Institutionalized clam bakes

"People all over New England, of course, have always baked clams on the beach -- built a fire of hardwood over stones that will retain the heat, then piled on four or five inches of rockweed that pops and sizzles as it steams -- but the custom seems particularly institutionalized around Providence .... Around Narragansett Bay...the tradition of clam bakes seems to have outlasted the clams.''

-- Calvin Trillin in his 1994 book The Tummy Trilogy