Harraseeket Lobster

Dine at a picnic table overlooking the Freeport town harbor, the meal perfumed by the salt smell of the ocean and serenaded by the sound of an American flag flapping overhead. What a summertime pleasure!

The specialty is boiled-to-order lobsters, but seafood baskets are swell, too. Whole belly clams are hefty gnarled spheres of golden crust enveloping mouthfuls of ocean nectar. On the side, onion rings: puffy circles of brittle sweet batter around a hoop of onion that still has crunch. Clam cakes are good, too, their puffy dough holding dozens of little nuggets of marine goodness. The chowder is wonderful, and best of all is the lobster roll, served splayed open in a broad cardboard dish and packed with briney-sweet chunks of meat. Have it with onion rings or an order of Fried onion middles (sweet, slick nuggets that are to fried rings what holes are to donuts); and conclude with a fudgy, hand-fashioned whoopie pie.

An awning up over the picnic tables makes it possible to dine outdoors even when it rains. They tell us that it does rain in Freeport, but every visit we have made to town in search of our favorite clam baskets and o’ rings, the sun was shining brightly and gulls were swooping overhead through the blue, blue sky. It is almost painfully picturesque, this eat-in-the-rough jewel of a clam shack overlooking the South Freeport Harbor. But even if it were ugly, we would recommend it for the seafood baskets and the lobsters.