Shrimply the Best Why seafood lovers are pining for Santa Barbara spot prawns

WHEN CHEF DOMINIQUE CRISP OPENED his first restaurant in Pasadena, California, he did it with the intention of running spot prawns, especially from Santa Barbara, on his menu as much as he possibly could.

- Jean Trinh

"I love the flavor, freshness, and lore involved with them," Crisp explains. "They're very rare."

Despite its name, the elusive spot prawn, which glimmers translucently under an orange-reddish shell, is actually shrimp. Sweet and briny, with meat as firm and succulent as lobster, these prized crustaceans can be found up and down the North American West Coast. But due to the warm waters around the Santa Barbara Channel, they grow to massive sizes there, averaging six to eight inches (and up to 10 at times), almost double the length of those found in Washington or Oregon.

Part of their appeal is that they're hard to get. Spot prawns are possibly the most expensive fishery on the West Coast. The very few permits allowed in Santa Barbara can go for over a million dollars each, according to Billy Gerard, who helms Santa Barbara Stone Crab Company and supplies area restaurants with spot prawns.

It's not an easy feat to catch these creatures. Gerard has crews out on 45-foot-long boats, dropping traps anywhere from 600 to 1,500 feet underwater. Regulations limit the number of traps that can be used. While he knows where they're likely to be gathering, it's not always a given.

"There are studies, but they don't know exactly how and where they migrate,” says Gerard. “It's a guessing game, and they're very hard to see to begin with because of the depth in which they live."

Crisp, who is now the executive chef at The Lonely Oyster in Los Angeles, likes to join Gerard on the docks when his team hauls in the spot prawns. They're pulled out of holding tanks and then put directly into trucks with tanks to keep them alive.

The chef calls spot prawns "unicorns because of the massive horn on their heads" and says people could get cut by them if they reached into the tanks.