the chart room

My dad never much liked this restaurant.  He had one major complaint:  it’s too loud.

But my mom, well, she has a different opinion.  Ask her and she’ll tell you, “I like a happening place.”  So for her, coming to the Chart Room is fun, even when the noise level makes conversation difficult.

 “All summer I’ve been dying for a baked stuffed lobstah,” my mom tells me soon after I arrive on Sunday.  Surprisingly there are very few restaurants on the Cape that offer a good one.  But the Chart Room does.  Jean is down for a couple of days and this is where we are going to dinner tonight.

We arrive early (we are with my mom, so we must leave 30 minutes to drive to the restaurant which is 15 minutes away).  It is another spectacular day, and though we have to wait, the night, too, is perfect. 

The restaurant sits on Red Brook Harbor in Cataumet, a little Cape Cod town.  We begin the evening with drinks outside, where chairs are set up.  There is always a wait; but the outside bar is welcoming.  With such a gorgeous backdrop, the wait is almost as good as the meal. 

We are seated at a near-perfect table on the porch.  We order, and then a couple nearby at a perfect table leaves. Jean asks the hostess, “Do you think it’d be possible to move to that table?”  The hostess immediately responds, “No, I’m sorry.” Within seconds of her denial, she changes her mind. “Okay, as soon as the table is cleaned, just grab your place settings and move.” We sit at a window table, on the porch, and watch the sun set.

We all get the baked stuff lobster. I am a lobster connoisseur and this is one of the best on the Cape. The very good-sized lobster comes clawless and the meat from the claws has been mixed into the stuffing and placed inside the split open tail.  There is no work involved in eating this lobster.  It’s incredible.

I know that if my dad had come along, he, too, would have loved tonight.  I can almost hear him saying, “Ya know Phyllis, it wasn’t too loud.”  And we’d all smile knowing that maybe it was still a bit loud, but our perfect little table filtered out any conversation but our own.