Getting fresh

We had our share of local seafood on the Vineyard, including steamed clams and local (Katama Bay) oysters, quahogs and littlenecks. One night my brother made us a dinner of linguini with clam sauce using a big sea clam that he had dug up — using his feet while swimming — at the beach only hours earlier. (He also got a toe bitten by a crab in the process.) He chopped up the bivalve and added it to more chopped quahogs and littlenecks, but he left some of the littlenecks whole and in their shells for dramatic effect. So yummy.

A major culinary highlight came in the fishing village of Menemsha, on the western side of the island. Menemsha is a tiny, classic working New England fishing village and the seafood is as fresh as it gets. (It also has a nice beach that's popular for sunsets). Here's a photo of the best local oysters any of us have ever had at Larsen's Fish Market :

The briny seawater in these sweet shellfish made cocktail sauce unnecessary (though a nice addition). We also had these small steamers — golden little morsels that were incredibly tender and sweet.

And it was all "in the rough" — lobster traps with plywood for "tables," old wiring spools for "chairs." And it's BYOB! Here we're all reaching for the golden steamed clams. We made a second visit to Menemsha later in the week and were sure to have one more batch of those fresh Katama Bay oysters. Mmmm ...