The first R.I. clambake creates lasting memories

SURF’S UP: Castle Hill Inn Executive Chef Karsten Hart calls the guests to the outdoor table to experience a New England clambake. / COURTESY MICHELLE GARDELLA
SURF’S UP: Castle Hill Inn Executive Chef Karsten Hart calls the guests to the outdoor table to experience a New England clambake. / COURTESY MICHELLE GARDELLA

In the midst of the July heat wave, restaurants from Providence to Newport to Narragansett were reporting busy outdoor dining areas on decks and patios as well as in the air conditioned comfort of the dining room. But it is more than just the weather – dining out is entertainment.
It was not long ago that a restaurant meal was a mere stop before or after a night at the theater or a sporting event. Nowadays those out for a night on the town are just as likely to skip the theater and spend the evening (and the entertainment budget) on dining out. We are also likely to look to professional chefs for home-style cooking, with so-called comfort food menus and casual fine dining in style these days.
But there are still a few meals that, while they may create a real taste of home, just cannot be duplicated in a home kitchen. One is the New England clambake. After all, a real bake cannot just be popped into the microwave. And sometimes it takes a newcomer to remind us of what is literally right under our noses.
Brian Young is the new general manager of Castle Hill Inn in Newport. The historic inn recently opened a new outdoor dining area and bar called The Lawn. Planning for the space has been in the works for almost a decade.
Young said that as Castle Hill has became more popular, management – the Newport Restaurant Group – realized that it needed to find more space in which to serve guests. The Lawn at Castle Hill features three bluestone terraces and an outdoor bar so that guests can be served outdoors but have an identical experience as that found in the main dining room and bar. Young anticipates keeping the space open through Columbus Day, weather permitting.
Executive Chef Karsten Hart has developed a menu based on local ingredients in keeping with the “farm to table” philosophy started by longtime chef and now Newport Restaurant Group Chief Operating Officer Casey Riley. Castle Hill Inn maintains five gardens on its property, growing a variety of vegetables such as cutting celery, which garnishes the Inn’s lobster rolls.
One of Hart’s menu items features local clams with smoked seaweed gathered from Narragansett Bay outside the inn’s doors. That dish is designed to conjure up a clambake. But the chefs at Castle Hill are going one better, preparing an authentic Newport bake just about every Tuesday for 25 guests for the remainder of the summer on The Lawn. The clambakes have been an initiation into all things Newport for both the chef and the manager. Hart tells how during his first year as chef, some three years ago, Castle Hill Inn hosted a clambake for the innkeepers and executives of all the Relais and Chateaux member properties of which Castle Hill is one.
“I was so blown away with the flavor of the lobster, the saltiness, the smokiness, that we just had to recreate.” So the company constructed a 14-by-12-foot clam and lobster bake pit also on the lawn with a view of the Pell Bridge. “What an experience to watch a spectacular sunset and then enjoy a real clambake on the water,” the chef said.
Young picked up the story. “Karsten gets started at around two in the afternoon stoking the fire and then loading up [the pit] with the baskets full of ingredients for the clambake. He then takes care of the bake all afternoon before he unveils it with the ringing of a big brass bell!” Young took part in his very first clambake earlier this summer. A native of Montreal, he had never been to one before. He found out as we all do how different this uniquely New England feast is from any other.
A food writer from North Carolina once called the clambake “contraption cuisine.” Hart explained from a technical viewpoint why they are so different and how they get the results. “[The food is cooked] in a pressure cooker, a smoker and a steamer all at the same time,” he said, referring to the tight cover put over the bake, the layers of seaweed and the indirect heat from the rocks which line the pit heated by the fire. “You have three cooking processes going on at the same time. It’s a pretty amazing technique.”
As veteran bakemaster T.R. McGrath pointed out, there can be some variations to the clambake menu, but the main attraction can never vary. As he put it, “With a bake, [the ingredients] might get tweaked a bit, some will serve Italian sausage instead of chourico or sweet potatoes instead of red bliss, but the clams and lobsters are always the stars.” •


Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” food and wine talk radio show is heard Saturdays and Sundays on WPRV-AM 790, weekdays on WADK-AM 1540, and online and through a mobile app on iHeartRadio. He can be reached by email at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

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