A Guide to Buying, Shucking, and Eating Clams

With delicate razor clams gracing tasting menus at Maison Premiere and Atera, Wylie Dufresne rethinking chowder at Alder, and urban fish shacks and raw bars continuing to proliferate, it's hard to imagine that the humble clam was ever more fashionable than it is now. In fact, it was: The native bivalve gained popularity in the early-twentieth century after New Yorkers depleted all the local oyster beds, and in 1976 Long Island's Great South Bay was supplying 700,000 bushels of hard-shell clams a...