4 Ways to Warm Up With the Best Clam Chowder in Boston

“Clam chowder is a religion in these parts,” says Kathy Sidell, owner of Saltie Girl restaurant in Boston’s Back Bay. With each spoonful, the best clam chowder in Boston grounds you in coastal Massachusetts — “the mudflats in Ipswich and the North Shore where the clams are freshly dug. It’s thick, creamy, clammy, briny, smoky personality cures a cold winter day in the Northeast.”

Of course, she’s describing New England clam chowder, rich with heavy cream unlike Rhode Island’s clear clam chowder or the other popular chowder that’s reddened with tomatoes. “Don’t even mention Manhattan,” she scoffs, a sentiment common to those who grew up in New England.

What’s the difference between Boston clam chowder and New England clam chowder?

New England clam chowder is so synonymous with Massachusetts and Boston that the restaurant chain Legal Sea Foods has served its take on the iconic dish at every U.S. presidential inauguration since 1981. But there’s no difference between Boston and New England clam chowder. Those names are used interchangeably for a white soup or stew of clam juice broth thickened with milk or cream and sometimes flour or potato starch, filled with hunks of clams, potatoes, and often onions, celery, and bacon or salt pork.

Dry, crispy oyster crackers are also a chowder go-to for topping or even crumbling in for extra thickness — they’re almost always served in a little plastic bag, but occasionally restaurants replace them with a housemade alternative, like the saltines at Row 34’s chic locations in Boston’s Seaport; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Burlington, Vermont; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

New England clam chowder developed from contact between Indigenous peoples like the Narragansett, who have long eaten chowder with ingredients like clams and corn, and Europeans, who likely introduced dairy and pork to the mix. Here are some of the best places in Boston to eat the fusion food that is New England clam chowder.

Saltie Girl

Courtesy of Saltie Girl

Some New Englanders say clam chowder should be so thick, you can stand a spoon up in it. At Saltie Girl, Sidell shares that mentality, reducing heavy cream and fresh clam stock until it’s practically a solid, yet never gloppy. She adds chopped clams, shallots, celery, and fingerling potatoes, then reinforces the flavors with some finishing touches, including whole clams in their shells, a fried clam floater, and crispy lardon. The seafood restaurant, which also has a luxurious location in Los Angeles, may be a thing of bright glamor, but when it comes to the chowder, “There is no elegance here,” says Sidell. “It is all earthy and hearty.”

Dive Bar

Courtesy of Dive Bar

“There’s not really any seasonality with clam chowder,” says Tiffani Faison, who, like most locals, happily eats the soup year-round, calling Saltie Girl’s one of her favorites. That said, “It’s tough to sit down in July and have a big thick bowl of clam chowder,” so Faison thins her broth in the summer and thickens it with more roux in the winter, a practice that she notices with appreciation at downtown Boston’s upscale Neptune Oyster.

At Dive Bar, one of Faison’s several businesses at the High Street Place Food Hall around the corner from South Station, the chowder features house-smoked bacon and whitefish to add depth to littleneck and middleneck clams. She recommends pairing it with a glass of something bright, like a Sancerre or a French Chardonnay like a white Burgundy, from Bubble Bath, her Champagne and wine bar just across the hall. “I want something that’s got some body to it but not something that’s super rich. I don’t want it competing with the richness of the chowder.”

Summer Shack

Courtesy of Summer Shack

Founded in 2000 by the late Jasper White, New England’s “Godfather of Seafood,” Summer Shack was one of the early examples of a casual spot from a fine dining chef who ensured everything was made with high-quality ingredients from scratch — everything but the chowder crackers, that is, which were the subject of a humorous anecdote White told at one of Julia Childs’ memorial services. At locations in Boston’s Back Bay (a favorite stop for Boston Red Sox fans given its proximity to Fenway Park), Cambridge, and Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, Summer Shack serves a few types of chowder, and the classic New England clam chowder is the most popular, comprising fresh clams, salt pork, butter, onions, celery, Yukon gold potatoes, fresh thyme, and heavy cream.

“The result is a clam chowder that strikes the perfect balance: rich and creamy, yet not overwhelming, with a smooth consistency that brings out the sweetness of the clams,” says executive chef Dell Leandro. And these days, even the oyster crackers are homemade.

The Banks Seafood and Steak

Courtesy of The Banks

Robert Sisca has been making New England clam chowder for over 20 years, perfecting an example just outside of archetypal, with Berkshire pork belly and herb oil, at his surf and turf restaurant in Back Bay. The Banks chef also uses clam chowder in a couple of other playful forms for those looking beyond the bowl. He strains the chowder and adds maple syrup, lemon juice, and chives to create a gravy for buttermilk fried clams and waffles, which get finished with candied bacon. And his “Chowda Flatbread” features a crème fraiche base, house-cured and -smoked bacon, chopped clams, fingerling potatoes, and cheese, topped with oyster crackers and chives just before serving.

“We also have an insider’s tip where guests can request caviar as an extra on it which makes it more decadent,” says Sisca. The Chowda Flatbread “has been on The Banks menu since day one and will never come off.”

Chowda Flatbread.

Courtesy of The Banks

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