Michael Symon’s Family-Friendly Clambake
“Food is all about interaction, so I always try to do something that can be served family-style,” says James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef Symon, who is a regular on Iron Chef America and is the chef/owner of several Cleveland restaurants. His signature clambake is dumped right on a picnic table covered with a disposable tablecloth, along with plastic lobster bibs, rolls of paper towels and bowls filled with lemon water. “People go at it with their hands,” he says. “This is a food you want to eat when you’re wearing shorts and flip flops and you don’t care if some shrimp juice falls on your shirt. When you’re done, you can just pull up all four corners of the tablecloth and throw it out.” The backdrop is Symon’s soundtrack, which ranges from Snoop Dogg’s “Gin & Juice” to Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody” and the Lumineers’ “Flowers in Your Hair.”