Buddy Holly and Sir Cricket's

Ok, this is about food not music, though good food and music go hand-in-hand. But, just to be clear, this is a not a post about Buddy Holly, much as I love his music, ever since I first heard it, back as a kid in the late 1950s. (I mean, "Maybe Baby" is one of my all-time favorite recordings.) But I just couldn't resist using his name in a post about Sir Cricket's on the Cape (Cape Cod, Route 6, Orleans, MA). On the other hand, you will feel like rock 'n' rolling after having the fried clams, fresh tuna sandwich, fish tacos, just about anything that Sir Cricket's dishes out.

My wife and I have been going up to the Cape every summer -- sometimes all summer, sometimes just a month or less -- since 1982. Our kids - now adults -- still think of it as a second home, and now come up with spouse and kids. We've loved the food in Cooke's, Captain Elmer's (now Rock Harbor Grill), Cobie's, J T's, Mac's, and other choice mid-Cape fish houses aka joints, but somehow didn't get around to trying Sir Cricket's until about ten years ago, when every other place had huge lines and we were hungry.

How did we like it? We ate there -- at one of the postage-stamp sized handful of tables, or take-out and back to our cottage on the bay -- at least half the time we were there after that summer and every time we've been on the Cape since then. Clams are my favorite kind of seafood anywhere. The steamers at Land Ho in Orleans are fabulous, but the fried clams -- I like 'em with bellies -- at Sir Cricket's are even better. Sweet as can be, with a breading that's perfectly slightly crisp and light.

The tuna roll is stand-out, too. If you never tasted a roll made with fresh as opposed to canned tuna, you don't know what you're missing. Sir Cricket's comes on delicious bun -- same as the clam roll, and all the other mouth-watering rolls in the place -- and is the smoothest, most satisfying little tuna sandwich you'll ever eat.

And then there are the fish tacos. Sir Cricket's has some kind of double tacos -- a soft taco, lined with a hard taco -- that's some kind of delicious. And the fish is fresh as can be, caught earlier in the day. That's what makes the tuna so good, too. Like all the fish in Cape restaurants, they're caught in the early morning of the day you eat them for lunch or dinner. This of course makes raw fish as well as cooked fish especially good. The tuna poke at Mac's is off-the-wall fantastic.

And the accoutrements are tasty, too. Cole slaw is a staple for any kind of fish sandwich or plate, and the slaw at Sir Cricket's is just top notch. And while we're on the subject of cole slaw, I have to give a shout-out to The Knack, which serves a carrot and apple slaw, making it sweetly scrumptious. Come to think of it, their fish is out of this world, too.

Getting back to Sir Cricket's, their prices are fine, as well. This is something you can't say for every Cape Cod restaurant, some of which will set you back a pretty penny -- a lot more than a penny -- for their mouth-watering fish. But the tuna roll at Sir Cricket's goes for an amazingly low $5.95, and those tacos for about twice that amount. Ok, enough of this writing, my wife and I are thinking of driving up to the Cape and getting some of this good stuff right now.