The Clam Chowder at West Barnstable's General Store Is Named for a Judge's Son-in-Law

Staple groceries. Duct tape. Penny candy. A wide selection of books. Clamming rakes. Guinness on tap.

That's how the Old Village Store describes its own stock, on its homepage. It also says it has operated continuously as a general store since its founding in 1880. The café side has its own menu, posted online, that runs from 7 AM breakfast sandwiches to a $16 double cheeseburger.

One item on that menu has a name that takes some explaining. The store doesn't explain it.

The day runs on the menu's own clock. From 7 AM, the hot grab-and-go case holds two breakfast sandwiches on English muffins, according to the store's food menu: the BEPC (bacon, egg, and pimento cheese) and the EC (egg and cheddar). They're there "until sold out."

At 9 AM the deli sandwiches go into the case, on the same terms. There's herbed turkey on multigrain and a Tiny 'Talian with mortadella, capicola and Genoa salami. There's a chicken Caesar wrap. And there's the Tony B, which the menu calls "a baloney sandwich for adults, inspired by Anthony Bourdain": sourdough, mustard, mayonnaise, mortadella, cornichons. None of the grab-and-go items has a posted price.

At 11 AM two things start at once: the made-to-order kitchen and, per the drink list, the beer. The Guinness on tap is billed as "A Pint of Plain." Below it on the list are a 2021 Normandy cider poured 4 ounces at a time, four biodynamic wines, and Madeira in 2-ounce pours.

Cyrus Buffum is behind the store's current chapter, with Andy Powers, whom an April Provincetown Independent profile identifies as a contractor and business partner. Buffum knew the place before any of it. "I used to come in here as a kid. We'd pick up some milk, buy some penny candy," he told the Independent. He remembered the former owner Pat Rogers at the register, with "Pat's watchful eye counting every bit of candy."

He gave the paper the store's first two chapters as well. "Melvin Parker opened it back then, and the second owner was A.D. Makepeace," Buffum said. The profile also runs a circa-1910 postcard that labels the store "Makepiece's Store," spelled the postcard's way. Old stores and their dates rarely line up neatly. When Centerville's 1856 Country Store went up for sale in September, its listing said 1840.

Some of the menu has a backstory too. "Barnstable once had a large number of apple groves, but they were cut down during Prohibition to prevent cider making," Buffum told the Independent, by way of explaining the French cider. "And the Madeira wine that we have from Portugal was extremely popular in colonial times."

The made-to-order menu opens with soup, and the soup has the longest name on the page: Lemuel Shaw's Son-in-Law's House-Made Clam Chowder. It's $13 a bowl as of Oct. 28, made with chopped Atlantic surf clams, potatoes, cream and salt pork.

Lemuel Shaw was born in West Barnstable in 1781. His father, the Rev. Oakes Shaw, was pastor of the village's West Church for 47 years, and the son went on to become chief justice of Massachusetts. In 1847, Shaw's daughter Elizabeth married Herman Melville.

Four years later, Melville titled a chapter of Moby-Dick "Chowder." Ishmael's bowl in Nantucket is made of "small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts," with pounded ship biscuit and "salted pork cut up into little flakes."

That's salt pork in 1851 and salt pork on Meetinghouse Way. The menu never prints Melville's name. It names the father-in-law, who was born in this village, and stops there. The line from the menu to Melville is our reading of the record, not something the store says.

The rest of the page, as of Oct. 28: a Caesar salad, $13. Smoked bluefish toast, $12. Roasted potatoes with Old Bay aioli, $7. The Old Village Cheeseburger, $12 single or $16 double, made with a blend that includes grass-fed beef from Seawind Meadows. A Reuben on Pain D'Avignon rye, $15. Grilled cheese, $9. A bowl of chowder and the bluefish toast together come to $25 before tax. Under the grilled cheese, the menu prints its house rule in four words: "Omissions accepted. No substitutes."

The Independent's profile placed a weekly readers group at a back table. The store's events page still lists it, Wednesdays at 10 AM, with the week's text posted on the store's Instagram. Events there are free unless noted. Two are on the calendar this week: a talk on sauna science with Will Kennedy of Cape Sauna Club on Thursday, Oct. 29, from 6 PM to 7 PM, and a Hocus Pocus screening on Friday, Oct. 30, from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM.

Orders go in person or online. The menu says there are no phone orders at this time.

Buffum told the Independent what he was after. "I want this place to be an antidote to the current state of affairs."