I read through a trade paper called Nation's Restaurant News almost every week, and there is often a cutely named restaurant featured in a box called Name of the Week. Last week, the winning entrant was a barbecue place in Georgia, Pork & Beans. Don't look for The Slanted Clam to be in this box anytime soon.
But what's in a name, the Bard once asked? The Slanted Clam Tavern is the latest effort from talented restaurateur Mark DiMartino, who also owns the Tillerman and the Tilted Kilt in the Rio. His new place is a pub in the purest sense, with proper pub grub to match. And the food is good quality, as we've come to expect from him.
Once DiMartino acquired this landmark location, which for many years was a local institution called the Venetian, he promptly renovated it, from old-school Italian to a more modern beach-shack theme, relying on fishnets, surfing paraphernalia and scantily clad waitresses. It has been a smash hit almost from the first.
It's also a minor shock for anyone who remembers the Venetian, where pork bones and Italian greens dominated the menu. It isn't so much the menu—which runs to things like steamed clams in broth and one of the best chopped salads anywhere—that might be jarring but more the ambience: youthful, noisy and all Sin City, sort of late Roman Empire meets tailgate party.
I ate my first meal here during the height of March Madness, the NCAA college basketball tournament, where an exuberant crowd was whooping it up over draught beers and occasionally eyeballing the pub's many plasma-screen TVs. The restaurant, like Rome's Gaul, is a three-part affair: a long bar strung with colorful Christmas-style lights; a small, cozy dining area between it and the front entrance; and a more reserved, spacious back dining room.
As you enter, you'll pass an enormous statue of the restaurant's guardian, Capt. Morgan, patron saint of rum. In the bar and small dining room, you sit on comfy, padded chairs at tables with galvanized steel tops. The rear dining room is guarded by barrels of goldfish of the Pepperidge Farm persuasion. That room is decorated with wall-mounted surfboards and retro movie posters, most notably one for the '50s classic, Creature From The Black Lagoon.
Happily, none of the seafood items featured here taste like one. Happy Clams is my favorite: one and a half pounds of steamers (each slanted with a little black stripe running down the shell), steeped in beer, garlic and pure butter, with the bonus of the good house garlic bread.
Fried oysters run a close second, panko-crusted Gulf oysters—I counted more than a dozen—served with cocktail and tartar sauces, the better to induce the need for a second round of Captain and Coke. As to the other seafood offerings, crispy clam strips and fried calamari, I prefer funkier versions with bellies and tentacles, but alas, they are not swimming around here.
Lots of other choices surface, though. Entrée salads are especially good: tuna salad made with roasted veggies, vine tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and homemade tuna spread; a nice, zippy chicken salad with chunky meat; and my favorite here, chopped salad laced with turkey, ham and bacon, each finely minced to add maximum flavor without making the salad seem overly ponderous.
Several quintessential pub-grub items are available by the pound. Crispy Buffalo chicken wings served with celery, chunky bleu cheese dipping sauce and cottage fries are more interesting than the slightly higher-priced fried chicken tenders, which can be had at your local KFC.
A half-pound Angus hamburger hits all the high notes, and so does a good French dip with Swiss cheese. But I was less than enamored with a hot corned beef sandwich and its supermarket-quality meat. Better is an all-beef Vienna hot dog, done with grilled red and yellow peppers and fruity sweet white onions, and a meaty Philadelphia cheese steak—an artery clogger if there ever was one.
DiMartino comes from a local Italian family, so it's not a surprise to find baked rigatoni and linguine clams, red and white, on his bar menu. It's a little challenging to eat them here, unless you are in the more bucolic back dining area. There is also pizza cooked in a brick oven, a medium-thick-crust pie you can have topped with most of the usual suspects. Johnny Clam Face uses chopped clams, olive oil, garlic, mozzarella cheese and oregano. Leave out tomato sauce and you're eating one of the most popular pizzas on Rhode Island.
A team of attractive women with exposed midriffs performs the majority of the service, which is why this concept is a natural to be franchised in major college towns. Think of it as a sort of sophisticated take on Hooters, with regard to food if not concept, at least.