Country Kettle Chowda — Local services in Beach Haven

Edit: Where are the clams???- Not in my chowder, that's for sure! Tried them again, close to zero clams, and served by 2 mumbling kids who didn't wanna be there. No thanks, will not return, dropped to 2 stars.

One of the many tourist traps on the island, and that's ok, but Country Kettle Chowda isn't a "4.7". Their chowder recipes are good, although a little too thin for my liking. Seasoned well, no problem there, but not including enough of the important ingredients, with CLAMS being the most important, isn't forgivable. It just comes off as stingy/greedy. Even the potatoes were short on quantity, which makes zero sense! I get trying to save some prep cost by skimping on the clams, but potatoes?? Gimme a break. And same goes for lobster bisque- good enough recipe, but almost zero lobster. And at these prices, the soups need to contain at least an adequate amount of clams/lobster. It's such a problem that the actual score should be a 3.5, but I've given them the boost because 3 stars seems too low. Very simple- cut the crap & add more clams/lobster so you're providing a good/great soup at a fair price. What you're doing right now isn't cutting it. Other reviewers have also noted the lack of clams. Maybe you don't care because it's a tourist trap & people are gonna buy it anyway, I dunno, but I'll get my chowder elsewhere on the island where the recipe is as good or better & is packed with seafood, as...

Walk down the sandy boardwalk of Long Beach Island and you’ll smell it before you see it — a briny steam, thick with promise. Country Kettle Chowda isn’t a restaurant trying to reinvent the wheel; it’s a shack serving what they know, and what they know is soup.

Inside, it’s all no-frills warmth. The counter is scuffed from decades of elbows, and the staff moves with the easy confidence of people who understand their craft. This is a place where you don’t order “soup.” You order chowda, and you damn well mean it.

The New England is a revelation: dense with clams, potatoes cut just the right size, and a creaminess that somehow avoids being cloying. The Manhattan, bright and tomato-slick, tastes like summer fishing trips and late-afternoon beers. If you’re lucky enough to snag a sourdough bread bowl, you’ll find yourself excavating every last spoonful, scraping the walls of that edible vessel like a prospector panning for gold.

There’s no pretense here, no influencer’s backdrop, no laboratory chef trying to justify a résumé. Country Kettle Chowda is about sustenance, about feeding sunburned families, salty locals, and anyone who wanders in looking for the taste of the sea made simple.

If you come to LBI and skip it, you’ve missed the marrow of the place. It’s a small reminder that the best food often doesn’t bother with adjectives — it just shows up, hot, honest, and exactly...

as you walk through the shopping village the aroma of chowdah tickles your nose and entices you as if in a trance. A cartoon who smells a fesh pie left on the window sill, you can't help but fall victim to it's inebriating fragrance. When you finally find this gem in buried deep in the shopping jungle, the doors open to a bouquet of bisque, chowda, and lobster alike. It crashes into your nose like an embrace from a long lost lover in a former life. Something out of a dream as you bring the first spoon full of bisque and oyster crackers to your lips. A flavor so familiar, but you've never had something this intoxicating. Your mind races to make sense of it, but it's impossible. You're hopelessly lost in the bliss of the bread...