Marguerite’s

*This restaurant is permanently closed*

Marguerite’s restaurant in Westport, MA | What to eat

“Dear, everything is homemade here except the bread we put things on,” says the waitress, slightly annoyed that we felt it necessary to ask if Marguerite’s crab cakes are made here or bought frozen. Because we are strangers, of which this local lunch room sees precious few, she realizes we need special help interpreting the menu. So when we ask for stuffed quohogs, she nods approvingly and calls our order by its proper local name: “You want stuffies.” And when she brings French fries to accompany our brittle-crusted fried bay scallops, she informs us that we can have ketchup, of course, but that many people hereabouts like a spritz of vinegar instead. Throughout the meal, as she patrols the tiny 12-table dining room, she is seldom without a coffee pot in one hand, always on the lookout for a cup that needs refilling.

In this cute little weathered-shingle café, you will eat fine meals of the sort that many along Yankee shores take for granted. For us inland folk, they are an exemplary taste of Southern Massachusetts. For example, those stuffies stand out in a region where stuffies are as common as hamburgers; they are a good-size appetizer plate of stuffed clams laced with nuggets of spicy linguica sausage, sweet onion, and green pepper. Billi-bi, ballasted with plenty of plump mussels, is sweet and creamy and redolent of rosemary. Even the non-seafood fare is homey and good. All-meat chicken pot pie arrives under a golden crust. We like the beef and bean chili which, in its own way, is a Northeast classic.

If you are traveling along I-195 just east of Fall River, take this detour and dine well!