disappointing clams (lyn)

So tonight is the night I have planned to eat fried clams.  It’ll be my second time this year (the other time was when I was here in June) and my last until next summer.  We are going to Bobby Burns (that’s a restaurant) in Mashpee because we have first-hand experience that the clams are good there.

“Dress warmly,” my mother tells us, “you know it’s always cold in there.”  I wear a hooded sweater and jeans.

We convince my mother to leave on the late side, 6:45.  My father has become agreeable to anything we want to do.  Tonight it’s just my parents, Alexander and me. 

We arrive at Bobby Burns and there are people, lots of them, mulling around outside.  Not a good sign.  We go in and are told that the wait is about an hour.  I think my parents would be okay eating at 8, but the long wait is not okay.  We go through the short list of other options.  First, it must be a restaurant that is not very popular (i.e. not that good) or it would be crowded too.  Next, it can’t be too far away (which isn’t really a problem since there are many restaurants in the area, just not a lot of good ones).  And finally, it has to appeal to two senior citizens, a teen-ager, and a person on a quest for good fried clams.  We settle on The Parrot, described on their website as a “restaurant where everyone feels welcome and the staff is smiling.”  Nothing about their food.

We get to the restaurant and it’s filled with a handful of people.  Good sign for us.  But bad sign in general, since every other place else in town appears to be mobbed with the leftover people from the road race.  We are seated immediately, but not in a preferred booth as those are taken. 

It’s a small family-owned restaurant with a bar.  Every so often the quiet of the restaurant is interrupted with a loud cheer from the bar area over some sports event on TV.  It unnerves my dad, as does the single older women who is eating alone with a book and taking up a whole booth.  The special of the day is fried clams.  We interrogate the poor young and attentive waitress on their quality.  “How’s the batter?”  “Do they have bellies?”  “Have you tried them?”  “Are they fresh?”  All our questions are answered in the affirmative, and so my parents and I order them; Alexander goes with a burger.

The clams arrive on top of a large plate of fries (I give the fries to Alexander,  my cole slaw to my dad, and eat all the clams).   I think they are over-cooked.  My mom “likes them that way.  I don’t like them squishy.”  My dad is easy to please.  “They’re fine.” 

Next year I’ll stick with the clams at Bobby Burns; I just won’t go on the Sunday of the Falmouth Road Race.