What are Drifters' operating hours and location?
Drifters is located in Chatham, MA, and operates during the off-season from Monday to Saturday, 5 PM to midnight. This makes it a perfect spot for evening dining and late-night gatherings.
What are Drifters' signature dishes?
Drifters is known for its award-winning chili and wings, which are so iconic they carry the restaurant's name. Other standout dishes include the Flank Steak Chimichurri, Orechiette Bolognese with a dollop of ricotta, and classic Fish & Chips.
What type of dining experience does Drifters offer?
Drifters provides a cozy, off-season dining experience with a focus on small plates and hearty mains. The ambiance is warm and inviting, ideal for both intimate dinners and lively gatherings with friends. The bar also offers expertly crafted cocktails, adding to the overall experience.
What makes Drifters unique?
Drifters stands out for its year-round operation in Chatham, catering to locals and visitors even during the quieter months. The restaurant's menu is dynamic and whimsical, offering dishes that may change with the chef's inspiration. Its ability to blend nostalgia with modern culinary trends makes it a must-visit spot.
What practical dining information should visitors know?
Drifters is a great choice for both casual and refined dining. The menu caters to a variety of tastes, from small plates to hearty mains. While pricing details aren't specified, the restaurant's focus on quality and creativity suggests a mid-to-high price range. Reservations may be recommended during peak times, even in the off-season.
Drifters Off-Season Hours: Mon-Sat, 5-Midnight
On the Table Tonight:
- Jacob’s custom pilot cocktail
- Drifters Chili
- Drifters Wings
- Flank Steak Chimichurri
- Orechiette Bolognese
- Fish & Chips
In which competition the chili had placed first had eluded the menu but it was the first thing to leap off the sheet.
Being early, the first to arrive at Drifters for dinner, had its benefits and digging into the menu while the rest of the party was still out on Speedway 6 in some horseshit non-traffic crawl to Chatham was a wonderful replacement for a scroll down instalane.
Pilot Cocktail
Soups, Salads, fine but it’d be a lie to say you … or ‘one’ … well it’d be a lie to say that one couldn’t make a night - as would be discussed in short order - make a full night of dining out of a Small Plates flight. There will be other nights, should the restaurant gods see fit, to tumble into Drifters, in or out of season, and put some serious numbers on the board from this section’s selection.
Those would be nights when the off-Cape friends rolled into town and were looking for a Cape Cod dining experience with some punch - these will be the urban friends, the visitors from Boston or Manhattan - who truly like the taste of St-Germain and feeling they’re in good hands when they order at the bar. These friends should have this place. These friends, and the other, the year-rounder friends, they’ll also like it because they simply have good taste, not only because they have nostalgic muscles that kick at when the famed liqueur swings her reflex hammer. No shots there, nary a pejorative in sight: it’s always valuable when folks emerge from the dank, wooded netherworld of Manhattan’s restaurant scene - was it Bushwick? was it west 29th street? - with a burlap sack of unicorn-horn wisdom and operations. And when they emerge, when they migrate home, they’ll have their strong appeal to those whose sensor reads the taste of that good ol St-Germain as catnip.
In which competition the chili had placed first had eluded the menu but it was the first thing to leap off the sheet.
Being early, the first to arrive at Drifters for dinner, had its benefits and digging into the menu while the rest of the party was still out on Speedway 6 in some horseshit non-traffic crawl to Chatham was a wonderful replacement for a scroll down Insta Lane.
So these good friends, these bad-weather, horrid wind, frigid temperature friends, join at the bar and by then the bartender has put up one or two cocktails, so things are warming. Or, let’s say, the environment’s become more fair in weather.
A moment for Jacob the bartender: not to beat this NYC thing into transparent chicken cutlets but it’d be gauche to NOT point out that Sir Shaker was asked, unsolicited, to duck into the lab by the Early Arrival knowing that said Arrival preferred only X, Y, and Z (and pointed did NOT smile upon 1, 2, or 3). Spoiler alert: Jacob not only came out the other side, but plainly victorious. Whatever the elixir was, t’was presented strong and short. It could have been the quick Hemingway parry that pushed him into the land of double potency - a punch packed in a dime-bag pouch.
SMALL PLATES
Yes! The chili. It would be the chili and the wings (both held in such high regard that they owned the restaurant’s name as some kind of possessive hyphenate. The chili choice was obvious and going with the wings was, for these seasoned diners traipsing up and down the Outer and Lower Cape looking for a haven in the roughest months, likely a move for their own nostalgia (if the callback is within reach). Another, doubtless the next, trip to Drifters would have running roughshod through the tartar, the pate, the white bean dip, probably even the kimchi fritters. If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly, nahmean?
The small plates—triumphant. But now, the mains. Joe Early, a seasoned diner with an appreciation for group logistics, knew that the best way to ensure the table hit all the right notes was to let the others lead. Strategy, not hesitation. Given the raw potential these Plates offered, Big Early took his ordering position at the caboose and held off to see what the compatriots would order. Certain things had to be on the table, he’d decided over the course of his deliberations, and this was the simplest way to ensure it happened. Yes, in addition to being a fair minded fellow, he was a problem solver. Tonight everyone would go home in a Cadillac. When asked about it later, he maintained this was something he liked to practice always but was rarely shown the opportunity. These choices, he’d gone on record to day, “so few, so strong” had supplied him with the confidence to engage in such a wild wager as ordering last.
PLATES
The necessities of the table had to be, at least!, the Steak Chimicurri (of course) The steak was excellent and the broccoli rabe was the diner’s favorite component.
Depending on who ordered that, there was then the Orechietta Bolognese (with its murderous dollop of ricotta splat in the middle … ya know, for kicks) that would need some stage time as well.
Then … would it be the Chicken & Noodles? The Fish & Chips? There are TWO burgers on here?! An embarrassment of riches, bitches.
The hand-cut fries were another in a series of appreciated sides. The fish was taken down with the fervor of an owl counting Tootsie Pop licks by our blue collar hero here.
The final tally, after the hellos, the bartender intros, the deliberations (you know how that goes), ended up as shown. A clear success.
Honor Among Locals & The Fleeting-Menu Philosophy
There’s good reason to be effusive about year-round restaurant owners in Chatham or anywhere out here: a) they have the stones, ethic, interest and the clientele to stay open in the shoulder season; b) they are generally gamblers, experimental and early adopters excited to engage in antics that, if successful, will allow their persecuted elephant to paint; and c) they may be the fortunate enough, the previously wealthy enough, able to subsidize their lifeblood the way many people wish they could.
These last type, the least common of the collective, should not be shunned or regarded badly, as they often can be, because they may have some innate characteristic quotient that, in the end, not only provides them with the means, but helps them move the needle because of a set of instilled expectations around success. Those expectations, in the finest instances, come complete with the understanding of what it takes to find success, not only the demand for it. It’s partially why, when high school quarterbacks marry the captain of the cheerleaders, they end up squeezing out kids who become QBs and cheerleader captains.
Yes, this is a real as a doughnut motherfucker, as Tarantino puts it through Austin Buter’s Tex.
The diners now sit upon a mountain of unstoppable, untoppable, and, more importantly, distinct, inimical dishes; an air full with inspiration, contentment, and sedation presides over them now. The air confides: if the chef desires it, it shall be desirable; if not, it shall be lain to waste.
Whimsy rules each night, as fleeting diners make their choices from a menu that may only exist only in this moment (kudos to Drifters’ improvisational approach there). Soon, the dishes, the company, even the hands that prepared them will shift. For now, they wear their words—and their selections—as if they were always meant to. But come tomorrow, the choices may change. The staff may shift. The night will never be the same. And that’s the thrill of it.
•••••
Do you have a favorite year-round restaurant in Chatham and want to spin a tale of your adventures?
Have you ever been tortured over endless menu options with the knowledge you can do no-wrong?
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