Restaurants

There’s a restaurant on Cape Cod to suit every mood, taste, whim, and budget. To help you choose the restaurant that suits your palate and your pocket, we’ve prepared descriptions of our favorite restaurants on Cape Cod. We’ll tell you about places that offer such regional favorites as cod, Monomoy mussels, Wellfleet oysters, New England clam chowder—and of course, lobster. Although not all of the Cape’s restaurants specialize in seafood, most serve lobster, and we highly recommend it, whether boiled, baked, broiled, stuffed, stewed, sautéed, served in salads, fried in cakes, or simmered the way we like it—with basil, wine, and tomatoes and served with clams, scallops, shrimp, and mussels.

If you’re not in the mood for these regional dishes, there are many other choices. What’s remarkable about the Cape is the incredible variety of eating establishments on this relatively small spit of land.

Most of the restaurants listed here accept major credit cards (we note the ones that don’t), and, unless otherwise stated, all are wheelchair accessible. Many offer early-bird dinner specials, usually to those seated by 5:30 p.m., with discounts ranging anywhere from 10 to 30 percent off the regular price.

One of the nice things about eating out on the Cape is that most restaurants maintain a casual and comfortable “come-as-you-are” dress code, so to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of these restaurants, you need dress no more formally than “Cape Cod casual,” typically an ensemble of shirt, shorts, and sandals. Some restaurants, such as the Paddock in Hyannis or Chillingsworth in Brewster, afford you the opportunity to dress up more formally.

Many restaurants are packed during the height of the tourist season and on weekends and holidays. In summer, reservations are a must at fine restaurants, and a wait is common at those that maintain a first-come, first-served policy. You may even have to wait a bit when you’ve made reservations, because even the most efficient restaurant can get backed up with lingering diners.

Many restaurants now have Web sites with their menus for potential diners to peruse. Some Web sites even have video that shows chefs preparing the meals they serve.

Thanks to state legislation barring smoking in restaurants and bars, all of these restaurants are smoke-free.

We have followed our usual geographical order in presenting the restaurants in this chapter. Note that some entries are described as seasonal and are closed for the winter months, usually from late fall through April or May.