One of my criticisms of restaurant reviewers who give stars is that, in a fair system, a great diner would get all the stars, while a mediocre bistro wouldn’t get any. But does this ever happen? As if to challenge the world’s restaurant reviewers, Harry’s — a truly great diner/clam stand in Westborough — also runs Harry’s Too, a mediocre bistro right next door.
Look out, Martha, now he’s telling us to go to some wicked-good clam stand in Westborough. What’s next with this guy, Kansas chowder?
Actually, Westborough is a seafood lover’s paradise these days, as it’s also home to one of the original Naked Fish restaurants. But my advice is to drive on past the Naked Fish and line up at Harry’s. The place really excels as a clam stand, but it also has the long hours and anytime breakfasts of a diner, as well as some serious Italian entrées and a variety of local and national snack foods. It looks like a diner inside, but has tables as well as booths, and a low " bar " with stools. It also has the handmade signs of a diner, but not so much stainless steel, and there seems to be a real kitchen out of sight in the back.
A sign touts fried onion rings and scallops, but the real key dish is belly clams, available as a clam roll ($7.95), as a plate ($11.95; $10.95 Wednesdays), as a large plate ($15.95), and in numerous other iterations. If you really don’t like belly clams, there are also clam strips ($5.95/$9.95/$11.95). Both have lots of flavor and an ideal, medium batter that fries up light and dry. The plates come with very decent French fries; usually clam-stand frying machines are set at too low a temperature for good fried potatoes.
In fact, you can have French fries as an appetizer called " fries ’n basket with gravy " ($3.95). One remembers the large French-Canadian population of central Massachusetts, apt to bring back this version of poutines from Quebec visits. But Harry’s has improved it with turkey gravy. Large seafood plates abound, but after one experiment with a shrimp-and-bellies combination ($14.95), I’d stick with bellies — the shrimp just didn’t taste like much. Scallops, on the evidence of a scallop roll ($7.95), are pretty good, but tend to take on grease. Onion rings, sometimes offered as a side dish on plates with belly clams, are very good, because the medium batter leaves some flavor in the onions.
Harry’s began in 1946, and has something of a ’50s atmosphere with ’80s prices. Interesting localisms are combination sandwiches called " zippies, " which add slices of fried salami, melted cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onion to pastrami and corned beef. A zippy burger ($6.95) proves absolutely delectable. The burger, cooked medium-rare without an argument, is superb. And the toppings, which sound extravagant, flatten nicely into two pieces of toast to make an excellent hamburger sandwich. Calvin Trillin once wrote than anyone who doesn’t think his hometown burger is the best in the world is a sissy. Well, Westborough kids are on solid ground. (Tommy’s Lunch, in Harvard Square, had a similar item in the early 1970s called a " Terry Burger, " but with less finesse. Perhaps Terry was from Westborough.)
More holdover items include old soda-fountain drinks like an orange freeze ($3.50), which is drinkable sherbet, and a raspberry-lime rickey ($1.75). The latter is still made at Bartley’s Burger Cottage in Cambridge, and perhaps more reliably. The ones I tried at Harry’s were too sour one time, too weak another.
The diner element of Harry’s comes through in a very good Greek salad ($3.95), with lots of cucumber and onion along with effective feta and calamata olives. They also have diner desserts, which is to say pies and ice cream. Strawberry shortcake ($5.25) is mostly ice cream, with whipped cream as a second ingredient. The strawberries and cake are underneath there somewhere. Apple pie ($3.95) will not win any prizes at the county fair for flaky crust, but the spiced-apple filling is just what you’re hoping for.
There are, without doubt, things one should not have at Harry’s. The chili ($3.95) is absurdly sweet, like tomato sauce with beans. On the plus side, it isn’t too spicy. The seafood chowder ($3.95) begins to taste like seafood about halfway through the giant bowl — that’s how gloppy it is.
Harry’s Too is across a lawn, via an oblique entrance in a strange building with a furniture store taking up most of the frontage. It’s hard to tell whether it’s even open, or whether there are tables available. On most of my visits, Harry’s was packed to overflowing, while you can almost always walk right into Harry’s Too. The latter sometimes has live music, including well-known acts, so it must come alive on those nights. There are linen tablecloths and background music, sometimes Sinatra. There is a mural of " Harry Land, " which does rather capture the concept: Harry Land looks the way downtown Framingham must have looked in 1948, with the anachronisms of mud streets, a Chaplin film at the theater, Yoda standing next to Shirley Temple, and ’70s muscle cars in the lot of Harry’s Drive-In.
Harry’s Too must have been a fantasy for the owners — If we had a real sit-down restaurant, then we’d get the respect we deserve — and perhaps for many of the customers. But food-wise, Harry’s Too just doesn’t seem in the same league as its older brother. There’s hot bread with a sourdough aroma, but no real substance. I will say that this bread makes an excellent burger bun, but the " basic burger " ($5.99) is otherwise not up to its cousin 30 yards up the road, not even with caramelized onions (75 cents additional). An appetizer of spicy Buffalo chicken ($5.99) is inedibly hot, heavily breaded, and lacking celery, though the blue-cheese dip is good. Crispy-squid salad ($6.99) suggests that even the frying loses a bit in translation to fancier quarters, although the sweet sesame dressing and homemade crackers dress up the salad well. A roast-turkey sandwich ($5.99) nicely combines lean meat, avocado, cheese, and onion, but the mashed potatoes are very odd — lumpy like real potatoes, but with the roasted flavor of powdered potatoes.
If I had stars, they would all go to the diner.
Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.
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