

It’s not a vast fleet you’ll find 100 miles southeast of Stonington on the continental shelf, trawling the seabed at depths up to 2,700 feet for one of the most elusive crustacean species. Instead, it’s just one or just a handful of boats. But the fishermen behind the wheel know their work reaps, quite literally, the sweetest reward.

“They were actually looking for a different species of shrimp called Scarlet Shrimp, and they didn’t find those, but they found the Royal Red,” recalls Nancy Balcom, who has served as the associate director and extension program leader for the University of Connecticut Sea Grant College Program since 1985. “The grant allowed them to put real deep sea nets and miles and miles of line on their boat without having to pay for it; covering the cost of going out and blowing diesel to go exploring in areas where they didn’t normally.”

Stonington’s Royal Red Shrimp, or colloquially, Stonington Reds, were uncovered in the cold deep blue of the Northeast Atlantic just 30 years ago. Funded by a National Marine Fisheries Service grant to unearth lesser-known species, the late William Bomster, a Connecticut native and longtime Stonington-based scalloper, brought to the surface the Pleoticus Robustus — plump, robust, “royal red” shrimp that lurk deep in the fathoms where temperatures linger at 50 degrees or cooler.

The limited number of boats fishing them and the 12-hour journey it takes to reach their fertile grounds combined with their extraordinary sweet, buttery flavor make Stonington Reds a delicacy. Retailers don’t carry them year-round and only a handful of chefs can get their hands on them, typically in late summer through mid-fall.

Asked about composing dishes with Stonington Reds, Reneé Touponce, chef/owner of Oyster Club and The Port of Call in Mystic, lights up. “We’ll get those reds on the menu as soon as they land,” says the 2024 James Beard Award finalist for Outstanding Chef. “They’re way sweeter and more delicate than other shrimp.”

Over the years, Reneé has prepared Stonington Reds in complex multi-ingredient dishes as well as simpler ones to highlight their exceptional flavor profile. Examples include serving them just lightly poached; in a Shrimp Mofongo — a Puerto Rican dish with plantains and chicharron (pork rinds) — and in various pasta dishes.

“These shrimp are very tender and creamy and buttery and obviously beautiful. I think they have a lot more sweetness than Gulf shrimp.”

“I also do a Stonington Red shrimp toast that crushes at Oyster Club, where we do a little bit of saffron cream and just some chives over top of toasted sourdough,” she says. “Something that’s also really cool that you can do with them is leave their heads on and grill them that way, then cut them in half, through their heads, and you can do Butter Grilled Roasted Stonington Red Shrimp.”

Shrimp imported from Indonesia, or anywhere around the globe, notes Reneé, can taste like a “blank canvas.” When cooked in white wine or other aromatics, she explains, typical shrimp impart those diverse and distinct flavors. “Whereas the Stonington Reds are so sweet and delicious and decadent, that altering the flavor, introducing all these other flavors, isn’t really necessarily needed because of how delicious they are,” she says. “You truly can taste this sweet, natural flavor from the shrimp itself.”

James Wayman, a chef and co-owner of River Bar in Westerly and sister restaurants Nana’s Westerly & Nana’s Mystic, recalls tasting Stonington Reds for the first time, noting their sweet finish and supple flesh. “They are super, super tender. I think of Gulf shrimp as having almost a crunch to them,” he says. “These shrimp are very tender and creamy and buttery and obviously beautiful. I think they have a lot more sweetness than Gulf shrimp.”

The chef also notes their fragility, which forces chefs like him to act quickly when they land, typically from Sea Well Seafood in Pawcatuck and Mystic. “They do have less of a shelf life, by far, than a regular shrimp does, so you have to cook them right away. When I was cooking them at Oyster Club, I’d only get enough for like a night or two,” he says, recalling some years ago when he was executive chef at Mystic’s Oyster Club.

David Standridge, executive chef of The Shipwright’s Daughter and newly opened Mystic Fish Camp, both in downtown Mystic, is a longtime fan of Stonington Reds. The chef, who was named Best Chef in the Northeast by the James Beard Foundation in 2024, says he loves working with the “delicate and amazingly delicious” shrimp, describing them as a “quirky delicacy.”

“We serve them raw as a simple crudo and seared in the shell with a lot of chili sugar kelp butter,” says David. The chef says with limited availability, they’re especially coveted.

“It’s a very niche fishing market because there are no shrimp boats here, and you need them to catch these,” he says. “We tend to think of seafood in commodity terms in this country, but I love something like this that emphasizes how, at the heart of every meal, there are stories and people who bring it all together by getting out of bed and going to work. There isn’t an endless supply of these people, and when they go, so does the food. Stonington Reds are a great example of that.” David is widely celebrated for centering local and sustainable species across his menus.

He says that ethos has multiple benefits, including supporting fishermen in his own community. “That’s really at the heart of what motivates us to keep things so extremely local. We try very hard to only use fish that’s landed within 20 miles of the restaurant. When you put those guardrails up, it informs the cuisine to a large degree, because we have to work around all those limitations,” he says. His approach also has its challenges, but he focuses on the silver lining. “This gives us simultaneously a very limited but also fluctuating palate of seafood to work with, and that limitation keeps things fresh and authentic in this amazing place. Stonington reds are certainly a big part of that.”

Kate Masury spearheads Eating with the Ecosystem, a non-profit that promotes a place-based approach to sustaining New England’s wild seafood to support the region’s marine ecosystems and the people who depend on them. For more than a decade, the organization has hosted culinary events to help make local seafood approachable and appealing to the public. By collaborating with the region’s most talented chefs, including Reneé, David, and James, who prepare wild seafood dishes, the organization is helping to create a broader audience and greater demand for hyper-local species.

“They are cool because they are a local shrimp and, beyond the Maine shrimp fishery, which has been closed for over a decade, it’s really the only local shrimp we have in our region,” explains Kate. “We served them the last two years at our Annual Community Seafood Dinner. The first year they were in a seafood pasta dish with squid and scallops and a pesto sauce. Last year, they were served in a seafood Bouillabaisse with green crabs, squid, and monkfish. They are pretty versatile and can be used any way you’d use other shrimp.”

Nancy Balcom, who is about to retire after three decades with the Sea Grant Program, reflects on the journey of Stonington Reds, how the species has evolved from barely known to a chef’s favorite. “I’m really kind of proud of this project after all these years,” she says. “It’s a small fishery but the grant did its job, fishermen are still earning some money off of it, and we all – well, not all of us, but some of us get to enjoy the shrimp.”

Learn more about the Sea Grant program at seagrant.uconn.edu and Eating with the Ecosystem at eatingwiththeecosystem.org