I know a thing or two about clams.
1: I was born and raised on the Jersey Shore, and much to popular disbelief, our waterways aren’t a back sewer for NYC’s hospital waste (though admittedly, they were in the 80’s), but instead, the Garden State is a mecca of streams, lakes, and bays, alongside the Atlantic ocean, bathed in the warmth of the Gulf Stream - a breeding ground for fresh seafood.
2: My dad was a shucker. To make some extra money on the side, when I was a kid, he worked weekend nights shucking clams at his buddy’s place, “Keep on Eatin’, right across the street from the Belmar boardwalk. Of course, my dad, being my dad, he made a game of how quickly he could open a clam and was ready to out-shuck any competitor. And he did, earning himself the nickname, “Clambo” (side note: his friend who owned the clam bar, also owned a T-shirt business, and therefore, “Clambo,” was recorded as wearable history).
So when I say Pete’s Seafood served me the most unbelievable bivalve that’s ever galavanted down my gullet, I meant that wholeheartedly. No grit, the subtly sweet crunch of a barely-there, yet noteworthy coat over the whole belly of the Ipswich clam. Pete took what could potentially turn into a rubber band ball of chew and finessed it into that rarely-seen, upper echelon of fragile, sometimes temperamental ingredients, who when prepared correctly, morph into edible epiphanies. These were the sweetbreads of seafood. A popable dose of panache, done in the most casual of fashions - deep-fried to resilience.
But the Ipswich clams were only part of the equation. I may know clams, but I didn’t know Pete...but I wanted to. He happened to be there that day, so I got to thank him for serving me the best clams I’d ever eaten. He told me that he flew in special flour from Massachusetts for the breading. What does that even mean?! Secret flour? Just another reason to go spend some more time with Pete.
Maybe I’d ask him how he could afford to fly in all of his product daily, mostly from the East Coast (my clams were from Mass)? Or maybe I’d ask him if he thinks it’s weird that no one on the west coast knows what steamers or “pisser clams” are? And I guess that’s when he would lay it on me that the whole belly Ipswich clams were actually de-footed and de-membraned steamer clams!! Mind blown.
Most of all, I’d thank him for sparking the taste of summer memories as a kid, feet hanging off a stool at the clam bar and going from plate to plate. Somehow, he surpassed that childhood nostalgia, a seemingly impossible feat. It was the type of miracle that rendered me speechless. Except to say...move over Clambo. All hail St. Peter of Seafood!
