In 1939,
Anna and George Gross rented a two-car garage on Salem Street and East Putnam
Avenue in Cos Cob and opened the original Clam Box restaurant. It had a few
stools in front and a take-out counter and was to serve customers in the
summers only. According to their son,
Arthur Gross, interviewed by Penny Bott-Haughwout of the Oral History Project
in 1986, “My parents started the original Clam Box restaurant with four hundred
dollars… They painted the building white. They put an awning in front of it.
They bought several truckloads of oyster shells which was put on the ground and
then crushed by a crushing machine. And that became the area where people ate
in their cars or ate at the stand.”
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Original Clam Box
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project |
Business
was good---so good, in fact, that “my father made more money in three months in
Cos Cob than he’d made all year in New York (at his NYC spot called Cooper’s
Fish and Chips near Grand Central Station). Shortly thereafter, the New York
City restaurant was closed and George Gross “devoted one hundred per cent of
his time in Cos Cob.” After the first year, Anna and George bought the building
and opened the Clam Box year-round. Eventually, they built on both sides of the
existing main stand and it became a restaurant of about 250 seats.
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The Clam Box menu, front cover
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
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What was
the “secret sauce” to this successful small business? According to Arthur, “ .
. . nobody had any seafood items cooked the way we did. The frying was
completely new to this New England area… Our kitchens were open to the public.
People got the aroma of the cooking. And the fact that we fried at such high
temperatures . . . at 375 degrees, they were seared very quickly. An order of
fried clams would take thirty or forty-five seconds in these special cooking
machines that we had.” Fish and chips were also cooked at a high temperature and
“ . . . in a matter of three or four minutes, we’d have a magnificent piece of
fish cooked, very crispy on the outside and very moist on the inside.” Everything
was cooked to order.
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The Clam Box menu, back cover
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
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Of course,
the high quality of the food was fundamental. “We sent a man from Greenwich to
New York City five mornings a week . . . to the Fulton Fish Market. He used to
leave here about quarter of three o’clock in the morning… The fish was
delivered to Cos Cob like ten o’clock in the morning, and it was served that
evening.”
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The Clam Box menu, inside left
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
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How about
the prices? The original Clam Box menu in 1939 lists “Silex coffee with cream” for
five cents. “People remembered the fact that they got a good cup of coffee.” In
addition, “Bottle Grade A Milk” was ten cents; clam chowder, fifteen cents; fish
and chips, thirty-five cents; oyster stew, forty cents. The “Clam Box Special” with
half cold lobster, crabmeat, shrimps, and clams was ninety-five cents.
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The Clam Box menu, inside right
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
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Customers,
mostly locals at the time, had a different cycle to their daily lives in those
early days. In the summer, before television and air-conditioning, “a man would
get in the car and take a ride with his wife and they’d stop off for fried
clams or fish and chips at our type of a restaurant. We also found that we were
busier late in the evening---this would run until two in the morning.”
Post-WWII, with the advent of television, people tended to stay home in the
evenings. “Our business changed rapidly… After the war we never stayed open as
late as we did prior to the war.”
George and
Anna believed in their business. “Every dollar they made they reinvested back
into the property, and they managed to survive, and it was quite successful
after the second year.” In 1947, the Grosses purchased another building, with
four hundred feet frontage on East Putnam Avenue in Cos Cob, in which the Clam
Box remained until 1985. Fortunately, the property also allowed for enlargement
of the restaurant facilities.
“By enlarging the kitchen, we were able to
purchase additional equipment to make the same recipes… We were able to handle
the many thousands of people that we did serve in the summertime… We had a
wonderful reputation. We had the nicest people in the area coming out to
dinner.” Arthur was proud that a family could be well-fed for under ten
dollars.
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The Clam Box, expanded capacity, outside
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
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In 1963, with
additional storage space made available for produce and seafood, the restaurant
could serve five hundred and fifty patrons “plus the take-out business.” A
bakery was also now contained on the premises in which fresh rolls, pies,
cakes, puddings, éclair shells, and more were prepared. Over one hundred and
thirty staff were employed. Arthur boasted that “ . . . we must have had
seventy-five working here more than five years . . . and another ten or fifteen
who worked here for twenty years or more.”
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The Clam Box, expanded capacity, inside
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
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Arthur’s
parents retired in 1957. His father George passed away in 1960. Arthur and his
wife, Priscilla, managed the business from that time on. Arthur himself had
worked in the restaurant from the age of 14 in 1939 to age 60 in 1985. “If
people wanted to find me, they could reach me at 9:30 in the morning, and I was
here until sometimes 9:30 at night, and I was here many a time seven days a
week.” In 1985, the decision was made to close the restaurant and “sell the
property, distribute the proceeds (among the corporation of family members),
and go our separate ways… It’s the end of an era.”
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The Clam Box postcard
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
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Arthur did
have to admit that occasionally he would see some tempting restaurant locations
in town. “I’d come home and say to my wife, ‘You know, we could go back and
open up another little stand again and just sell clams and shrimp and fish and
chips.’ And she’d say, ‘No way, Buster.’”
The
interview of Arthur Gross appears in the Oral History Project book entitled “The Clam Box and the Food Mart.”
It may be read in its entirety at Greenwich Library and is available for
purchase at the OHP office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich
Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Our narrator’s recollections are
personal and have not been subject to factual scrutiny.
Mary Jacobson, OHP blog editor.
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