Lenny’s Indian Head Inn

A well-worn seafood house in the Indian Neck section of Branford’s scenic coast, Lenny’s has a choice of places to sit: a tap room up front, a dining room with varnished booths in back, and a scenic deck overlooking marshland behind the dining room. In business now since the late 1960s, it is a neighborhood kind of place with a menu that ranges from hamburgers and hot dogs to steaks and big platters of broiled or fried seafood. A full shore dinner includes chowder (either creamy New England style or clear-broth shoreline style), cherrystone clams on the shell, a lobster, a heap of steamers, sweet corn, and a thick slice of watermelon for dessert.

Good as both kinds of chowder are, we intend never to begin a meal at Lenny’s without “zuppa d’clams”: six steamed-open cherrystones in a bowl of briny, lemon-laced broth, a half-loaf of bread on the side for dunking. Delicious! Swordfish is always on the menu, and always fresh, available in dinner-size steaks or in smaller sandwich cuts served on nice fluffy buns with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise.

Lenny’s fried food is some of the shoreline’s best: big, whole-belly clams, succulent oysters, scallops, fish ‘n’ chips, and huge butterflied shrimp. Crunch-crusted and clean-flavored, these are exemplary fried seafood, and definitive proof that a crisp, clean crust can be the very best halo for seafood’s natural sweetness.

Throughout the summer, strawberry shortcake is the must-eat dessert. It is the true Yankee version, made from a split biscuit layered with sliced berries in sugar syrup, and a mountain of whipped cream. The perfect end for a seafood feast!