New 'Clam Shack' Serves Up New England Favorites In Old Greenwich

GREENWICH, CT — For about five years, Tina Carpenteri and her brother, Frank, have dreamt of opening up a place that serves fried clams and lobster rolls.

"My brother and I have always had a love for seafood," Carpenteri said in an interview with Patch. "We've vacationed over the summer in Cape Cod and would always go for clams and lobster rolls. It was kind of our thing."

Along with their father, Frank Sr., the siblings own and operate Garden Catering in Old Greenwich, as well as the store's seven other locations across Connecticut and New York. A local favorite, the tiny eatery has been serving chicken nuggets and potato cones to hungry customers for over 30 years. (To sign up for Greenwich breaking news alerts and more, click here.)

When the coronavirus hit the area in March, the Old Greenwich shop was forced to close its doors and limit its service to pick-up orders only. Carpenteri said this is when she and her brother started thinking seriously about making their seafood dreams a reality.

"There's a lot of not fun things going on right now," Carpenteri said. "Obviously the virus took a toll on so many businesses and restaurants...there was just so much in and out of the day that was just not fun."

During this period, the bright spot in the siblings' day became dreaming up a menu for this proposed seafood restaurant and re-tasting all the recipes they had come up with over the years.

"We realized it was the highlight of our day," Carpenteri said," so we finally got our act together and launched it."

The result is the Clam Shack, a food cart stationed outside Garden Catering that serves up fried seafood, lobster rolls and other summer favorites. The cart launched on July 2, just before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, and was an immediate hit with customers.

According to Carpenteri, the shack sold out of all its products within the first three hours of operation that day.

"It was really fun to see," Carpenteri said. "It made us feel amazing to know that people were really responding so well to this."

The menu at the shack is designed to bring customers back to an "old-school" feeling of days spent in Nantucket or Cape Cod, where fried clams and lobster rolls are often a staple on every menu.

It is also the Garden Catering team's attempt at bringing an old-fashioned summer feel to a summer season that has been complicated for most residents.

"A customer told me their trip to Nantucket was unfortunately cancelled for the summer, but they felt like [the Clam Shack] being here made it feel a little bit like they were on vacation," Carpenteri said. "We're trying to bring the old summer back; to bring a vacation feeling to the beach town we live in, and just the experience of something new and different that you couldn't get in town before."

While the Clam Shack's menu offers a few different rolls, platters and "pails" for customers to try, Carpenteri personally recommends trying the "CT style" lobster roll.

"It's not overbearing," Carpenteri said. "It doesn't have too much butter, it doesn't feel heavy; it's really good."

For families looking to share, she recommends ordering a clam strip pail with a side of their homemade Cajun remoulade sauce, which she says is a delicious alternative to tarter sauce.

Any family looking to try out this pail may want to order ahead of time as well. While the Clam Shack opens at 3 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and at 11 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, the cart typically operates until they sell out, which happens often.

While the owners feel they have gotten a better handle on what to anticipate in regards to customer demands since opening earlier this month, Carpenteri still recommends placing orders ahead of time rather than showing up at the cart to order.

When speaking by phone on a Thursday, Carpenteri said the shack had already received a number of orders scheduled for pickup on Sunday, many of them residents looking to bring food with them on their boat or to the beach.

"Last weekend we really think we got it right, so we're hoping there won't be too many unhappy people that call and won't be able to get their food," Carpenteri said. "We think we really got it right this time, so we'll see."

She also attributed a lot of the Clam Shack's success to the fact that, aside from delicious food, residents are clamoring for something new and fun to experience after being cooped up inside for months as a result of the coronavirus, also referred to as COVID-19.

"People are excited because there's not too many things we can do nowadays [due to COVID-19]," Carpernteri said. "We're kind of restricted, but going to the beach and bringing delicious food that you couldn't really get before this time...it makes it more of an experience. I feel like that's kind of what we're all missing right now."

Of course, the owner also offered another, even simpler reason the shack has been so immediately successful: "Food makes people happy."

The Clam Shack's menu can be viewed at gardencatering.com.