Story by Catherine Walthers
Photos by Joe Mikos
As Matt Runyon and Laura Martin’s outdoor wedding ceremony was concluding on a Chilmark bluff overlooking Menemsha Pond, caterer Doug Korell was nearby building a fire to cook clams, mussels, corn, and seventy-five lobsters for their Vineyard-style wedding clambake.
As most guests dispersed and headed to the main tent for hors d’oeuvres, some wandered over to watch the clambake in progress. The owner of Lobster Tales catering, with ten years experience specializing in clambakes, Doug had set up a custom-made, portable clambake pan the size of a kids’ sandbox that sat two feet off the ground over the fire he had built of slow-burning sassafras wood.
Inside the massive pan, he placed a layer of Island corn still in the husk, and then individual foil-sealed packages of clams and mussels (soaked overnight to remove any sand). He pulled some rockweed seaweed from a bag and tossed that over the clams and corn, creating a nest for the lobsters. Another layer of seaweed covered the lobsters. After pouring in some water to create the steam, the entire bake was covered with heavy-duty tinfoil. The result closely resembled a giant-sized Jiffy Pop container just after it’s been popped but before it’s been opened. Temperatures inside can reach up to 500 degrees.
“This is unbelievable,” commented Anthony Lopez, the best man at Matt and Laura’s wedding. “How do you know when it’s all done?”
“It’s going to cook for about half an hour,” replied Doug, who watched as steam started to seep out the sides, and seafood began to scent the air.
“You can tell by the smell when it’s done,” he added. “It all cooks at the same time, so it’s all done at the same time. You get flavor from the lobsters, clams, corn – all infused together. The lobsters are really tender when cooked like this.”
Inside the tent, Laura and Matt’s wedding guests nibbled on appetizers as the meal cooked away. Soon they were being served clam chowder, as the catering crew filled three attractive galvanized tubs on the buffet table with the cooked lobsters, shellfish packages, and corn on the cob. Accompanying cornbread, potatoes, coleslaw, and melted butter filled out the tables.
A Vineyard clambake is a popular choice for many celebrations, whether at traditional wedding locales, private homes, or outdoor settings – just about any spot. Many couples choose clambakes for rehearsal dinners, and especially popular are those clambakes beside the water. Some favorite settings include town beaches along State Beach, stretching between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown; Eastville Beach in Oak Bluffs, overlooking Vineyard Haven harbor; or along Lobsterville Beach in Aquinnah, having a good view of the sunset.
Clambakes are traditional on Martha’s Vineyard and in many coastal New England communities dating back several hundred years. Sandra Oliver, a food historian and author of Saltwater Foodways (Mystic Seaport Museum, 1995), found records of family and community clambakes along southern Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island shores during the 1800s and most of the 1900s, but says the heyday of these outside events came between the 1850s and 1930s – coinciding with the rise of the leisure class, when vacationers would travel to the shore and partake in commercial clambakes or “shore dinners” as they were sometimes called.
Early clambakes were most often a collection of clams, corn, and “Irish” and sweet potatoes cooked in a pit dug in the sand and filled with heated stones, seaweed, and a covering, which locked the steam in and cooked the food. Though no two clambakes are alike, fare today almost always features lobster and can include variations of oysters, clams, mussels, blue crabs, sausage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn.
Though today’s clambakes are rarely done with the traditional pit and hot stones, some Vineyard family clans still hold these labor-intensive, old-style clambakes, and some caterers say they will do them. Jan Buhrman of Kitchen Porch Catering says she will do a traditional style clambake for a party of more than a hundred people and V. Jaime Hamlin Catering advertises “hand-dug” clambakes, which she will do for fifty or more people.
The caterers who do the bulk of the clambakes on the Island utilize more modern equipment and tend to have their own clambake styles. “There are so many variations,” explains Mark Venette, manager of Lobster Tales catering. “The clambakes we do are as elaborate or as casual as you want.” Bill Smith’s Martha’s Vineyard Clambake Co. has more than fifty years in the clambake business and divides its clambakes into three categories: the Formal, the Casual, and the Clambake-To-Go; if you have a small or budget-conscious party, the to-go option includes just about everything you need to cook a portable meal for as few as six people.
“It’s informal, and it’s a relaxed atmosphere,” says Fella Cecilio of Fella Caters, which specializes in both clambakes and country barbecues. “A lot of the people who come here haven’t experienced a clambake. Some people haven’t even experienced lobster – it’s not something you have all the time.”
Fella, who put on seventy-three clambakes during the 2007 season (thirty-five of them in August alone), says he got into the clambake business here on the Island twenty-three years ago after watching one done by Bill Smith’s company. “I was getting out of the restaurant business, and I wanted to find something to do. There were only a few people doing clambakes back then; he [Bill Smith] was the one doing most of them,” says Fella. “Some of the caterers thought they were too above clambakes, and suddenly now, everyone’s doing clambakes.”
“Since my wife grew up on the Island, she brought up the clambake idea,” Matt explains some weeks after his and Laura’s September wedding. “I thought it was very original, because it is traditional on the Island. Plus we thought it would be a unique experience for our guests.”And it was. Many guests had traveled to the Vineyard from the New Jersey area, where the couple lives. “Some of the guests told me that they had never seen something like this before, and the lobsters were so delicious,” says Matt, a twenty-nine-year-old civil drafter. “They enjoyed it without any doubt....We made the right choice.”
His wife, Laura, a thirty-year-old high school teacher, says she thought everyone managed the lobsters fine, even in their wedding best. “We have a bunch of pictures of guests holding up lobster in their red lobster bibs,” she notes. “Everyone had fun and their staff was there to give ‘lobster lessons’ if people needed help. The picture of all the bridesmaids in lobster bibs is so hilarious.”