Happy as a clam in the City by the Bay
Mark Twain was once quoted as saying, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
He was right.
During my summertime visit to San Francisco, the wind whipped through the quaint, steep, inclined streets with stairs carved into them, while the fog erased the Golden Gate Bridge from the skyline. This meant strange new necessities for an Arizona girl: warm jackets, lots of scarves … and clam chowder.
This seafood concoction was the best soup I’d ever had and left a lasting impression: fresh clam chowder in a sourdough bowl, sitting on blustery Fisherman’s Wharf fending off pelicans and tourists.
I’ve never been able to find anything quite like it, not even on the East Coast. I know they’re proud of it there, even calling it “New England Clam Chowder.” But sorry, East Coast, San Francisco has you beat. I have a theory that the saltier Atlantic changes the clams’ flavor, and not for the better.
Because in the Bay, the clam chowder is fresh but not fishy, it’s salty and chunky, and always creamy, never watery. The clams are never chewy, always melting in your mouth. The potatoes are in small pieces and are used sparingly, not as a filler. The celery and onion pieces highlight the buttery flavors by contrast, and it’s sprinkled with a pinch of parsley, which floats on top.
But wait, there’s more.
The steaming sourdough bowl completes this soup-meal. I admit a bread bowl has more carbs than I’d usually let myself eat in a week — but when it’s cold, my body craves it as if I can’t live without it. The bowl is as much part of the soup as the clams because the chowder leftovers cling to the inside as a special treat when you’ve finished, fueling your body’s furnace and allowing you to continue sight-seeing in the cold.
I proudly finished my bread bowl during my visit, leaving nothing for the disappointed seagulls. I’m sure they’re there every day, even now, hanging around waiting to be rewarded by the tourists who lose their Battle of the Bread Bowl.
When you think about it, clam chowder is San Francisco: classic and sophisticated, yet unique and hard to replicate. Its warm broth absorbs the individual ingredients, but allows each element to maintain its separate, diverse characteristics. San Francisco is a big city unlike any other with its colorful corner-shaped buildings, an arts scene beyond compare, and a diverse, outspoken populace.
Now I wonder if perhaps it’s simply the memories tied to clam chowder that makes it taste so good, because San Francisco was the first city with which I fell in love. Now an avid traveller, it wouldn’t be the last. But everything from the clam chowder to the brave windsurfers in the bay left such an impression on my wide, 13-year-old eyes. It was also my first time in a big city, other than Phoenix, which is much more spread out.
I had been traveling up the coast of California with my family, when we made a stop at my Great Uncle’s flat in the city. To me, San Francisco is record store shopping while people-watching the hippies and city types.
It’s listening to Great Uncle Eric thunder on his great grand piano from a room away.
It’s watching the fog roll in from the roof of his building, as it slowly envelops the city and mutes the streetlights.
And it’s certainly clam chowder. Delicious, hearty, creamy clam chowder on a windy pier, warming you to your core on a cold day.
Even in July.
