The Dolphin
Osibili si ergo, Fortibuses in ero. Nobili demis Trux: Sewatis enim? Cowsendux!
At The Dolphin Restaurant in Barnstable Village, you might be greeted by proprietor Nancy Smith, but since Smith is happiest cooking, you might also be greeted by the bar staff. If you’re a local they know your name, and if you’re really local, they might even be related to you.
The Dolphin parking lot is close to the marsh, and its wooden screen door opens into a long, comfortable bar situated next to a more formal dining room. Locals know the faux-Latin verse hanging above the bar has been confusing, confounding and amusing patrons for as long as anyone can remember. If you can read it, you might be from the village. If you can read it late at night across the humming, wood-clad warmth of the candlelit bar, you might even be a native. I’m just sorry The Dolphin bar can’t talk because I’m sure it has stories to tell. The center of village life for 70 years, it has served as a meeting place, a watering hole and a great source of local news. It has been the scene of too many hijinks to record here, especially as the names of the innocent must be protected.
In my earliest memory of The Dolphin, I am excited because we are out for dinner on Saturday night. We are all gussied up because that’s what families used to do back then, and I am looking forward to ordering the fried clams. I am wearing a twirly-skirted sundress perfect for dancing, and there is a proper band playing dance music near the front windows. This is where my dad taught me to dance. It must be the mid-1970s.
In 1948, Nancy Smith’s grandparents came down from Boston to open The Dolphin on the site of the old Karras produce stand. Smith’s grandmother, Irene Barton, a runner-up in the Miss Massachusetts contest, had a dress shop in Boston and came to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner for a summertime change of pace. “The bar faced 6A in those days, and we had dance music. People dressed up on Saturday night and local families would come,” Smith said.
In Smith’s grandparents’ day, there were local Portuguese farmers, fishermen and fish markets. The scale was smaller then, and produce and distribution was local. “I remember as a kid the only year-round liquor licenses were Mitchell’s, The Dolphin, East Bay Lodge and the Captain’s Chair. The meat order was once a week,” recalls Smith. One of the changes she has seen in her 30 years at The Dolphin involves food distribution. “There were more seasonal ingredients [back in the day], but when Sid Wainer came into town everyone could get specialty stuff all year round,” she said. Today Smith lives over the restaurant in the same upstairs apartment where her grandparents once lived. She is sure they remain at The Dolphin in spirit, and she remembers her grandmother as the power behind the establishment.
Smith loves to develop recipes, and her favorite place in the restaurant is cooking behind the line; her favorite thing to cook is fish. Traditionally The Dolphin bought fish from local fisherman out the back door. Today Smith continues to procure fresh fish in season as locally as possible. “Striped bass are running now, so I’m serving locally procured striper. I’ll read some cookbook like Jasper White’s or the Barefoot Contessa, and I’ll weave recipes together. The Barefoot Contessa is a wonderful source,” she said. Barnstable stuffed clams top the list of my own favorite Dolphin treats. I have treasured the recipe, scrawled on a paper bar napkin, for years.
It must still be the 1970s, and I am super excited because my grandfather has invited me to lunch at The Dolphin. He likes to venture across Cape from Hyannis Port to meet his friends there, but today he is picking me up in his big blue car. He’ll order the BLT with a martini and I’ll have the clam roll because I love clams. My grandfather does not like to wear his hearing aid, so I don’t think he can hear much of my chatter, but that doesn’t stop us from having a great time.
You can have a great lunch at The Dolphin right now, but many locals also treasure happy memories of past lunches. For years people had their own tables, and Smith says they would get upset if they couldn’t have them. The most sought after was the one under the old mermaid wall hanging. Lifelong Barnstable resident Heather Hinckley remembers her mother accusing her dad of supporting the place because he lunched there Monday through Friday, always at the same table. “I joined him on Fridays, he held that spot for decades,” she said.
Smith’s grandparents ran the restaurant until 1967 when her parents took it over. She remembers her dad, Bill Smith, a photographer for the Boston Herald, going down to Dallas when JFK was shot. At The Dolphin, he tended bar while her mother, Renee, cooked and hosted. The first line in the faux-Latin verse above the bar reads Osibili si ergo. A fair translation renders this “O see Billie, see her go,” a reference to Smith’s dad back in the day, and an homage of sorts to him now (I’ll let you figure out the rest of the verse for yourself ). Renee loved to be in the middle of everything, and could often be found sitting at a table near the bar. I once joined her there for an afternoon of intense backgammon. I can’t remember who won.
Renee’s cooking was traditional. “When I was a kid, the menu was staid New England food. Scrod, chowders, iceberg lettuce and steak,” Smith remembers. An old menu from the days of Bill and Renee shows a heavy emphasis on seafood: scrod, shrimp, scallops, clams and lobster, broiled, deep fried and casseroled. There is an appetizer for marinated herring, while the meat section offers steak, veal, chicken Parmesan, and broiled steak Hawaiian.
It is the late 1980s and I am a college student serving lunches at The Dolphin. It’s a fun job because I know most of the customers, and I feel utterly at home. I am wearing a black skirt and a white apron. Renee is in the dining room, and Nancy is in the kitchen. The crab bisque at this time is, for some reason, especially delicious.
Another Dolphin tradition is the hiring of local staff. “Everybody local has worked here, from dishwashing to waiting tables, and they all come back,” said Smith. She remembers a former employee named Otis Warren who went on to become a surgeon. “Whatever you do, you do it your best,” he once told her.
Longtime Barnstable resident Robbie Stewart has a lifetime of Dolphin memories, and he once worked there as well. “It has always been a village favorite, all the locals patronized it. When the Sandy Neck camp existed, the parents of the children there would lunch at The Dolphin. The food was delicious, and the dishes were clean because I was the dishwasher, and the salad was clean because I tossed it,” he said.
When she came to run the Dolphin in 1988, Smith combined her family’s old ways with the new trends that were then reshaping the culinary landscape. “I came into The Dolphin in the third generation, and I called it the time warp Cape: Perfect dining, 1967. I came from new trends in Boston, where I had run 12 Cardoos stores around New England for 12 years. People were making their own pate, using fresh herbs, and roasting their own coffee beans,” she said. The US was in the process of rediscovering food at the time. “I went to Johnson & Wales and got a culinary degree, and came back and cooked the line. Now I cater and write recipes for the cooks to utilize. Right now I’m working on Mexican corn using fresh local produce,” she said.
Dinner in the formal dining room is a cozy experience in fine dining Cape Cod style. Think white tablecloths, toile, fresh flowers and, in winter, a warm gas fire. The view from the back of the dining room is the marsh, while the front windows look out over historic Main Street. I have eaten everything in that dining room, including funeral lunches, New Year’s Day nibbles, meals celebrating birthdays, and dinner the night before the rehearsal dinner for my own wedding, when many bottles of wine arrived at my table from friends at the bar.
A look at today’s menu reflects the old and the new culinary influences. The regular menu is rich in seafood offerings, including grilled swordfish, sole, cod and seafood stew. Fried clams and oysters satisfy any clam shack cravings, and there is plenty of meat for carnivores. Salads and light options freshen the flavors up, as do hints of foreign flavor from the Mediterranean and even Thailand.
The specials menu changes daily and seasonally as it plays against the backdrop of the regular menu. It is here that Smith’s creativity comes out. Most of today’s specials feature fish fresh from the ocean with a modern twist, such as pistachio-crusted halibut with fruit salsa or grilled salmon over spinach with quinoa Greek salad. The mussels with tomatoes and garlic butter starter are my own favorite after stuffed quahogs, and since Smith spent her college years as a Barnstable shellfish warden, I know I am in good hands when it comes bivalves.
It is the summer of 1996 and Nancy is catering my wedding reception in the backyard of my mother’s house on Indian Hill. It is a perfect summer day, not too hot, not too cold. Tables are groaning under the weight of good food, and everything is going smoothly until we all arrive back at the house from the church half an hour early. Happily, the guests never notice how surprised Nancy is by their early arrival as she seamlessly pulls the party together right under their noses. The food is wonderful.
In addition to running the restaurant, Smith has been catering village events for the last 25 years, and I imagine her phone number is on speed dial for party planners across the village. It is through her flourishing catering business, which she runs out of the restaurant, that she and The Dolphin have taken part in the countless local weddings, graduations and christenings celebrated at home.
The world is always changing, but The Dolphin offers Barnstable Village a constant bedrock. Successive generations have woven their way through the bar, around the dining room and out into the wider village in an enduring mosaic of food, cheer and companionship. Smith considers it an important part of the intergenerational culture of Barnstable and she has seen everything happen at least once with her sharp birds-eye view. “All roads end at The Dolphin,” she says.
