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Giovanni's Shrimp

People selling food out of old trucks and RV's are a pretty common site around the island. They usually look pretty run down and dingy, but sell amazingly good food. Some are better than others though and they usually develop a reputation among the populace. We know of a guava chicken tent (not a truck, just a tent) that absolutely makes me giddy with glee every time we pass near it. With this in mind, we finally stopped at one of the top shrimp trucks on the island:

Giovanni's.

We'd heard about Giovanni's dozen's of times. It and Fumi's are the two top shrimp trucks on the island if you're judging by number of times they are mentioned. Fumi's is about an hour away from us though, and Giovanni's is only about a twenty minute drive. Not a tough decision to make.

We knew that sometimes the wait in line to place your order can be thirty minutes or more, so we went for a late lunch and fortunately only waited a few minutes.

Giovanni's had three shrimp meals to offer as well as a garlic hot dog. Kerry, Ben, and I all ordered the shrimp scampi, Katie opted for the lemon butter shrimp, and Emily, because she is allergic to dairy, took the only option available to her, the hot and spicy shrimp. The hot and spicy shrimp comes with the scary warning, "Very Hot - No Refunds".

The shrimp scampi has LOTS of garlic on it (we love garlic, so this was good) and comes with two large scoops of rice as a side dish. Katie's lemon-butter shrimp was actually my favorite.

We amazingly got a table under an umbrella (the tables were all full when we arrived and Katie wanted to eat in the car, but no way were we taking all that rice and garlic in a vehicle).

Emily's hot and spicy no-refunds shrimp was definitely flaming hot. She was only able to eat three of them before she gave up. The rest of us ate one each and that was plenty.

So here's the verdict: The shrimp was very good. It was really tasty. But that was it. I was really expecting something phenomenal, I guess. I don't like white rice so one of my main disappointments was that there was no option of a green salad as a side dish. Also, we all ate with one hand, while fanning away flies with the other. They were everywhere. The one exception was that not one single fly landed on Emily's "no refunds" shrimp. We paid $70 to eat shrimp and fan flies. The kids ate a little of the rice.

Apparently, when they can't get a table, or maybe just to escape from the flies, some folks eat in their cars, so this sign has been placed in front of the parking lot:

Please turn your car engines off. People are eating and you aren't the only person here!
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