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The Clam Box of Ipswich is a fried-seafood restaurant at 246 High Street, Ipswich, Massachusetts, in a building from 1935 shaped like a clam box, the takeout container for fried clams. Boston Magazine listed it among North Shore clam shacks in August 2025.
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The Clam Box
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Site-level location · 42.6958° N, 70.8668° W
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The Clam Box of Ipswich is built to look like the takeout container fried clams come in.
The building dates from 1935, according to the restaurant and the Boston Globe. The Globe reported in 2020 that it had been an ice cream shop in an earlier incarnation, and that its longtime owner, who first called it her own in the mid-1980s, told the Phantom Gourmet: "Follow 1A and you’ll come right into the Clam Box. You can’t miss it ’cause it’s shaped like a clam box." Yankee magazine wrote in 2023 that the flared-roof, shingle-sided building resembles an open-topped takeout container and was built in 1935 by a man as a present for his wife, who wanted to try running a restaurant.
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PRACTICAL
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WHAT TO EXPECT
A fried-seafood restaurant with indoor dining, an outdoor deck and takeout, according to its website. It runs seasonally and closes at the end of the year's clam season, with a day off each week. The Boston Globe reported in 2020 that weekend queues of an hour or more were common.
ACCESS
A business at 246 High Street (Route 1A), Ipswich, about 30 miles north of Boston according to its website. Open to customers as a restaurant, seasonally; check its website for current opening before travelling.
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