An Annual Weiss Potluck
Alt. title: A week with a family obsessed with grocery shopping and fried clams.
I am so sorry for the delay—I had no interest in writing while on vacation! Forgive me for this rogue Wednesday email. I also just got off the phone with Mads Refslund… more on that soon (eek!). Hope you all enjoy the Cape Cod roundup!
I feel very lucky to have spent many summers in Cape Cod, for any amount of time. Moving away from Boston has made traveling there an enormous hassle, but my entire family has agreed that it is worth the Sagamore Bridge traffic and braving the Merritt Parkway to be in our favorite place, time and time again. We often jump from town to town, at the will of the Cape’s preposterous rental market, though we certainly have our favorites: Wellfleet, of course, and Orleans, our summer digs for the last few years!
With Jesse, my brother, now in Los Angeles, and my parents in Washington D.C., it is always nice to have an excuse to sit in the same place for a week, all together, with very little to do. My brother being a private chef and my entire family being professional eaters means, naturally, that a week together with nothing to do means a week of basically filling time between meals. We are the way we are and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Whether it was the palpable quiet of Cape Cod in early June, the perfect 70-and-sunny weather every day, or my brother’s full immersion into his private-cheffing, we all agreed this was our family’s best trip yet. You’ll find below what we ate, where we ate it, and what we made.
Fried Things
If there is one thing to do on the coast of Massachusetts, it is to eat seafood—preferably the fried kind. Cape Cod may not have fine steakhouses but they do have the most fish-frying establishments in the world, I’m guessing. Even so, procuring fried clams poses some real difficulties, mostly due to the never-ending argument of where to go get them, and whose are the best. Here is the run-down, after many years of fried clam eating from more places than I can possibly remember.
In no particular order:
Sir Cricket’s Fish & Chips This was our favorite spot last summer and somehow, last week it just did not hit the same. Look at this picture and tell me that doesn't look perfect! I didn’t take a photo this year because we did take-out (mistake) and my fried scallops were soggy. They still make the BEST tartar sauce and coleslaw. Stick to the basics and eat the food the second it is ready and you’ll be happy, maybe next summer they’ll redeem themselves.
Kream ‘N Kone A true Cape institution. We didn’t go this year which, looking at these pictures from last summer, I am regretting. All around, I think they’re the most consistent and it is fun to sit basically in a parking lot at a picnic table and eat a mountain of onion rings and suffer through soft-serve afterwards. Also, I almost exclusively order clam strips over whole bellies. The texture is so good and they’re not too meaty. Jesse gives me an earful about this every year but I can’t be persuaded.
3. Arnold’s Lobster & Clam Bar The Cape Cod trifecta of fried seafood, ice cream, AND putt-putt! There is also a bar with $2 collector’s cups, one of which is now sitting in my kitchen. There is no way to not order way too much food here, but it is part of the experience! The portions are large, everything tastes good and is fried oh so well. The tartar sauce tasted like salad dressing and we asked two separate times if we had picked up the wrong container. They swore we had the right sauce and then the sweetest man in the entire world came over with a chowder cup full of tartar sauce that he made JUST FOR US. It was delicious. No salad dressing detected! Please note I got a hole-in-one in putt-putt which has absolutely never happened before. I still came in last place :)
4. Mac’s On the Pier is also a family favorite, though we didn’t go this year. Eating by the water is the best ever, and those picnic tables make everything taste better.
Special addition: This fried chicken Jesse made us for a random lunch… we are so spoiled. The brined and double fried chicken was accompanied by a wedge salad with blue cheese dressing and Mac salad. What did we do to deserve such treatment?! Fried chicken, a wedge that rivals Bernie’s, all while feet away from the pool? Incredible.
A Salad or Two
It is important, after all those fried clams, to mix in at least one crunchy green thing. This, of course, includes a lobster salad in a Martin’s hot dog bun. Jesse prepared some mini ones and carried them around to each of us. He topped each with white onions and a little lettuce, as seen below in the top left corner. The other lobster roll was when I was left to fend for myself on burger night. Though we were out of celery and I was left to make do with a cucumber, which was odd, it came out pretty good. I didn't get a good photo of the chicken jus potatoes Jesse made alongside the burgers, which is something I would now like to eat at every meal.
I love to be on salad duty, and I had a few hits on the trip. On the lower left is a very light arugula salad that accompanied Jesse’s Paella. Thinly slice sugar snap peas, shaved Pecorino, arugula, a very lemon-y, mustard vinaigrette, salt, pepper, et voila! So easy and fresh and delicious. The last salad was a mix of green leaf and chopped radicchio, tossed with parsley and coated in a dressing made from many green herbs—dill, tarragon, basil, chives, parsley—emulsified with oil in a blender, lemon, and red wine vinegar, a dash of mustard, and finished with half a perfectly ripe avocado to make a pseudo-green goddess dressing that was, with Jesse’s help, one of my favorite dressings I have ever made.
The Staples
Apart from the lobster rolls and the fried clams, we always throw in a few special dinners and save our favorite bottles of wine to accompany them. These are reserved for when we all have the energy to cook and clean and are usually spearheaded by Jesse.
Our first night having dinner altogether Jesse had just landed from LA, so I took it upon myself to do the menu planning. The vision was Fusilli Lungi col Buco (the long curly noodles) alla Vongole (with clams), a bright green salad (the aforementioned radicchio and green leaf herby salad), and a blueberry cobbler. Jesse executed the Vongole which included fennel, lots of parsley, and butter-y, tender clams.
The pièce de résistance of our trip for the last several years is Jesse’s paella, which requires collecting saffron threads and bomba paella rice prior to arriving to Cape Cod. He has mastered what is now my favorite thing he makes, and it always is such a a special treat when paella night comes around. This years paella included chicken, merguez sausage, clams, shrimp, scallops, and fish sausages with the crucial addition of the green olive. Hallie and I got the wrong olives, they should’ve been pimiento, but luckily the paella was not ruined!
Sweet Treats
It wouldn’t be Cape Cod without ice cream, and it wouldn’t be a Weiss vacation without some baking. A kiddie vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles in a cake cone from Ice Cream Cafe is summer’s greatest gift. I always stare at their menu for about 20 minutes before I can finally decide what flavor to get. Peppermint stick with Sno-Caps was also a baller order from last week.
My dad made the gorgeous (and enormous) pineapple upside down cake pictured below—his favorite dessert. My father is a really good baker and I really love that about him. Below that is the blueberry cobbler I mentioned one million times. The biscuits were tender and flaky, the blueberries sweet and punchy with the addition of a little lemon and bergamot from earl grey tea leaves, topped with cold cream. Yum. I also threw together a banana bread and strawberries macerated in brown sugar with whipped cream on our last night in a fun Chopped challenge of trying to minimize how much food we had left over.
That’s all from me this week! And give Jesse’s food instagram a follow if you want to look at all the fun stuff he’s making.
Next on the list…
I think I am going to try every ice cream truck in New York. This was Ani’s idea. What do we think?
EEL BAR OPENS THURSDAY! I AM SO EXCITED!
Rodeo just opened by me and I can tell it’ll be my new summer haunt.
See you all soon!!! xo
I want to see the grocery lists omg how
Your family is a seriously kickass fun bunch! Sounds like if it rained all week you wouldn't even care! I don't know where to start with the things I want to eat and make. I need to buy some elastic waist pants first.