I ate the lobster, and then I ate his tail

Behold... the classic Cape Cod clam shack.

Welcome to Barlow's Clam Shack.

Known among the local culinary elite as Barlow's Of Bournedale, it is a favorite haunt of my good friend the Bournedale Phantom.

Normally, you don't want to eat at a decrepit shanty on an industrial canal a quarter mile from a power plant (and about 10 miles from a nuclear plant)... but clam shacks are to Cape Cod Cuisine what shotgun shacks are to Soul Food, or maybe what greasy-spoon diners are to truckers.

Besides... they fry everything... and any bacteria that survives a fat fryer was probably going to get you anyhow.

Note the ground covering. Those are smashed up clam shells. While a trifle sharp, they are actually an aesthetically-pleasing enough Look. The olfactory benefits can be muted by boiling the shells before paving your place with them, although New Englanders are usually far too enured to the smell of decaying mollusk to waste time on that kind of stuff.

Before you call the Home Depot.... Your average clam is about 2-3 inches long, and clam shell driveways are only economically viable if you have access to thousands of clams... like if you ran a seafood place, maybe...

I was just here for ice cream, and often aim my daily walks towards this Mecca of mine. Why, just this week I had Maine Blueberry ice cream (which was superb) and Lobster Tails (which was an artery-clogging vanilla/chocolate swirl/almond concoction with little halved peanut butter cups- red, of course- that looked like lobster tails)... the latter being so good that I almost had to have sex with the cone.

 

As I became more well-travelled earlier in my life, there were three things I was shocked to learn about the way the rest of the country speaks.

One... what everyone else calls a "milkshake, we call a "frappe." The rest of the USA has no term for a whipped milk/syrup drink.

Two... you only have to get as far as Connecticut before the practice of calling a split-loaf sandwich a "sub" is obsolete. By the time you get to NYC, "hoagie" is useless. "Hero," however good it is as a term, doesn't even make it to Philly. The rest of the country, I've determined, lacks imagination or a large Jewish/Italian population.

Three... no one outside of New England uses "wicked" as an adverb/modifier of an adjective. "Wicked" means "evil" everywhere in the United States... except New England, where it means "very."

The use of "wicked good" on Barlow's sign looks like an oxymoron to 99.1% of the country, but it clearly speaks to me that it this a local place run by local people. I was drawn to it immediately... or "wicked fast."

 

This is my man Hoss The Booty Filler from Grazing Fields Farm, in Bounedale.

 

You may have trouble finding the carved-cod window box at the local hardware store if you live in, say, everywhere but Cape Cod.... but we have plenty.

Tags: Clam Shacks, Bournedale, Cape Cod, Monponsett, Ice Cream, Lobster Tails, Blogplugs, the use of wicked as an adverb