New England Chowder

My wife and I try New England Chowder almost everywhere we go. If we see it on a menu somewhere—we aren’t “somewhere” so much lately as we are simply at home looking at a takeout menu online—we try it. Oftentimes it’s an accompaniment with Friday fish fry, sometimes it’s just a soup option with another entree.

It’s fun to note the variations across different restaurants: some add corn and some don’t, some use a little dill to season it and others use a lot. And, of course, some places offer a clam chowder and others a seafood chowder that might include fish, clams and perhaps even bits of lobster. Chowder is one of our very favorite items to have from a restaurant and we are rarely disappointed.

Except when we’re in New England. There, it seems, they don’t like a thick, hearty stew filled with the rich flavors of cream and potatoes and butter and bacon to go with the seafood. They seem to prefer a watery broth that might have a little flavor imparted by a wedge of lemon on the side to accompany the subtle notes of fresh ocean-caught fish. They require an inordinate amount of salt and pepper to be added at the table. And perhaps they believe that the cute little packet of oyster crackers will somehow transform the bowl of thin liquid into something with the proper consistency: a viscous phase of matter almost between a liquid and a solid, like ivory lava, flowing with fat and flavor.

We are looking forward to a day when we can safely travel to New England again and try all sorts of seafood dishes that are best consumed by the sea that produced them, but chowders may no longer be among them. I don’t know how New England Chowder got it’s name, because it’s only made properly in the Midwest.