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By Root 853 0

While the chefs regularly scrape debris into the grill’s front gutter, their touch is light enough that the flavors of bacon, ham, sausage, and hash linger, ready to be sucked into heaps of shredded potatoes piled on the hot surface. A broad cake of three or four servings is flattened and remains untouched long enough for the underside to turn gold, then the still-soft top is crowned with a scoop of butter. As the butter melts, the potatoes are flipped and worried so that by the time they are plated, they have become mostly crunchy, but with enough tender white tips to sop up at least two sunnyside yolks.

Adjacent to the Laurel Service Station, the Laurel Diner opens every day at 5:30, and by midmorning, sections of Connecticut’s daily papers are strewn almost everywhere, providing easy-reach reading no matter where you sit. The menu is written daily in multicolored marking pens directly on the diner’s white wall. If you are hungry and also need an oil change, call ahead to the service station (where the pumps open at seven and the garage at nine) and make an appointment. Your vehicle can be in and out in thirty minutes, which is about as long as it takes to order and enjoy breakfast next door. The service station number is 203–264–9100.

Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale Restaurant

1301 Boston Post Rd. (Route 1)

203–245–7289

Madison, CT

LD | $$

Also at 86 Boston Post Road (Route 1), Westbrook, CT (860–669–0767), and 138 Granite St., Westerly, RI (401–348–9941)

Lenny & Joe’s opened as a roadside fried-clam stand in 1979. It has since become three restaurants with vast seafood menus that range from all-you-can-eat Wednesday fish fries (winter months) to whole lobster dinners (summertime) and include virtually every kind of fried seafood known to the human race.

Whole-bellied fried clams are big and succulent with golden crusts. We also love the fried shrimp and scallops, even simple fried fish. All fried items are available in an ample regular-size configuration as well as a “super” plate with double the amount of fish. This is one restaurant where the undecided customer who craves the crunch of fresh-fried seafood will be happy ordering a variety platter with some of everything. It is a gargantuan meal, including crinkle-cut French fries and a little cup of sweet coleslaw. The only other necessary item would be an order of fried onions; Lenny & Joe’s are wicked good!

Lobster fanatics know Lenny & Joe’s as a reliable source for a hot lobster roll, meaning chunks and shreds of lobster meat drenched in butter and heaped into a butter-toasted long roll. This is pure bliss, with none of the whole-lobster hassle of shell cracking and meat extraction. In season, the kitchen also offers a soft-shell crab roll that is almost as luscious.

Lenny’s

205 S. Montowese St.

203–488–1500

Branford, CT

LD | $$

A fixture of the Indian Neck section of Branford’s coast well known to local cognoscenti, this excellent restaurant is a neighborhood place with a menu that ranges from hamburgers and hot dogs to full shore dinners. The latter includes chowder (either creamy New England–style or clear-broth shoreline-style), a couple of cherrystone clams on the shell, a lobster, a heap of steamers, sweet corn, and a thick slice of watermelon for dessert.

Good as both kinds of chowder are, one should never begin a meal at Lenny’s without zuppa d’clams: six steamed-open cherrystones in a bowl of briny, lemon-laced broth, with a half-loaf of bread on the side for dunking. Delicious! Many of Lenny’s best meals are fried: whole-belly clams, succulent oysters, scallops, fish ’n’ chips, and huge butterflied shrimp. Crunch-crusted and clean-flavored, these are consummate fried seafood, and proof that a crisp, clean crust can be the ideal complement to seafood’s natural sweetness.

Throughout the summer, strawberry shortcake is available for dessert. It is the true Yankee version, made from a sideways-split, unsweetened biscuit layered with sliced berries in a thin sugar syrup, and a mountain of whipped cream. “I make it myself,” our waitress