The First Restaurant To Serve Clam Chowder Was This Boston Staple

Clam chowder may not be to everyone's tastes — to quote "The Good Place," some see it as "hot ocean milk with dead animal croutons" — but if you're in the right mindset, nothing hits quite like it. It's creamy, rich, and nourishing, whether you eat a bowl as is or crumble some oyster crackers over top. But where did this delicious dish come from, and what restaurant had the bright idea of serving it first? While clam chowder has existed for quite some time, the first restaurant to serve it was the Union Oyster House in — where else? — Boston, Massachusetts.

The oldest continually operating restaurant in America, the Union Oyster House was established in 1826 and has become a favorite of everybody from Massachusetts native John F. Kennedy to Julia Child, who has a plaque on the restaurant's wall. In 1836, just ten years after the restaurant opened, clam chowder was reported as one of its menu items, and it's been there ever since. So, if you can't make like legendary politician Daniel Webster and house six platters of oysters in a single night (which he did pretty often), why not enjoy a nice bowl of clam chowder?

With that said, though, clam chowder obviously wasn't invented in the Union Oyster House kitchen — it's not like the brownie, which was, in fact, invented in a Chicago hotel. Native Americans had been eating a soup very much like clam chowder for hundreds of years before European colonists arrived in the Americas, using corn and beans along with clam meat. Fur traders from France and England adopted the dish and, depending on who you ask, contributed to its current name. Some say the word "chowder" comes from the French word "chaudière," meaning a cauldron or pot, while others say it comes from the English slang term "jowter," referring to a fishmonger.

The disagreements don't end there. Should clam chowder consist of a thick, creamy broth or a thinner, more delicate broth? Is Manhattan clam chowder made from tomatoes an acceptable alternative to the milk-based New England clam chowder or an unholy abomination? (One Maine state senator certainly thought so and lobbied to have tomatoes in clam chowder banned from the state.) Wherever you stand on the issues, though, you can swing by the Union Oyster House and know you're tasting a bit of history with each spoonful.