Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on June 27, 2015
Under a hot sun, a subtle breeze carries the scent of fried seafood out to the lot outside Captain Jack’s Roadside Shack on Route 10 in Easthampton where customers are dining on the fresh fish at picnic tables dotting the area.
The clams, scallops and pollack served by restaurant owner Kevin Sahagian are all straight from the waters off the Massachusetts coast, even though you’d have to drive over 100 miles to take a dip in the ocean yourself.
“We get the seafood as quick as they do,” restaurant owner Kevin Sahagian said of his seaside counterparts. “We have guys that work directly with the fisherman.”
Sahagian said fish gets picked up at the auction sites at 4 a.m. and is delivered to him by noon. “As fresh as you can get it — the pollack is still pink.”
Nothing is frozen at Captain Jack’s — from cole slaw to French fries to the thinnest onion rings around — Sahagian doesn’t have a freezer. It’s all fresh and made by hand the day it is served.
“We use a mandoline (slicer) by hand, so they are doing over 100 pounds (of onions) a day,” he said. “It doesn’t take as long as you think.”
Captain Jack’s is a small hut set back from the road at 232 Northampton St., with room inside for just a kitchen. To order, customers climb small sets of stairs to the front porch where menu items are listed on chalkboards mounted near the take-out windows.
“It’s a small little place, but the way I look at it is you can hang out here with you family, your dogs, your kids can run around and relax,” Sahagian said.
In the rain — or winter — diners take their food to their cars.
Fish sandwiches and tacos generally are made with the Massachusetts pollack; Sahagian gets clams from Ipswich and scallops from New Bedford. The meat for the lobster rolls comes from Maine.
He goes easy on the breading for his fried food using a mix of flour, corn flour, corn starch “and some other stuff,” which he chooses to keep to himself.
“It’s just to keep it really, really light and let the seafood do the talking,” he said. “The scallops are the best scallops money can buy. The clams are just amazing, that’s what you want to eat. Don’t mess with it.”
Sahagian isn’t the only restauranteur around here who can satisfy your hankering for fried seafood without your needing to drive to the coast.
Webster’s Fish Hook on Damon Road in Northampton and The Williamsburg Snack Bar on Route 9 in Williamsburg are two more places that take pride in bringing beach food to Western Massachusetts.
Three generations
Webster’s, with its nautical-themed indoor dining room, is a three-generation family business that has been specializing in serving fried fish here for 30 years.
The restaurant was started by father and son, Daniel, W. and Daniel J. Webster, who both had a passion for seafood. Daniel J.’s son, Alex Webster, is the kitchen manager.
Like Sahagian, Daniel J. Webster, said it is a misconception that being on the ocean means the seafood is fresher than what cooks like him are serving here. “There can be a fish restaurant right on the pier on the Cape and that doesn’t mean they are getting all their seafood from those boats,” he said.
Webster says he gets what he can from New England waters, but some of his fish comes from the ocean off Iceland and Canada and comes in overnight, fresh-packed on ice.
Webster’s menu ranges from the kind of fried seafood platters and rolls sold at Captain Jack’s, to steamed and baked fish. Almost 40 percent of its business is take out.
The Websters use a combination of batter and breading on their fried items that they have been using since the very beginning. They also take pride in making their own tarter and cocktail sauces, which lets them control the flavor, as their cocktail sauce relies on fresh horseradish for spice. Balancing enough, but not too much heat, can he tricky, Daniel J. Webster said.
Though they are open year-round, summertime is good for business. “People think about eating seafood when the warm weather starts,” he said.
Move up the street
The Williamsburg Snack Bar on Route 9 has been serving summer classics for 11 years — 10 at its original shack on Route 9 and the last six months at an indoor sit-down restaurant at 103 Main St., Haydenville. For now, the shack is closed, while owners Diane and Rich Karowski focus on the new restaurant.
The new space was once McFadden’s Pub, but it has been painted white with multi-colored shutters lining the windows. At the back of the parking lot on the left side sits the old shack, waiting to be put back into use in the future. Along the side of the property are the original picnic tables.
“It’s what you get down at the beach,” Diane Karowski said of her restaurant’s specialties. “It’s nostalgic and who doesn’t like fried food?”
The Karowskis started the shack as a seasonal enterprise mainly serving lobster rolls: hot with butter or cold as a mayo-based lobster salad. The beach theme and expanded fried-fish menu followed.
“We realized when we had the shack we weren’t making it to the beach,” Diane Karowski said. “So, we said, if we can’t make it to the beach, let’s make it feel like we’re at the beach and make our customers feel like they are at the beach. I think over the years we’ve accomplished that. People will say they feel like they are on vacation.”
When the former McFadden’s space became available, the couple jumped at the chance to go year-round and moved indoors in January.
Inside, The Williamsburg Snack Bar continues the beach theme with bright green- and blue-colored picnic tables and walls decorated with beach motifs such as flip flops and sand dollars.
“They enjoyed their lobster roll more looking outside and seeing five feet of snow,” Karowski said of her winter diners. “It was a little challenging buying some of the fresh seafood because we had never bought it in the winter,” she said. “The prices were a little shocking for us.”
With a large, new kitchen, the Karowskis added grilled and baked items to the menu, along with breakfast foods, which steer clear of seafood and favors classic dishes like eggs and pancakes.
They are still cranking out lobster rolls but, due to a change in hours to allow them to catch a break, they are down to 575 a week, from over 200 a day, in addition to pounds and pounds of fried and baked seafood. They are now open Sunday, Monday and Wednesday 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., Thursday, Friday and Saturday 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Burgers, dogs, chicken, too
Though seafood is their main attraction, all three places sell other foods as well.
At Williamsburg Snack Bar, Karowski said they also try to bring a Cajun flavor into their lunch and dinner items like pastas and steak tips, as well as offering various chicken entrees and burgers.
Sahagian’s menu also includes a large variety of hot dogs, burgers and chicken sandwiches. One of his biggest sellers is what he calls the Chicago hotdog, which comes with the classic toppings of dill pickle spears, sweet pickle relish, mustard and peppers. At Websters, there are also burgers, chicken fingers and ribs for non-seafood eaters.
The cooking Sahagian is doing nowadays is a far cry from his past work. In 2000, he capped nine years as the executive chef with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he was focused on gourmet cuisine. Sahagain spent the years immediately following cooking in Boston’s North End and traveling before returning to his Easthampton roots a few years later.
He decided to open Captain Jack’s four years ago as a business in which he could simplify his cooking: make what he wanted and connect with his diners.
“I was just looking to do a little spot where I didn’t have too many employees and I could be here cleaning the fryers every morning, cooking the food and just hanging out,” he said. “I like the whole process. I like to get here in the morning when no one is here. I like the busy lunch. … You see the community, you’re hustling cash, you’re hustling produce or goods, so you kind of really have your pulse on what’s going on.”
Sahagian continues to toy with his menu, trying to decide what to add to his seafood. Last winter he tried doughnuts. This coming winter? Maybe curry or wings. But he likes that fish has caught on as his main attraction.
“It’s easier to pay the bills (in the summer),” he said with a laugh.
Like the iconic beach stand, Captain Jack’s is staffed with students working part time.
Sahagian said his workers are mostly Easthampton High School students who work their way up from dishwashers to line cooks. He finds many of them through his step-daughter Andie Hall, a sophomore — she and her friends are the majority of his crew this summer.
“It’s kind of cool with the high school kids because you see them come up, and go through, and they come back (to visit) all the time,” he said. “Andie’s Club House, that’s what they call it. It’s funny.”
Make your own
If you want to making some simple beach fare at home, crab cakes are easy to put together and allow you to adjust the mix-ins to your own tastes. Crab cakes go well with corn on the cob that can also be made easily. Paired with s’mores made under the broiler or over a of gas stove, you can even do all of this inside if you are faced with a rainy summer day. The recipes follow.
CRAB CAKES
Makes 8 2-inch diameter cakes
½ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 egg
Juice from half a lemon
Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper
1 pound crab meat, at least half lump crab meat
2 scallions, sliced
½ cup panko bread crumbs
Vegetable oil for frying
1. In a medium bowl, mix the mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, egg, lemon juice, salt and pepper together.
2. Add the crab meat and scallions. Gently fold to combine, careful to not break up the crab meat too much. Add panko bread crumbs, again, carefully folding to prevent the crab meat lumps from breaking (Some will happen, that’s OK).
3. Refrigerator and chill for 30 minutes.
4. Heat just enough oil to cover the bottom of a skillet over medium-low heat. Form patties with small handfuls of crab mixture.
5. Fry in batches of four. Cook on each side for 3 to 4 minutes, until golden, then flip and cook another 3 minutes on the second side.
EASY CORN ON THE COB
Corn on the cob doesn’t have to be cooked in a pot of boiling water. When selecting corn, pick ears that feel heavy, are closed in their husks — don’t open them! — and still have the silk tassel at one end.
Corn in its husk can be microwaved to perfection in just minutes, as its natural housing creates a perfect steaming action.
For one or two ears, microwave for 4 minutes, let them stand in the microwave for two minutes or until you can pick them up.
When ready to eat, husk the corn, pulling from the silk tassel straight down in one motion. This will remove it from the husk with almost all of the stringy, silk-like fibers.
Spread with butter and sprinkle with salt and the corn is ready to eat. Or you can rub the cooked corn with olive oil and place it in a skillet over medium-high heat for 3 to 5 minutes, or until it starts to caramelize to replicate grilled corn. This can also be done under the broiler, positioned 6 inches from the flame for 5 minutes. Watch it carefully.
INDOOR S’MORES
Graham crackers
Milk chocolate
Marshmallows
1. Position an oven rack 4 to 6 inches below the broiler. Preheat broiler to high.
2. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Break graham crackers in half and place on a cookie sheet. On half of the crackers, place a piece or two of chocolate. Place marshmallows on the other halves.
3. Place under the broiler for 5 minutes or until the chocolate is melted and the marshmallow is golden. Leave the oven door open a crack to keep an eye on it.
4. Remove from the broiler and put the two sides together to create sweet sandwiches.