With fresh bounty from the sea and local farms, food and summer go hand in hand in New England.
From lobster rolls and clambakes to fried dough and wild blueberry pie, we've rounded up the best of the season, Yankee-style.
Whatever your dish of choice, rest assured that it will likely be followed by a heaping scoop of homemade ice cream.
Wild Blueberry Pie
Blueberries grow all over the country, but there's nothing quite like the tiny, wild bleuets found in Maine. Bake them inside a two-crust pie and you get the sweet essence of summer concentrated in dessert form.
Originally made by early American settlers, blueberry pie remains simple with a nostalgic, just-like-grandma-used-to-make quality. In fact, it is so loved that it won the battle for the state's official dessert. Sure, you can eat it year-round, but it's truly best in August when the berries are just plucked and absolutely fresh, not frozen or canned. So when you head Down East this summer, be sure to stop for a slice along the way.
Where to Go: The pie is available at many roadside restaurants and diners up and down Maine's coast, but Helen's Restaurant in Machias is famous for its rendition. The Broad Arrow Tavern at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport serves it a la mode with homemade vanilla ice cream. And the version atWaterman's Beach Lobster in South Thomaston (near Rockland) is showing up on "best of New England" lists. For blueberry-pie extremists, the annual Machias Wild Blueberry Festival in August is host to a pie-eating contest.
Lobster Roll
While other regions have the hot dog, New England has the lobster (locally pronounced "lobsta") roll. Available in all the coastal states, the sandwich usually consists of a split-top bun, often warmed and buttered, stuffed with large chunks of rich tail and claw meat.
While no one really knows the exact origin of the roll, there are definitely two solid camps in terms of its preparation: Connecticut-style (with drawn butter) and Maine-style (with mayonnaise). Most variations incorporate ingredients like celery salt, paprika, and lemon juice, but you can continually find new interpretations, especially in cities like Boston.
Where to Go: In Maine, lobster-roll aficionados swear by Red's Eats in Wiscasset or Kennebunkport's The Clam Shack, which won America's Best Lobster Roll at Tasting Table's 2013 Lobster Roll Rumble. The Beach Plum, with locations in North Hampton and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gets plenty of accolades, and those in Cape Cod love Sesuit Harbor Cafe, which also hosts a lobster-roll cruise.
Fried Clams
Battered in milk and corn flour, then deep-fried: That's how clams are done in New England. Harvested in tidal mudflats and served up in seaside shacks, these bivalves—often soft-shell clams, also called "steamers"—come crispy, in strips or whole bellies, and are synonymous with summer.
Likely invented in Ipswich, Massachusetts, by Lawrence ("Chubby") Woodman in 1916, fried clams are now a staple along the coast. The shacks serving them tend to be open seasonally and have long lines, but the anticipation is part of the experience.
Where to Go: New Englanders take fried clams very seriously; this is evident in the Boston Globe's recent Shack Showdown that pitted some of the area's best eateries against each other, head-to-head. While top honors in the contest went to the Clam Box of Ipswich in Massachusetts, each state has its own favorites. Woodman's of Essex offers the Clam Box serious competition in Massachusetts and claims to have invented the fried clam, and SmarterTravel staff likes The Bite in Menemsha on Martha's Vineyard as well as Bob's Clam Hut in Kittery, Maine. Find a great list of clam shacks onBoston.com.
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