Johnny Ad’s

Although it feels like a summer place, Johnny Ad’s is open year around; and other than the deck of picnic tables that make outdoor dining here along Route One such a pleasure, there is a whole indoor dining room for shoreline feasting.

Johnny Ad’s is a shoreline restaurant, make no mistake about that. Featured menu items include fragile-crusted whole belly clams (or clam strips, if that’s what you prefer), shrimp, scallops, calamari, and soft-shell crab, all available either on a plate with fries and cole slaw or in a roll, which is a toasted buttered bun.

Among the superior seafood rolls available is a hot lobster roll: hunks of warm pink meat bathed in butter and nestled in one of those long, tender buns. It is also possible to get a cool lobster salad roll, the pieces of lobster bound with mayonnaise. The latter is more typical of downeast New England; the hot roll is more a Connecticut thing.

K.A. Bowen, who originally tipped us off to Johnny Ad’s, highly recommended we also try a hot dog. It’s a beauty, alright, a plump, foot-long that tastes especially right when blanketed with chili and cheese.

Unlike many shoreline quick-eats joints, Johnny Ad’s is open year-around.