Search seafood near me in West Hollywood and you find a mid-century-styled building on a corner of Santa Monica Boulevard doing something transplanted: New England seafood, in Los Angeles, from a chef whose reputation was built on it. Connie and Ted's is a deliberate reconstruction of an East Coast clam shack, which raises a fair question — why eat East Coast seafood on the Pacific — and the answer turns out to be more interesting than the objection.
The difference between coasts shows up on a menu long before it shows up in an argument. Ask Karpo what is actually local where you are and what has been flown in.
Two coasts, two menus
The Pacific and the Atlantic supply almost entirely different creatures, and the cooking traditions followed the supply. New England is built on cold-water shellfish: lobster, quahogs and steamers, bay scallops, oysters, and the cream-and-potato chowders that use them. It is a cuisine of boiling, steaming, frying and stewing.
The Pacific coast has Dungeness crab, spot prawns, rockfish, halibut, salmon and sea urchin, and the cooking that grew up around it in California leans towards grilling, raw preparations and citrus. Neither tradition is better; they are answers to different questions.
A restaurant importing one tradition into the other's territory has to fly things in, and the honest ones say so. What makes it worth doing is that certain New England preparations — a proper clam chowder, fried whole-belly clams, a lobster roll on a griddled split-top bun — simply do not exist in the Californian repertoire, and if you want them you have to have them made.
What to order
Chowder first, because it is the test. It should be thickened by potato starch and cream rather than by flour or cornstarch, and it should coat a spoon without gelling on it. If the chowder is good the kitchen is serious; if it is thick and gluey, order accordingly.
Fried clams with the bellies attached, if they are on the menu, are the item most worth the airfare. Strips are the tourist version; whole-belly clams are richer, more mineral and considerably more interesting, and they are genuinely difficult to find west of the Rockies.
Then use the raw bar for the local side. Oysters from both coasts on the same tray is the most instructive order available here, and it turns a meal into a direct comparison of the two traditions the restaurant is straddling.
Lunch is the better meal
Seafood shacks are daytime institutions in their native habitat — you eat at a picnic table in the afternoon, in sunlight, after being near water. A New England seafood restaurant at nine in the evening is doing something slightly against its own grain.
Los Angeles at lunchtime is also considerably more pleasant than Los Angeles at dinner: less traffic, easier parking, a covered patio that is warm rather than cold, and a room that is not competing with the entire city's evening plans. A weekday lunch here is a much easier and cheaper version of the same restaurant.
Weekend brunch is the busy period and the raw bar is at its best then. If a queue is acceptable, it is a good weekend anchor; if it is not, weekday lunch remains the underused option.
The corner and around it
West Hollywood is one of the more walkable parts of Los Angeles for short distances, with continuous frontages along the main boulevards and a genuine street-level scene rather than a series of parking lots. It is also flat, which matters more than it sounds in a city with this much elevation change.
The design district and the shops along Melrose are a short distance away, the Pacific Design Center is nearby, and there is enough within a few blocks that lunch can be part of an afternoon rather than the whole of it.
Parking is metered and there is a lot; both are easier at lunchtime than in the evening. The boulevard is well served by buses, which is worth knowing if the raw bar comes with wine. Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
The clam vocabulary, sorted out
New England clam terminology defeats most people and it is genuinely simple once laid out. Quahogs are hard-shell clams, and the names refer to size: littlenecks are the smallest and are eaten raw or steamed, cherrystones are the next size up and are usually grilled or stuffed, and chowder clams are the largest and are chopped for soup because they are too tough to eat whole.
Steamers are a different animal entirely — soft-shell clams with a protruding siphon, steamed and eaten by pulling off the sheath, dunking in broth and then butter. They are messy, unphotogenic and one of the best things on any New England menu.
Fried clams are made from soft-shell clams too, and the whole-belly versus strip distinction is simply whether the soft body is included or only the tougher siphon. Once you know that, every clam item on a menu is legible, and the ordering decisions become obvious.
Practical notes
Connie and Ted's is a New England-style seafood restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, with a raw bar and a covered patio. Judge the kitchen on the chowder — it should coat a spoon, not gel on it — and order whole-belly fried clams, which are hard to find on this coast. Use the raw bar to compare oysters from both coasts on one tray. Lunch is the better and cheaper meal and suits the format; weekend brunch is the busy period. The neighbourhood is flat and walkable, parking is metered plus a lot, and both are easier at midday.
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Ask Karpo first
Half of eating well by the coast is knowing what is actually from there. Ask Karpo what is local and in season where you are, what has been flown in and is worth it anyway, and which meal of the day the restaurant is really built for.
