The Bite, Martha’s Vineyard

It may look pretty basic, but this famous seafood shack on the road down to Menemsha draws people from near and far. One one side of us, a family chatted in Italian, and on the other, a couple of summer people despaired the outage of fried scallops so early in the afternoon. What you see is what you get: a shack, sodas from a machine, fried seafood and some picnic tables, but there’s nothing ordinary about the quality of the Bite’s fried clams.

This seemingly simple dish is actually easy to mess up, and therefore I usually avoid it. More often than not, fried clams come out listless, dry and tasteless, with a leaden, greasy crust. But lesser fry cooks everywhere could learn from the Bite, where the batter is light and slightly spicy with a hint of cayenne and the finest grinding of sea salt, the crunch satisfying but not overwhelming, and the clams themselves still plump, bursting with juiciness and served whole.

Even by island standards, the price of $23.95 is quite expensive for a pint of fried clams. Only the wealthy could afford to make a habit of the Bite. But unlike boiling a lobster, could you replicate this at home? No, and that’s why locals and tourists alike can’t resist the lure of this little place.

The Bite
29 Basin Road
Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard
508-645-9239
thebitemenemsha.com