Clem & Ursie's

A counter restaurant with a touch of the Azores and something for everyone

by Robert Nadeau

85 Shank Painter Road, Provincetown (508) 487-2333 or 2536 Open daily, 11 a.m. -10 p.m., through September Cash or checks only Beer and wine Street-level access

Clem use to be partners with Joe in a Commercial Street barbecue stand that did a remarkably good job on several kinds of smoke-cooked meat. He then hooked up with Ursie to take over the historic location known generally, from the many years it specialized in soft-serve ice cream with fish and chips, as Dairyland.

Many kinds of surrealism are joined together here -- there's the absurdity of first-class Southern barbecue in Provincetown; the neoprimitive humor of the signage and decorative masks by the great Truro artist Susan B. Baker; the Dairyland collection of distorted, genetic-misfit lobster claws (the whale vertebrae have been quietly removed); the bizarre juxtaposition of deli sandwiches, barbecue, live-lobster tanks, and gourmet bread for sale in the adjoining market.

Basically I'm drawing your attention to one of the best counter-service restaurants in the world. It has, perhaps unintentionally, crossed my threshold for Provincetown reviews by picking up a few dishes from the traditional Azorean Portuguese fisherman's repertoire -- a great Massachusetts folk cuisine. I've sent people nearly this far for barbecue, but anybody can steam a lobster and nearly anyone can fry fish if they try a little, so the clincher for me is the catfish vinho dahlos (sandwich $4.95, platter $6.95, and $8.95 with corn bread and fries).

Vinho dahlos (sometimes vinha d'alhos) is nothing more than a marinade of vinegar, garlic, and spices, probably adapted by fishermen's wives from a marinade for pork. It evolved under Clara Cook at the lamented Cookie's Tap in Provincetown, was popularized by the late Howard Mitcham, and often appears on Provincetown menus. For some reason, it doesn't seem to hold the same place in the Azorean cuisines of East Cambridge and New Bedford. What happens here is that the marinade (plus some tomato and hot pepper from the molho cru mackerel version) is applied to ocean catfish (an underrated species), which is then fried in batter. To say that the result is like fish and chips with the vinegar inside instead of outside is to capture only about 25 percent of how good this tastes. It is one of the really great fried dishes of the world, and it is crisply and unfussily executed at Clem & Ursie's.

Monday night is Portuguese night this summer, for those who need a hit of squid stew and such. I would be just as tempted by the weekday Jamaican nights with jerk chicken, based on my test of a smoked brisket sandwich on a French bread roll ($5.95). I think smoked brisket is the apotheosis of barbecue, and this sandwich had all the smoke flavor anyone would need. The meat was cut three-quarters of an inch thick, which makes for awkward eating but doesn't harm the flavor any. This brisket could be a little juicier (though a mop of standard barbecue sauce helps) but no smokier, and that augurs well for the jerk, the ribs, and anything else they want to call barbecue here.

The lobster story is that the adjoining fish market keeps them in tanks, so you can pick by size or just play God and be arbitrary. Prices by the pound are posted for either taking them away or having them steamed, or baked and stuffed, and served to you with various side dishes. I'd advise a big one if you don't mind working in teams, but individualists can have a one-pound lobster for $10.95. I would suggest the lobster clambake ($16.95), which also hooks you up with a pound of excellent steamed clams, broth of same, butter for both, terrific steamed red potatoes, and corn on the cob, since you will need some roughage. (Another way to get your vegetables is the creamy, sweet, Southern-style cole slaw, $2 per half-pint.)

We also sampled a "lazy lobster roll" (market price, recently $10.50), which is about as delicious a thing as you can get on a hot-dog roll. Ours featured a lot of lobster tail meat and not much else.

Then there are composed seafood dishes, which are generally not so great in places with a lot of paper plates and plastic bibs. However, I thought the bouillabaisse ($16.95) had a reasonably accurate saffron-fennel-garlic broth and standout mussels -- not to mention the fillet of white fish, shrimp, scallops, and the odd littleneck. The olives were good, too, but the dish did not come together as any more than the sum of its parts. (You can add a lobster for a total of $25.95.)

Back to appetizers. The raw bar features Wellfleet oysters ($1), and that may be all you need to know. There are also cold seafood salads and pâtés with crackers, but the calamari salad ($3.50) was nothing special. A combo of five kinds of seafood cakes ($5.95; with beans and slaw, $9.95) leads me to suggest that you want to have crab cakes (three in a sandwich, $5.95; five on a plate, $6.95; five with beans and slaw, $10.95) rather than lobster, shrimp, or fish cakes, and especially more than the bready "Rhode Island Clam Cakes" (five for $2.95), which are those globular, bready fritters those people in that little state eat with their weird chowders. Clem's chowder isn't weird, and neither is the Portuguese kale soup (small $2.95; medium $5.90; large $11.80), although our sample was like the bouillabaisse -- good ingredients (in this case, kale, sausage, potato, and kidney beans) thrown together without much synergy. It's easily perked up with anything from the long, long row of assorted hot sauces at the raw bar.

There is a decent little list of wines and cold beer, as well as three flavors of Portuguese soda. I tried Vida Nova, which looks like a cola and is caffeinated but tastes like bubble gum. For dessert, there's both soft-serve ice cream and the good stuff.

Clem and Ursie's is not only a terrific restaurant, it's a terrific restaurant for everyone: there is much for kids, much for serious eaters, and much for casual eaters. Even the hamburgers ($3.95 to $5.50) are excellent, although somewhat lean and dry. On the bacon cheeseburger ($5.50), these qualities were elegantly compensated for with slightly undercooked lean bacon.

Because the restaurant is outside the main strip of Provincetown, though right on Route 6, it hasn't been that crowded. If it were in Boston, the line would stretch to Hyannisport.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.