' clams casino are mainly about the bacon. 'The dish is really a gussied-up substitute for regular Italian stuffed clams, which have a simple filling of bread crumbs, garlic, and sometimes oregano,' says Eater senior critic Robert Sietsema, a documented fan of clams. Stevens put me in her good graces for the remainder of the time I spent at Narragansett,' Keller wrote.Ĭlams casino at Cranston, RI's Mike's Kitchen.īut Keller's account doesn't specify the ingredients that went into that first clams casino.

'My introduction of them to the socially ultra Mrs. Those eight guests were the first to taste what Keller called 'clams casino,' and according to Keller's memoir, his diner was rather pleased. Paran Stevens, requested a 'special' clam dish for an eight-person luncheon she was hosting. Julius Keller was a Sherry employee, and in his 1939 memoir Inns and Outs, he lays claim to the dish: In Keller's account, one of the resort's guests, Mrs. The 'Sherry cottages,' Vivian says, were situated about 1.25 miles away from the main resort, and offered guests access to several rental cottages with a restaurant situated in between. (The resort suffered two catastrophic fires - one in 1900, the other in 1965 - but the property's signature towers structures remain, and today, the Towers operate mainly as a rental space for private events and weddings.) According to the Towers' director Kate Vivian, New York City restaurateur Louis Sherry, best known for his eponymous line of confections and chocolates, was one of the 10 people who built the resort. Contrary to its name, the Narragansett Pier Casino was not a gambling hall, but instead an upscale resort property built in the mid-1880s.

The dish is most often credited to Julius Keller, who claimed to have invented the dish when he was an employee at Rhode Island's Narragansett Pier Casino. In many diners' food memories, they arrive to the table on a bed of rock salt, with lemon wedges and parsley for optional garnishing.īut the birth of clams casino has a fuzzier history. Whether at a classic red-sauce joint or at a oceanside seafood shack, the dish remains assuringly consistent: littleneck clams are propped on their half-shells with a mixture of peppers, bacon, bread crumbs, and butter, then broiled until each stuffed shell browns on top. For many New Englanders, it doesn't get more classic than clams casino.

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