Swimming against the tide

Marie-Christine Aquarone, Standard-Times correspondent

Lettuce entrepreneur Chris Killenberg imports wild southern shrimp

For 13 years, Chris Killenberg, the owner and manager of Gooseberry Farms in Westport, has grown large quantities of hydroponic lettuce for the East Coast market. So what made him suddenly decide to add a wild shrimp importing business?

"I'm a like-to-eat guy," says Mr. Killenberg, a native of North Carolina. He graduated with an economics degree from Yale and moved to Westport to start his hydroponic lettuce business.

"In North Carolina, my family spent every summer at the beach on the Outer Banks. Almost every day, at 5 p.m., we'd be finishing off a big bowl of shrimp. It was fresh-caught, and it tasted fantastic."

When he moved to New England, he had no idea that other shrimp tasted different. Two summers ago, he wanted to test a shrimp recipe in preparation for his family's traditional summer gathering in North Carolina. So he went to a New England fish store to buy some tiger shrimp.

"I found it tasteless," he says, but the reason wasn't that it was frozen.

"Frozen shrimp will hold its texture. But it was farm-raised shrimp, from the Far East or Central America, and its texture was rubbery. The way it had been processed had added water to it, maybe 45 percent of its total weight."

So he asked the fishhouse owner that his family knew down in North Carolina if he had any extra wild shrimp to sell to him. This owner put Mr. Killenberg in touch with a network of suppliers. He then set out to persuade restaurants in Westport, Newport, Providence and Boston to buy quality wild shrimp and to stop serving what he considers the less tasty farm-raised shrimp on restaurant plates.

Mr. Killenberg started the Great Southern Shrimp Company two years ago. Now, 35 restaurants in the area buy his southern wild shrimp. They include most of Newport's top restaurants; Neath's New American Bistro, Pot au Feu, XO Caf? and Empire, in Providence; The Back Eddy, Marguerite's and Bayside in Westport; and The East Coast Grill in Boston.

It was a matter of choosing a better quality shrimp at a slightly higher price. "I have a passion about food," says Mr. Killenberg. "It is so much a part of my world view. But not everyone cares about food the way I do. Even some of my friends will eat whatever's quick, filling, and inexpensive."

The North Carolina shrimp season only lasts from May to November. So he extended his network of suppliers to Georgia, and then to the Gulf of Mexico, where the shrimp fishery is year-round. He did it by contacting people recommended by others he already knew.

"These suppliers know what I'm looking for," he says. "They appreciate that I'm after quality. They'll say, 'What we caught today isn't up to your standards.'"

Great Southern Shrimp imports five types of shrimp, which are harvested between North Carolina and the Gulf of Mexico. The Carolina white shrimps, caught between Cape Hatteras and Charleston, have a sweet succulence that is ideal for shrimp cocktail.

Atlantic brown shrimps ("browns") are summertime shrimps of the Carolinas. Known for their deep full flavor, they turn a coral color when cooked. Their large size makes them suitable for shrimp scampi or spicy Cajun shrimp.

Further south, along the Atlantic coast and Florida's panhandle, Florida hopper shrimps are a pink variety with a signature red spot on their side. They are the biggest shrimp in the South. With a flavor that some compare to lobster, they are ideal to bake, broil, stuff or toss on the grill.

The "pinks," or Key West pink shrimps, have a sweet flavor that is ideal for an elegant shrimp cocktail. As for White gulf shrimps, they are great in any shrimp recipe.

Mr. Killenberg operates his shrimp business in a small building next to the greenhouses. Guatemalan and Honduran employees sort the shrimp and soft-shell crabs that arrive, packed on ice, by truck from the South. The shrimps are inspected, weighed, measured and graded by size. Markets and restaurants go by the number of shrimps to the pound, such as 41-50.

An IQF facility in Fall River quick-freezes the shrimp, a process that keeps its saline content intact. The shrimps are individually frozen, then packed in bags and brought back to Gooseberry Farms, ready to be sold and delivered to markets and restaurants. In Mr. Killenberg's freezer locker, the Florida hopper shrimps, 10 to a one-pound bag, look almost as big as turkey legs.

"The pink shrimp is a neat creature, a chameleon," he says, pulling out two bags for a comparison. "In Key West where the sands are very white, it will turn almost white. North of Tampa the shrimps get a more sandy brown color. They're known as 'hoppers' there. But it's the same exact species, a fantastic species. It tastes almost like lobster."

Most shrimps are bottom feeders, even burrowers, caught commercially by trawlers that drag nets across the ocean floor. But some shrimp species like the whites are known to swim upward at night in the water column, where skimmer nets operating from the surface to water depths of 10 feet scoop them up.

In two years, Mr. Killenberg has experienced both a boom and a bust. "The first year was a boom. But the second year was the worst in 25 years. Because of the drought we had last summer, there was less fresh water and the spawning rate was way down." Shrimps like to lay their eggs close to the shore, in the less saline waters of river estuaries.

Shrimp is the second biggest selling seafood in the country after canned tuna. He estimates that 850 million pounds of shrimp are sold each year.

"That's 4 pounds per capita," he says. He is expanding the business. "I'm hoping for a sliver of this enormous market."

Mr. Killenberg may be reached at Great Southern Shrimp Company, P.O. Box 3600, Westport, MA 02790, or by phone at (508) 636-6471. Lee's Super Market and Westport Lobster are the only local retail stores where the shrimp currently are available.