Translation: Fried food police not welcome here. Clam shack aficionados, step right in.
The little red building sits at the water's edge, framed out front by a take-out window and menu board. A line has formed and orders are being taken. "One clam plate, two fish and chips, an order of crab cakes," a counter person shouts into the kitchen.
The restaurant opened 40 years ago and is named for its founder, Evelyn Duponte. Bitto and her husband, Dominic, have owned it for 21 years, and two of their three children work here. One teenage daughter makes the clam cakes. A teenage son is the fry cook. "My husband and I are always in the kitchen," Jane says.
Evelyn's is mostly a seafood restaurant, with fried clams, shrimp, and scallops among the most popular menu items, but there is eclectic fare beyond salads and burgers: chow mein sandwich, lobster chow mein, meatloaf, and chicken pie.
Bill and Elizabeth McCarthy have been coming here for more than half of their 62 married years. "The food is good and plentiful," says Elizabeth McCarthy. When their children were young, they would stop at Evelyn's on the way home from the beach, Bill McCarthy recalls. On a recent day, the McCarthys have returned with their daughter, Cynthia Cole. "The service is friendly, you see a lot of local people, and I love the views," Cole says.
Views aside, the seafood is the cornerstone of Evelyn's. "The New England Clam Shack Cookbook" by Brooke Dojny includes three recipes from Evelyn's. A recent review on "Phantom Gourmet" described Evelyn's as a "hidden jewel." The secret to the light, fried seafood is in the oil and the batter. Besides using cholesterol-free oil, "which is more expensive but what our customers want," Jane Bitto says, they fry with a dry batter, just like the original Evelyn's.
