Beach Plum
If you live in New England, this is what you dream about all year round – sunny days filled with lobster rolls, fried clams, cold drinks and ice cream sundaes. And that’s the kind of food they serve here all year round at the Beach Plum. Now the beach plum has been a long time favorite in the Andelman family. They have locations in Portsmouth and in Epping, New Hampshire, they have a seasonal one in Northampton, but this is the latest and greatest Beach Plum location. We’re at Tuscan village in Salem, New Hampshire, right across the parking lot from the Tuscan Market. So this place is brand new and it already feels like it has been here forever. And we’re here now with a man himself the quiet genius behind the beach plum owner Bob Lee. Bob you cannot get this kind of food and a lot of places around here?
Salem was a almost a great opportunity for us, we recognize that there are no seafood restaurants nearby so been a great opportunity and the reception here has been amazing.
This place is a true clam shack it gives you that feeling of being on the sea coast or in coastal Maine or on Cape Cod. It even has that smell, the beautiful smell of the fryer letters in the air. You can hear them calling out the orders, and in the nice weather you could sit outside at the picnic tables and then year round you can feel like you’re having that summertime experience because they even have the picnic tables set up inside with a very high ceilings that are painted blue so you feel like you’re there on a nice sunny summer day.
So what should you order at the Beach Plum? Honestly it is not easy to decide. Just check out this menu board it spans the length of the entire restaurant so it has everything you want to eat. You want a sandwic,h you want a burger, you want a hot dog, you want fried seafood, you want ice cream. Yeah, they have all that and a lot lot more.
This is what a lobster roll is supposed to look like. You don’t see anything green. You don’t see anything fancy. What do you see? Just a gigantic mound of fresh shuck lobster meat and I’m talking claws and knuckle I mean the good stuff simplicity at its finest.
We believe lobster rolls should have lots of lobster and not much else. So do put a little bit of mayo in there but no veggies or other fillers like some places.
And they sell them in five different sizes starting at four ounces all the way up to a huge 10 ounce heap of lobster meat and you can get them either hot or you can get them cold. I like a nice traditional cold lobster roll because I like to play off the difference between the toasty buttery roll and the cool lobster salad but just a little bit of mayo but I have to say the hot lobster roll here is incredible piles of lobster meat and just some melted butter couldn’t be more delicious.
Lobster roll is the number one seller at the Beach Plum but this is the close second. This is the Big Catch a gigantic fried haddock sandwich. Just check out the haddock itself super fresh, super crispy, nice and golden and it is such a large piece of fish that literally stretches beyond the bun. This here is what’s called the whale’s tail that sticks out beyond the bun. You can kind of pull it out. Dip it in some tartar sauce and you have yourself a little meal before the meal.
Now let’s talk fried seafood because they’re famous for that here at the Beach Plum so what is your favorite fried clams, fried scallops shrimp paddock. Well, how about all of it? You get it all on the fisherman’s platter.
So you get a healthy serving of clams, shrimp, haddock scallops, it’s great. I mean people can split one of those if they’re not too hungry.
There is so much piled onto this plate. I’m gonna need some extra tartar sauce. We got some extra tartar sauce over here? Anytime you go to a clam shack and you order some kind of fried seafood platter, it comes with fries right but when I’m going to a clam shack, I always get onion rings because the kitchen is already battering stuff fresh and frying lots of stuff. And nobody does onion rings around here quite like the Beach Plum. They are thin. They are crispy. They are sweet. They’re perfect with fried seafood. But they also do onion rings in two different styles. Yeah, traditional thin onion rings. And then there’s this baby, the blooming onion. Look at that. Just the beauty of it. This is what I would give for Valentine’s Day. Just a beautiful flower of delicious crunchy golden onion rings. And then it has a nice Boom Boom sauce on it to spice things up. That is Spicy that’s nice.
Ice cream is a huge part of our business. We have over 70 flavors of hot ice cream plus the soft serve just about anything you can imagine for ice cream. We have it so we’ve got very unusual flavors here. Whatever your tastes whatever your favorite flavor we have it.
So whether you want your ice cream, your tartar sauce, your lobster bisque or just a big old lobster roll. Just head to Tuscan Village and check out the Beach Plum.