When Neera first told me about Sam's Chowder House, I was beyond excited. It is the kind of restaurant that is totally up my alley: super casual but not dumpy, gorgeous views of the water, and an endless menu of seafood. Heaven. When we drove up to the restaurant at 11AM on Saturday, there already was a line just to get in. I would strongly suggest recommendations if you want to eat at a reasonably hour.
As I mentioned, there were tons of amazing sounding seafood options. It ranged from a raw bar, different kinds of chowders and soups, poke, shrimp cocktail, crab cakes, calamari, mussels, different kinds of seafood salad, fish sandwich, salmon burger, daily catch of fish, several fried platters as well as some "land" options of burgers, chicken, and pasta. Sorry vegetarians, besides some side dishes, you're out of luck. I wish I could have ordered almost everything on the menu, but we settled on splitting the Captain's Platter ($34.95) which included 4 oysters, 4 clams, 4 chilled shrimp, ahi tuna poke and seafood ceviche - which was perfect because there was 4 of us. For my main, Neera and I split the New England clam chowder ($6.95) and the lobster roll ($21.95) and I also ordered a side of Old Bay fries ($5) because I love anything with Old Bay. Levi got the spicy popcorn shrimp as an entree ($11.50) and Kevin got the salmon burger ($14.95). As soon as the Captain's Platter came out I was ready to dive right in. I'll start with the good news. The oysters and clams were amazing (although I really wish the waitress told us what kind of oysters they were) and the poke was some of the best I've had outside of Hawaii. It kind of made me regret not actually ordering the appetizer size portion of the poke because it had the perfect blend of soy, ginger and fresh ahi tuna. The bad news: the ceviche was pretty disappointing. Kevin had mentioned that he had never had ceviche, so Levi and I were excited for him to try it out. Normally when I think of ceviche, I picture raw pieces of fish or scallop in an acid/citrus base. This one had a bunch of cold small cooked shrimp and cooked scallop in a mango avocado base. It wasn't very impressive and I've definitely had much better ceviche elsewhere.
After our appetizer, we then had to wait a while for our main entrees to come out. First they started to bring out the wrong dish but soon realized that we didn't order the seafood spaghetti. I assumed that our order would come out soon after that. Well, it didn't. Finally when our food came, I was ready to demolish the soup and sandwich. I started with the soup - it's made with littleneck clams, yukon potatoes, smoked bacon and cream. The restaurant makes it clear on their menu that they don't thicken their chowder with flour but instead use the natural ingredients to bring out the flavor and texture. I'll be honest, but I kind of wish they did use flour to thicken their chowder. It just felt like it was more soup than chowder. Maybe my perception is skewed based on my childhood obsession with Campbell's Chunky Chowder, but I expect my chowders to be thick and chunky - you almost need to eat it with a fork. The soup here was fine but I wish it also had more clam to it as well. After I finished my portion of the soup, I moved on to the lobster roll. For those of you who've followed my blog for a while, you know my complete obsession with a good lobster roll. It's probably one of my favorite food items ever. I usually like the mayo based kind but the one here was more of the Connecticut style kind with no mayo but instead chunks of buttered lobster. The actual lobster was fantastic. Big, large chunks of fresh lobster tail and claw. I wasn't, however, a huge fan of the roll it came on. It was too toasted and on the dry side. I could tell that there was a lot of butter on the roll but it wasn't very soft. At some point, I just started picking out the lobster meat. To me, this dish seemed less like a lobster roll and more like chunks of buttered lobster out of the shell.
While our waitress was super sweet and nice, she was very flighty and had to come back to our table to figure out how to split the bill among the 3 credit card. I really really wanted to give this place at least 4 forks or higher, but between the long wait, disappointing ceviche and dry lobster bun, I had to settle for 3.5 forks. But it's sitting on a beautiful waterfront property, so if you do find yourself in the neighborhood, I would recommend coming in and at least have a few drinks and some oysters. Total bill: $40/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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