Off-Season Hours: DAILY 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 a.m.
On the Menu Tonight:
- Smoked Bluefish
- Truffle Fries
- French Dip
- Squire Carbonara
- Ribeye
- King Cut Prime Rib
If you haven’t been to the Chatham Squire, you should go to the Chatham Squire, ok? It is an institution, it’s a target-rich environment, and it’s one of a few things in Chatham that will not try to price or class you out.
If you haven’t been to the Chatham Squire, you should go to the Chatham Squire, dig? It’s a bell tower calling you home, a refuge for the low-tide heart, and a shifty-eyed smirk against everything in Chatham that wants to check your credentials. No pretense here—just a cracked barstool and a schooner of whatever ale eases you out of the Cape Cod sun, wind, or snow.
You’ll catch scenes you don’t expect. A mom with a two-year-old clutching her newborn as she climbs out of the bathroom. A food runner who has Napoleon Dynamite’s confidence but none of his luck tries a party trick and misses. The jukebox—of course there’s a jukebox—is unreachable except through some confounded app on your phone. None of it matters, though. Not at all. The moment you walk in, it’s like falling into a faded Polaroid of every bar that’s ever been your second home. There’s a comfort to this place so deep, it burrows into the lizard part of your brain. Let it. Let it drag up the ghosts of other nights, other places, and let it bring them here to dance a while.
This is the kind of place where time puddles. Fancy cocktail lounges might shuffle you out after a drink or two; here, you stay. The bar wraps around like a long, unbroken laugh, giving everyone a prime view of each other. Watch carefully: someone’s eyes will meet another’s, and if they’re not sharing a taxi home by last call, well, they might just tumble into the lot behind the place. This isn’t a martini bar. It’s a beer bar, a shot bar. Maybe just something strong on the rocks if you’ve had a day. It’s wonderful. Fucking wonderful.
There are tables scattered like chess pieces around the edges, up a couple of stairs, the pool tables, and the dartboard. Turn right at the bar, and you’ll find yourself navigating the hallway toward the tavern, which feels older, darker, like slipping back another era or two. On some Wednesday in October, you might hear live music from some local musicians nestled into a booth, their fiddles and guitars weaving between bites of stew and glasses of stout. Not tonight, though. Tonight, it’s the bar proper, so we double back to our spot: up the stairs, hightop on the left. The waitress—a motivated co-ed shuffling plated to stack a little paper over the break, is ready to tell you what’s sold out (but only after you’ve ordered)—will find us. She’s perfect for the place.
So pour up some drafts and let’s have some bar dinner. Hoorah, away we go.
FOR THE TABLE
Smoked Bluefish & Truffle Fries
It’s not mousse, it’s not pretty. It’s a slab of fish, just as it should be, bold and unapologetic, cranked out with horseradish spread, cornichons, onions, tomatoes, caperberries, and water crackers. This, my friend, is a postcard to the Old Cape—the kind your grandfather sent back from a foggy pier, ink running where he wrote “Wish you were here.” Each bite a perfect storm of tang, salt, brine, smoke. Go ahead: pile it all high and take it down in one. You won’t be disappointed.
Crisp-crusted, fluffy inside, and so perfect they dare you to expect more. They’re trying at truffle—just barely grazing the edge of it with a sprinkle of Parmesan—but no one’s here for precision. We’re here for golden fries and golden nights and beers sliding cold and frothy across the sticky bar top. Temper expectations and everything tastes just fine.
DINNER
Napoleon Dynamite’s been reborn a food runner—he appeared with flair and tried his hand at mind-reading, convinced he had tapped some forgotten neural pathways. Four dishes, four misses. Didn’t matter. He dropped them in front of us with the enthusiasm of an Old West pitchman, and then he was gone.
French Dip
Here’s a messy bite of glory. Roast beef meets au jus in a slow-dance of dripping, decadent nostalgia. Grab it with both hands. Worry not for the thin serviette that won’t save you. Somewhere back in the tavern, a band scraped brushes over snare drums, plinking out notes against the drone of chatter. The sandwich was music. Savor it.
Squire Carbonara
Shrimp, pancetta, smoked salmon—it came minus the scallops because, well, they were too good to last. No matter. What arrived was a symphony, the salmon bold and smoky, taking center stage as the pancetta countered with its salty, fatty twang. Fettucine twisting and slipping through carbonara like silver eels in a tidepool. Harmonicas wept softly from somewhere unseen.
Ribeye
Perfectly cooked, a classic. The butter sat unopened, still wrapped, beside the baked potato. Familiar touches straight from another time—the kind you only notice when you’re here. Every bite rich and unapologetic, paired with greens that broke up the storm.
King Cut Prime Rib (16 oz)
Towering, this thing. Beef on beef on beef. It sat atop asparagus and mashed potatoes, anointed in its own juices. This was the night’s pièce de résistance, so good not even a single scrape made it home to the dogs. It was here and then it was gone, polished off like a memory too good to let linger.
Pile on the beer. The band’s warming up—except, hold on, there isn’t a band, or maybe there is, or maybe it’s just the chatter and clink and hum of the place taking the shape of one. Either way, it works. There’s no stage, no singer, no crowd noise to define it, yet there’s music, somehow. Maybe it’s nostalgia playing tricks. Maybe it’s just the Squire being the Squire. But whatever it was, by the time the cold whipped in from nowhere, I realized it didn’t matter. This was the place we wanted to be, needed to be, at the end of a long, winter day—and nowhere else would have done. Let the night roll on.
•••••
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