Woodman's of Essex

Lawrence "Chubby" Woodman, at the suggestion of a friend, fried a few clams at his roadside business in Essex, Massachusetts on July 3rd, 1916, and the original New England fried clams were born. This is where the story ends! On Main Street in Essex, Chubby and his wife Bessie started a tiny concession shop in 1914. They sold little groceries, homemade potato chips, and fresh clams picked by Chubby on weekends. Business was slow initially, but things began to pick up on July 3, 1916. Chubby remarked that "business was slower than a couple of snails walking uphill" on that day in 1916 when a local fisherman named Tarr (his first name long forgotten) dropped by the stand. Tarr noticed a bucket of clams nearby while munching on his delicious homemade potato chips. "Why don't you cook up some of your clams?" Tarr joked as he pointed at them. You'll never have to worry about running out of consumers if they're as great as your potato chips." Tarr's quip was met with chilly stares from two other patrons who had never heard of fried clams. "That's insane!" exclaimed one. "Clams have shells," the other observed. "I wasn't serious, it was just a small joke," the unfortunate fisherman grumbled. I know clams can't be fried like chips!" Chubby and Bessie began to think after the three patrons had left. What if we sold some of the clams after they were fried? "Let's give it a shot," Bessie remarked, tossing a slab of fat into the fry kettle generally used for potato chips. So they took some clams out of the shell, tried out different batters, and enlisted the help of several locals to sample them. They realized they were onto something significant when the overall conclusion was "wonderful!" Chubby and Bessie presented the first fried clam to the folks of Essex the next day during the 4th of July parade, and the world has never been the same since! A Boston fish market announced a year after the Woodman's experiment that it was "today equipped to deliver the new culinary treat—fried clams." Howard Johnson, the proprietor of a restaurant company with 100 locations across the East Coast, came to Chubby in person to learn how to cook New England fried clams. Lawrence and Bessie jotted down crucial family events on the back of their wedding certificate. Wilbur and Henry, their two eldest sons, were born on the first two lines. The third line was the family's other significant birth date. "On July 3, 1916, we fried the first fried clam—in the town of Essex," it said. Woodman's is still frying clams the same way Chubby and Bessie did when it all started over 100 years and five generations ago.