I landed in Boston in the evening, and after a five hour flight, I was starving. Luckily, around the corner from my hotel was Legal Sea Foods. This place first opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a low-key restaurant next to the Berkowitz family’s Legal Cash Market and fish market. Word quickly spread about its fresh and quality seafood. Now there have locations throughout the east coast and airports. Despite many locations, the place was packed. It was a 45 minute wait for a table. I walked around the block for a few minutes before heading to the bar to warm up with a glass of wine instead. Shortly afterwards, our table was ready.

The menu was filled with many seafood options cooked in different methods.  I wanted to try all of it from steamers to lobster to the fried mussels. It was hard to choose. Eventually, I decided on the the New England clam chowder, crab cake, baked oysters, and the ciopinno.

The New England clam chowder was perfect. It was creamy, full of clam flavor and whole clam pieces. I was surprised by this since it’s rare to have whole clam pieces. I enjoyed this chowder so much that I wiped the cup clean with bread.

As a crab cake lover, Legal’s signature crab cake was a disappointment. It had bits of apple in it giving the crab cake a hint of sweetness. The crab cake was fried so it had a consistency of a fried dough ball instead of the crunch from a pan seared crab cake. The one good thing was its huge lumps of crab.

As a recommendation from the waitress, we ordered the baked oysters. The oysters were topped with spinach, tomato, cheese, and breadcrumbs. They were cheesy delicious but since the oysters were huge, one baked oyster was filling. I was getting full at this point.

Somehow I managed to save enough room for the cippinno. The cippinno came with a small lobster tail, scallops, shrimp, calamari, littleneck clams, mussels and whitefish all cooked in a white tomato sauce. It was a decent cippinno but nothing decadent.

 If you’re drooling to try Legal seafood, they deliver throughout the continental U.S.