Sweet Grown Alabama Blogs

“Our customers just love it. And, oh! Wait a sec,” Tali May says, rushing into the small commercial kitchen of her seafood market to check the stove.

Explaining what makes her gumbo special — hint: It’s Alabama seafood — distracted her from the pot packed with simmering shrimp, crab and fish just long enough to cause momentary panic. After a quick look and a stir, she declares it “all good!” and continues sharing the origin story of the gumbo she cooks and serves at The Shrimp Lady, the Satsuma seafood market she owns and operates with her husband, Christian.

“I grew up right here in Mobile eating gumbo, and I’ve always loved it,” she says.

She turned her Oklahoma-raised husband into a gumbo fan, too. The hearty stew even topped the menu at their wedding reception, and the couple worked hard to get their version just right.

“We played around with recipes, adding this and adding that until we got what we wanted,” she says.

Tali describes the result as “not spicy but really seasoned.”

But she quickly shifts the praise away from her recipe and onto the Alabama seafood inside it.

“The key aspect is the fresh and local seafood I use,” she says.

An abundance of shrimp, fish and crab swim in its rich base, built on a dark roux. There is okra, but Tali adds no tomatoes, chicken or sausage, allowing the seafood to remain the star.

And while Tali is relieved she didn’t burn the day’s gumbo batch, so are her customers, including one self-proclaimed “gumbo fanatic” who stopped in to grab her regular gumbo order to go and hail Tali’s as the best anywhere around.

She’s only one of the many who make their way to The Shrimp Lady on Thursdays through Saturdays to get their gumbo fix.

Customers also visit The Shrimp Lady for creamy shrimp bisque, boiled shrimp and raw, wild-caught Gulf shrimp, as well as local crab meat, fresh Gulf fish sourced from nearby Fairhope Fish House and oysters.

Today, alongside its other offerings, The Shrimp Lady sells approximately 300 to 500 pounds of raw shrimp each week from its store, at area farmers markets, at a roadside stand on Highway 45 and at Tuscaloosa’s year-round River Market. The shrimp are sold both fresh and fresh but flash-frozen on shrimp boats.

But Tali started small in 2019, buying from a friend who had a shrimp boat and selling shrimp out of the back of her daddy’s pickup truck. Within a year, she was ready to go bigger and bought her current building.

A lot of the market’s shrimp now comes from another local shrimper, who sometimes brings her treasure dredged from the deep: prized royal red shrimp.

“We just got some in, but we don’t have them often,” she says. “Jeremy Zirlott, the Alabama shrimper I work with, is one of the last in this area who goes after them because you have to go out pretty far.”

The seafood industry is not an easy business. Currently, multiple factors out of the control of fishermen, crabbers, shrimpers and seafood markets like Tali’s affect the bottom line, but Tali stays positive when she considers the less obvious benefits of her work.

“When you start a business, everyone tells you about profit and loss,” she says, “but what I’ve come to love are the people we get to meet, our customers, and feeding them. We have so many regulars who come buy gumbo and seafood but also just hang out and visit.”

And a type of loss Tali never anticipated stirs her emotions.

“There are folks who come in all the time, and then they stop because they pass away,” she says, her voice catching a little. “That’s tough, because we really get to know our customers.”

While Tali appreciates her customers’ consistent support and friendship, she never hesitates to rally folks behind those who make her business possible.

“If there is one thing I want people to know, it’s this: Support our local shrimpers. Everyone needs to get educated on local shrimp versus imported,” she says. “Imports are killing the local guys, so always ask at Alabama restaurants, especially those down here by the water, where their shrimp come from. They are obligated, by law, to tell you, and you want shrimp from Alabama shrimpers.”