Recipes & Lore • Shore Dinner Canon

Clams Casino

Name: Clams Casino
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 24 clams
Cuisine: American (Rhode Island)
Ingredients: 24 littleneck clams, scrubbed; 4 slices bacon, chopped fine; 3 tablespoons butter; 1 shallot, minced; 1/2 red bell pepper, minced; 2 cloves garlic, minced; 1/2 cup breadcrumbs; 2 tablespoons dry sherry (or white wine); 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; Lemon wedges, to serve

Take littlenecks — the smallest, sweetest rung of the quahog ladder — set them on the half shell, and broil them under bacon, peppers, and breadcrumbs with a splash of sherry. That's clams casino: the dressed-up cousin of the raw bar, a fixture of every Rhode Island clam shack and red-sauce menu, and the subject of one of the state's favorite origin stories — which we'll tell honestly, contested parts and all.

You need

24 littleneck clams, scrubbed
4 slices bacon, chopped fine
3 tbsp butter
1 shallot, ½ red bell pepper, 2 cloves garlic — all minced
½ cup breadcrumbs
2 tbsp dry sherry (or white wine)
2 tbsp chopped parsley; lemon wedges to serve

Method

Shuck the littlenecks — or steam them just until they barely open, which is cheating everyone does. Keep each clam on its half shell with its liquor, and steady the shells on rock salt or crumpled foil on a sheet pan.
Cook the bacon until rendered but not yet crisp — it finishes under the broiler. Remove it, then soften the shallot, pepper, and garlic in the fat with the butter.
Stir in the breadcrumbs, sherry, parsley, and bacon. The topping should be moist, not sandy.
Spoon it over each clam and broil 5–8 minutes, until browned and bubbling at the rim.
Straight to the table with lemon. They do not sit well, and they never get the chance.

The lore: The Rhode Island story goes like this: in 1917, at the Little Casino at Narragansett Pier, society hostess Mrs. Paran Stevens asked maître d'hôtel Julius Keller to invent something special for a luncheon. He dressed littlenecks with bacon and peppers; she named the dish for the house; Keller told the tale himself in his 1939 memoir Inns and Outs. Now, the honest footnote: food historians have turned up a "soft clams à la casino" on a New York menu as early as 1900, so the airtight version of the claim doesn't survive the archives. What does survive: the dish was popularized from Narragansett, it carries a Rhode Island casino's name in every restaurant in America, and no state has loved it harder or longer. We'll take that deal.

Sources & further reading

Send the raw-bar mood

Live littlenecks stay in the bay — but the shelf-stable Rhode Island canon ships anywhere, packed in the Rhode Island Survival Kit, field guide included.

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