Quarterdeck

Quarterdeck in Falmouth is really 1/3 Irish pub, 1/3 American restaurant and 1/3 Cape Cod seafood shanty, but it is 100% my kind of spot.

I love the look and feel of this restaurant. It just has so much soul. And I think a lot of it stems from the wood. It goes back to the 1600s I mean, it's older than the nation itself. They salvaged some of the wood from a local shipyard right here in Falmouth.

The stained glass windows from a church. They used to face the street, but the owner actually moved them behind the bar, which I support, because, to me, hanging out at a bar like this is a religious experience.

I'm telling you, this bar has a special feel if you can get one of these 12 seats, Grab one..

Bruce is a really great bartender. They call him buddy…, and I have no idea why.

and I have no idea why.

Executive Chef Dan Delancey is a man who knows his way around a bar and knows his way around a kitchen. In my book, that's a win win.

“If I walk out here out of the kitchen out of the kitchen, come out, it's all local people. It's familiar faces every day.”

“We kind of do a little bit of everything here, you know, with a classic, you know, seafood, Cape Cod to, you know, hand cutting steaks to pastas to… great burgers, great sandwiches.

Warm, cozy tavern. Feel Salty Cape Cod, look just real, classic nostalgic.”

Chef Dan is local. He will make you a hot lobster roll if you beg or if you buy him a beer, but he really likes to serve it the true Cape Cod way, cold.

“We use all fresh claw, knuckle and tail meat, just a little bit of mayonnaise, a little bit of celery, a little bit of lemon juice, salt, pepper. That's on a toasted brioche roll. Then our large is on a hand sliced Portuguese bread…It's very big. We like everything big…. We like to you know just deliver something that no one's doing. That's for sure.”

The seafood tower is absolutely one of my favorite things to order at a restaurant. It's so dramatic and diverse and delicious. Here they do it with tuna. They also do wontons. That's a nice touch on a seafood tower you don't usually see there's a bunch of lobster on there, shrimps, little necks and oysters, and I always ask for tons of extra cocktail sauce. I think that's the number one thing to really bring out the flavor of fresh seafood.

Chef Dan and I did have a bar fight about this dish. He calls it a Quahog. I'm sorry I still call it a Quahog.

“It's a cohog, not a Quahog, it's a cohog”

“We grind the meat, peppers, onions, butter, and then that fresh quahog meat… we use all the ends of our Portuguese bread, kind of… incorporate that into our stuffing.”
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Whatever you call it. This is delicious, served in the shell,

tons of Quahog meat

and chorizo. That chorizo influence comes from all the Portuguese fishermen down this way, and I got to tell you, I salute them because I love chorizo.

When the chef is doing something new every day, I like to give it a try.

I love this concept. It's called the chef's whim flatbread. Every day, Chef Dan decides what he's in the mood to do. Today, it is a shrimp scampi, heavy on the garlic with sun dried tomatoes, spinach and mozzarella cheese served on the wooden board. I love everything about this dish.

A Reuben usually features corn beef, but here they do it with fried cod.

This is like a mash up of Jewish deli, Irish food and Cape Cod seafood. And Chef Dan makes it work.

“It's great. You get that kind of brininess a little bit with a sweet fish”

“You get that, you know, coleslaw, creaminess, so that, you know, the melted Swiss cheese, marble rye… and then the 1000 Islands dressing. Just just brings it all together.”

“It's just, it's absolutely to die for.”

Cape Cod is the home of the fried seafood platter. It's Chef Dan's favorite thing on the menu. Of course, it starts with a big fresh piece of fried cod.

This also has clams, shrimp, scallops, and oysters.

and they round it out the way that you should with french fries, coleslaw and tartar sauce.

I love any protein served with a puff pastry. Here they do a dish I've never seen at any other restaurant. It's called seafood pot pie.

This is lobster, shrimp, scallops, and cod with a delicious lobster sherry sauce, and you have that puff pastry to make sure you don't miss one single drop of that sweet lobster sherry.

“It's an explosion of fun…, the creaminess of the lobster Sherry almost like a Newburg style… nice scallops… you know… the cod just buttery, tons of flavor.”

You're gonna love it.

It doesn't get any fresher than day boat scallops.

Here they serve the scallops blackened with garlic aioli on the side.

I'm telling you can't get this in Omaha.

Chef Dan is a local boy, but he likes to sprinkle in global flavors and he does his tuna with an Asian influence.

“So Furikake crusted Ahi Tuna….We sear it, slice it… We do an edamame rice cake with it. So it's a we buzz up some edamame, fresh peas, and… with some sushi rice. We make it into a cake pan, sear that in the pan, and some grilled baby bok choy.”

“I love Euro- Asian style food. That's my thing is, I love pushing the envelope. It's so fresh, it's so clean, you know, so it kind of delivers that unique flavor definitely.”

Whether you live on the cape year round or whether you just visit from time to time. Quarterdeck is the kind of spot you want to remember.