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Food in New England

Mew England cuisine is strongly based on fish, seafood and dairy products.

New England traditional chowders come from the French thick soups made with fish, seafood, and vegetables. The word chaudiere is the French name for the big copper pot in which those soups were prepared, hence the name chowder.

The New England clam chowder has a lovely creamy base.

New England foods

Maple syrup, apples and cheddar cheese from Vermont.

Cranberries, cod, haddock and clams from Massachussets.

Maine lobster, boiled, broiled, steamed, stuffed or in lobster cakes or lobster Alfredo. Lobster was once so abundant that it was used as fertilizer, not food.

New Haven, Connecticut, is supposed to have seen the birth of the hamburger.

Quahogs are hard shell clams native to the Atlantic coast of America. Quahogs grow from Canada to Florida, but they are more abundant in the stretch between Cape Cod and New Jersey. They are also known as round clams or chowder clams.

In local fish markets or restaurants you will find specialist names for different sizes of hard clam, corresponding to their different uses in cooking. The smallest clams are called littlenecks, medium clams are called cherrystones, and the largest are called quahogs or chowder clams.

Visiting New England you’ll come along raw bars specialized in serving littlenecks and cherrystones raw, as you would oysters, on an opened half-shell, with a cocktail sauce, horseradish, or just lemon.

Sometimes, cherrystones are steamed and dipped in butter, but this treatment is more common for other New England clams, the soft-shelled steamers.

…and food events

In Connecticut, look for the Lobster Weekend at Mystic, in May, or the Oyster Festival in the city of Norwalk, on Labor Day, celebrating the history of the city’s oyster industry.

Enoy the clam festival at Yarmouth, Maine, in July.

What to do in New England

Visit the aquarium and the old port at Mystic, Connecticut, where you can learn how candles were made and climb inside the old whaling boats.

Whale watching in the Nantucket sound.

Explore Cape Cod and, while you are at it, explore Martha's Vineyard and Natucket Island, only a ferry ride away.

Visit the Plymouth Plantation, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and see how the first settlers lived and get to know the settlers first hand. Get to know some native American customs.

Climb Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Take a kayak or canoe in the lake Winnipesaukee for a quiet paddle.

Visit the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island.

Fish for crayfish at Ogunquit, Maine. The best bait: a frankfurter.

When to go

Autumn is famous for the changing colors on the trees.

Summer is wonderful in the New England beaches.

At winter, we loved the slopes in Vermont and New Hampshire.