Experience Endless Summer at Cape House: Brooklyn’s New Four-Season Fish Shack
With temperatures seesawing between 80 and 40 degrees, October certainly seems a contrary time to launch a New England-style seafood shack. But while tents and space heaters will soon shroud the patio at Bushwick’s recently debuted Cape House, the menu will stay blessedly stable, providing year-round access to beachy staples like deep-fried whole belly clams.
The restaurant’s whitewashed interiors further the impression of the Eastern seaboard in the off-season, evoking a friend’s parent’s summer cottage abandoned for the winter, and appropriated for parties. Family fishing photos (owner Dana Gardner hails from Ipswich) and genteel, nautical knick knacks are illuminated by garish strings of Christmas lights, and surfaces are littered with cans of Narragansett, sticky-sweet rum concoctions, and glasses of Cisco Whale’s Tale Pale Ale. Unfettered festivities will eventually spill over into an expansive rec room downstairs (a parting gift from previous tenant, the spin-the-bottle-loving Amancay), which serves as an ideal venue for live entertainment, and motley late night ragers.
2 Knickerbocker Ave., Bushwick
Photos by Maggie Shannon