The Boiling Shrimp - Hollywood

There’s something too fun about eating with your hands. As adults, we know better than to play with our food, but it seems that any given opportunity, I’m not going to pass up the chance to act like a 5 year old finger painting with pudding. I think it’s what I like most about Ethiopian food, to be completely honest. Over the weekend, I reverted back to my childhood and was brought great pleasure playing with my food. This time it came with a shell, eyeballs and tentacles, in the form of a lovely, plump, lipstick pink shrimp. Tucked away in an interesting little area of Thai town, in Hollywood, sits The Boiling Shrimp; it so happens to be right next door to a middle Eastern restaurant, Carousel, easy to confuse with Carousel in Glendale which is famous thanks to the Kardashian’s. Apparently the location in Hollywood has no relation to either… Back to the shrimp, The Boiling Shrimp is interesting, it has a half Thai menu, where one will find their favorite Thai all-star dishes and the other half, Creole seafood, definitely the kind of kitsch I adore in an eatery. We ordered the garlic bread which was mind blowing, super garlic in flavor and tasted like it was buttered with coconut butter. The calamari, which had a very different taste than most calamari, the batter reminded Todd and I of a breading one would find on southern fried chicken, it wasn’t overly salty nor greasy. We then ordered a bucket o’shrimp with “the medley” of spices, mild kick. The spices were amazing and actually spicy (I often feel that restaurants are overly cautious with bringing on the heat). The bucket had corn cobs, which we added to our order, red potatoes and a pound of large shrimp with everything intact. I loved the spice mix, the potato, the corn was juicy and the shrimp were flavorful and large. It took me a minute to set my overly girly ways aside to not get grossed out by the shrimp eyeballs but I’m glad I over came it and dug right in. All in all, The Boiling Shrimp turned out to be a great, casual and inexpensive experience that really added some fun into my daily dinner. Note: this is probably not the best first date option, though they provide bibs they are in no way sexy and I did somehow manage to get food all over me. I could smell shrimp all through our post dinner movie and cocktail but thank goodness it disappeared after about five vigorous hand washes- the price you pay eating with your hands. For the well acquainted company, a definite fun place to check out in the Hollywood area.