Minorcan Clam Chowder

Minorcan clam chowder is a tomato-based clam chowder of north Florida, descended from the cooking of Mahón-Menorca settlers who arrived in St. Augustine and New Smyrna Beach in the late 1700s. It looks and tastes more like a Mediterranean fish soup than the cream-based New England version: a clear, deeply savory broth built on a sofrito of onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic, to which chopped tomatoes, clam juice, potatoes, and the chopped clams themselves are added. A final splash of dry sherry gives the bowl a slightly briny, nutty finish that you do not get from the cream- or flour-thickened American chowders.

What sets the Minorcan version apart is the seasoning: datil peppers, a small yellow-orange Capsicum grown almost exclusively in the St. Augustine area, lend a sharp, fruity heat that wakes up the broth without overwhelming the sweetness of the clams. When datils are out of season, cooks use a combination of sweet banana pepper and a touch of hot sauce as a stand-in, but purists insist on the real thing. The clam is most often a chopped local Atlantic quahog, sometimes supplemented with a few oysters or a piece of finfish for depth.

Minorcan clam chowder is served at almost every seafood restaurant in St. Augustine and the surrounding coast, where it is ladled into a mug or a deep bowl and paired with an oyster cracker, a slice of Cuban bread, or a hush puppy. You can find it at the Columbia Restaurant's original St. Augustine location, at the Oyster Bay Cafe in the historic district, at Cap's on the Water, and at long-running fish camps along the Matanzas and Tolomato rivers. It is also poured into a bread bowl at festivals in the fall, when datil peppers are being harvested.