Clambake Celebration for a Crowd
Every year, on the weekend before the 4th of July, our family throws a party. In addition to a great selection of food, the party usually involves a big water ballon fight, various beers on tap, and a fireworks show that wow's the crowd. Every year we hire out for food though; we often have chicken entrees, sushi, sandwich trays and potato salads or similar catered food. Once we splurged and had someone roast a pig, but we decided that was too expensive. All of our family agreed though that we had the best experience at last year's party when we had a clambake celebration.
I would suggest going the seafood route to anyone contemplating throwing the sort of summer celebration that we normally do. True, it is never actually "cheap" to hire professional catering for a party. But, if you are already set with decision of catering the event, the seafood route isn't much more expensive than the usual chicken, potato salad, macaroni, etc, that caterers typically offer.
A couple hundred people often show up for our Independence day celebrations. Not all of the people show up at the same time, but they come and go over the course of the party, and I guess that 200 or more show up every year. For a successful clambake celebration, you ought to have at least 40 people show up. If you don't have that many people, you may find that you end up having too much stuff and not enough participants. When there are enough participants, it would be worthwhile to have a clambake celebration.
The food for last year's clambake celebration was provided by a catering company. The main attraction was the live lobster. Kids and adults enjoyed watching the entertaining performance of the chefs as they prepared and cooked the lobster right in front of them. The catering company also did a great job displaying the rest of the full menu items on rocks and seafood. In addition to the lobster, we were served clams, quahogs and mussels.
The one which we ordered was considered as a "standard clambake", but they also offered an option for a "New England clambake". The price for both was similar, but I suppose the New England one had more local menu entries for New England stuff. I am pleased with the one I ordered, but couldn't say anything about the New England one, since we haven't tried it - not yet!
We are excited to once again throw a clambake celebration for this year's 4th of July Party, and it is already all planned. July cannot come soon enough! It was such a big hit that we couldn't even consider doing anything else food-wise. The fireworks, beer, and water balloon fight will also stick around though!
- Michael Chapman
