Burning Question: Is Monterey style clam chowder a real thing?

While most scholars find the white whale to be a profound symbol of something or other—no one really finishes Moby Dick—they miss the very purpose of Melville’s monument, which was a culinary manifest.

Consider this passage: “But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.”

Good stuff, apart from the pounded ship biscuit. Melville solved.

The quest for meaning, however, can fracture into schisms. A century after Melville, clam chowder advocates had staked regional claims and turned on one another. A bill was introduced in Maine’s state legislature, for example, that would have made it illegal to use tomatoes in the broth. 

And so we have New England style, as well as claimants such as Manhattan, Long Island, New Jersey, Hatteras style particular to North Carolina and Minorcan chowder in northeast Florida. Rhode Island is split between two distinct styles.

This infighting is not limited to the Eastern seaboard, either.

Visit any seafood restaurant in Monterey County and just about every spot on Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf and you can order a bowl of chowder, apparently of New England origin and often presented San Francisco style, in a hollowed-out sourdough. 

“Chowder is the stereotype of the wharf,” observes Rick Beidoun of Crab Louie’s Bistro.

OK. So the first question to answer is why?

“It’s a question I’ve never been asked,” says Sal Tedesco, owner of Paluca Trattoria on the wharf, ruminating on the matter. “We did have a clam chowder cook-off many years ago.”

Maybe the answer is simple. Clam chowder is warming, hearty and pretty good stuff. 

“It’s always been on the menu,” Domenico’s owner Sammy Mercurio points out. “We sell a lot of those.”

Fine. But there’s another nagging question.

While many restaurants list New England, more rarely Manhattan or a rootless “clam chowder” on menus, there are some that hew to another regional definition: Monterey style.

Is that really a thing? Absolutely, insists Chris Shake of Old Fisherman’s Grotto, where Monterey clam chowder made its first appearance.

“It’s world famous,” Shake adds. “That was my dad’s recipe.”

Sabu Shake opened the wharf destination in the 1950s. And the restaurant indeed now ships its chowder around the country, probably the world. A recipe posted on Food.Com that sought to crack the secrets of Monterey clam chowder boasted, “This soup is the BEST clam chowder I have ever tasted! It is thick and very rich and fattening!”

Old Fisherman’s Grotto has been dubbed Best Clam Chowder by Weekly readers for something like 15 years in a row. And they protect the recipe. Shake knows it. Chef Juan Ponce knows it. Not sure about anyone else.

“We hear it every day,” Shake says of praise for the restaurant’s creation.

But Monterey style resembles New England style, enough that it’s easy to become suspicious. Specific mentions of Monterey style are pretty thin on the internet. And outside of the Peninsula, it may be impossible to locate the version on a menu.

“It’s completely different,” Shake says. “It’s real cream, like a bisque.”

That’s one thing that does set Monterey clam chowder apart. The recipe clearly calls for cream, and nothing lighter. So it is a dense and filling broth.

And Shake lets spill one guarded hint. Garlic is key to the flavor backdrop.

While original New England style recipes have been tampered with, adding herbs and even garlic, the latter was not typical in older recipes. Some claim that potatoes and onions were the only vegetables included in traditional New England chowders. Starch from potatoes helped to thicken the soup.

So the response to this Burning Question is pretty well sorted. The tale of clam chowder is one of legislative spats, literary reverie and regional difference. Given the history of the dish, any locale can claim their own version of clam chowder. So, yes—Monterey clam chowder is a thing. That it has not spread much further than Fisherman’s Wharf is just the price of keeping the recipe secret.