Suburban Exploration: Plymouth/Bourne

Gooses (hehe), and Bay Bay Gooses, hanging around the Bournedale herring run.

I don't know how many geese make up a gander, so I use the less-definable "Gooses," which I picked up from a 4 year old.

I was going to chase this turkey up the driveway for a better shot, but "Cranberry County Magazine" isn't an impressive enough publication to avoid being shot by a vigilant homeowner.

Once we got up to the waterfront in Plymouth, our subjects were more willing to stay still. These guys just bobbed a bit.

The benefits of Roof Sailing are that you never get wet, you never get seasick and the sail is more for show than anything else.

Personal Use Lighthouse, off Route 3A

Just in case you thought we were in Duxbury Harbor, straight frontin' on you.... Duxbury was founded in 1637.

I'm so g*ddamned 'Merica, I shot the flag and Plymouth Rock like bang-bang.

Long Beach (in background) seems very small and lightly-populated for something that Snoop Dogg sings about so much. 

Lunch at Mamma Mia, ravioli! I ate so much, it hurt.

The cops got a little strange when I anchored my car to the street with this... OK, maybe I was the strange one.

...or not

The Massachusetts Maritime Academy uses Great Herring Pond for skipper training. They do a lot of slalom sailing on a pond before they let you get your hands on one of the Big Boys.

Iconic Regional Businesses: The South Shore

Be sure to check out our CAPE COD and also our SOUTH COAST versions of this article. Same intro, different businesses.

Life has bounced me from Boston to Quincy to Duxbury to Worcester (back) to Duxbury to Monponsett to Cape Motherlovin' Cod. I've seen them come and go, friend.

One thing that I noticed as I hopped around was that some business chains I got used to in one spot would either not exist in another spot, or some other product in the same field would be dominant in this new region.

I'd also see businesses that started in one spot springing up everywhere. That's always nice to see, especially with something you grew up loving... it sort of affirms your sense of good taste for you.

One other phenomena I'd see is that, while my friends and I might favor one particular local place or another, we'd have a regional default option.

To use an example with a powerful business not born of these parts... we both might want a burger. I like Schmuckburgers over on Main Street. You like Ye Olde Slaughtered Cow on the State Road. However, there's always McDonald's.

Massachusetts is a funny place. We like things a certain way. There is an impressive list of otherwise nationally prosperous franchises who flop in Massachusetts. Pizza Hut, Papa John, Little Caesar and Domino's all struggle in Massachusetts, as locals often prefer their town's House Of Pizza. Locals laugh, especially near the coast, if you ask where the Red Lobster is. You might get punched, especially in Italian neighborhoods, if you ask where The Olive Garden is. IHOP and Krispy Kreme may be the biggest names crossed off of the Dunkin' Donut's hit list.

Today, we shall examine a few businesses which have that sort of regional recognition. Some people explore the world. Some people explore regions of it. If you are a regional tourist, look at this as a sort of Bucket List. You should be familiar with all of these businesses we are about to discuss, You can get your Local card pulled, otherwise.

Someone who never went to the Cape as a kid might not know the Thompson's Clam Bar jingle, while someone from Harwich might think that Peaceful Meadows is a pet cemetery. View these places as a sort of Mendoza Line. Thompson's never expanded regionally, and Peaceful Meadows might be an ounce of Swagger away from being listed down below.

I broke this list up by Barnstable/Plymouth/Bristol County, although it could very easily be Cape Cod/South Shore/South Coast. I had to stretch up to Mansfield to fatten the South Coast category, but it's still Bristol, babe.

Here we go...

Plymouth County

Marylou's Coffee

The mocha-making mini-MILFs in the pink shirts have a strong regional presence on the South Shore coffee market, not an easy job in the state that birthed both Dunkin' Donuts and Honey Dew.

Hanover was the site of the first Marylou's, but they have scattered all over the place from Quincy to Providence. I actually fly out of T.F. Green when I have to travel, so that I can load up on Marylou's before I leave. They have two stores on Cape Cod, three if you count the Sagamore one on the mainland.

You could kick my mother in the stomach, but if you gave me a large Almond Joy with cream and sugar first, I'd try to rationalize it.

Just kidding. I'm an orphan.



Mamma Mia

You're going to get a different answer to Best Pizza South Of Boston from a food critic type like the Phantom Gourmet, and that's correct if your one of those trendy people who like getting Goat Cheese on a pizza. If you're serious about pizza, however... there's only one choice once you get out of the city.

Mamma Mia'!

Mamma Mia has expanded in recent years, and they now range from Hanover to Carver to the Pinehills. The best one of the bunch, as is often the case with great restaurant chains, is in a shack-like building in Kingston.

Founded in 1974 in Kingston by the Viscariello brothers, because Italians. Children of the owners work in the shop making pizza boxes "until they are tall enough to reach the pizza counter."

I'm not the only South Shore kid who used to ask for Mamma Mia as a birthday dinner destination, right up until they invented video games. Mamma Mia's was a godsend for Busing refugees who moved out of the city and still wanted Boston-style pizza.


Persy's Place

Being a breakfast franchise in the hard-drinking Irish Riviera means that you are a sort of Emergency Room for hangover sufferers.

The first Persy's Place was opened in Kingston, about 100 yards as the bird flies from the first Mamma Mia. They opened for business in 1982, and now have 9 restaurants ranging from Kingston to Providence to Centerville.

Much like Mamma Mia's, I think they add towns as the owner's children get experienced enough to run a place solo.

A few people tell me that the Wareham one sucks, but I also had a girlfriend who would get angry if we went for breakfast anywhere but the Kingston Persy's.

If you like baked beans served with your breakfast (you don't get much more Massachusetts than that, save for "getting into a fight at a rotary"), this is the place for you.

Ocean Spray

The first name in cranberries was born in Hanson, in 1930. It was originally three farmers looking to expand their reach by pooling their efforts. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts now and then, as Ocean Spray did $2.2 billion in sales in 2013.

They did this simply by inventing what most people would recognize as cranberry sauce, then inventing cranberry juice, then Cran-Apple, then juice boxes and finally sweetened dried cranberries. If they think of it, invest in it... it's probably going to work.

There are plenty of people in America who have never seen a Dunkin' Donuts, have no idea what the Christmas Tree Shops are and think that Papa Gino is a mobster. These people still most likely give some money to Ocean Spray, usually at Thanksgiving.

They're now based in the Middleboro/Lakeville area.

I actually wrote a shameful amount of this article, while drinking a Cran-Grape, without remembering to include Ocean Spray.


Dunkin' Donuts

DD deserves their own category. They not only rule the region, they scare away almost all competitors. Like we said, they own scalps like Krispy Kreme and IHOP. If they don't rule the Coffee Shop world, I'd like to know who does.

The first Dunkin' opened up in 1950, in Quincy. They now have 31,000 locations in 30 countries. You can get Dunkin' in Russia, China, Oman, Syria, Singapore, Peru... while the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden didn't say whether or not the Al-Qaeda el jefe was holding a Coolatta when they aerated his head, it is possible... there's a Dunkin' Donuts in Karachi, Pakistan. It's not in Abbottabad, but it does deliver.

Dunkin' just opened in California (if you go to business school, you learn that it is natural to expand into Lebanon before California), and they have lines around the block.

The section of Bourne where I live has three Dunkins within one hundred yards of each other, with a half dozen more reachable with a five minute drive..


Papa Gino's

This is a chain that started in East Boston in 1961, founded by Michael and Helen Velario. It was "Piece o' Pizza" until 1968.

Papa Gino's is one of those default chains we spoke of earlier. My girlfriend and I differ on pizza. She likes Greek pizza, which is more popular on the South Coast. I believe that Italians make pizza the best. The one pizza we agree on is Papa Gino's.

If you move to a new town, you love pizza and your local House Of Pizza sucks, you'd better find either a Papa Gino's or a realtor.

Again, Papa Gino's is a Boston chain, but it quickly became the South Shore's baby. This may because Italians tended to move north and west out of Boston when Busing hit, thus giving those towns a better House Of Pizza talent pool. I'm looking at a crowded Locations Near You map right now, and while I may have the numbers fudged a bit, there seem to be as many Papa Gino's on the South Shore as there are in Boston, the North Shore and MetroWest combined.

Pilgrims

Plymouth makes a pretty good dollar milking the Pilgrims.

You can go to Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower II, several historic sites and several museums to get your John Alden on if that's what you're looking to do.

I've said it before, and I'm saying it now. Plymouth's parade and Thanksgiving football game should be nationally televised events.

While Plymouth may be a hoot and a holler when compared to some of her sleepy neighbors like Plympton or Duxbury, it's hardly New Orleans or Los Angeles. Still, almost every sentient person in America knows at least a little bit about it.

You can make some money off of stuff like that.

Iconic Regional Businesses: Cape Cod

Marylou's, although popular on the Cape, is a South Shore brand. Never hurts to lead off with a Lou, however... especially a Sagamore one.

(Check out our SOUTH COAST and our SOUTH SHORE versions of this article. Same intro, different businesses)

Life has bounced me from Boston to Quincy to Duxbury to Worcester (back) to Duxbury to Monponsett to Cape Motherlovin' Cod. I've seen them come and go, friend.

One thing that I noticed as I hopped around was that some business chains I got used to in one spot would either not exist in another spot, or some other product in the same field would be dominant in this new region.

I'd also see businesses that started in one spot springing up everywhere. That's always nice to see, especially with something you grew up loving... it sort of affirms your sense of good taste for you.

One other phenomena I'd see is that, while my friends and I might favor one particular local place or another, we'd have a regional default option. To use an example with a powerful business not born of these parts... we both might want a burger. I like Schmuckburgers over on Main Street. You like Ye Olde Slaughtered Cow on the State Road. However, there's always McDonald's.

Massachusetts is a funny place. We like things a certain way. There is an impressive list of otherwise nationally prosperous franchises who flop in Massachusetts. Pizza Hut, Papa John, Little Caesar and Domino's all struggle in Massachusetts, as locals often prefer their town's House Of Pizza. Locals laugh, especially near the coast, if you ask where the Red Lobster is. You might get punched, especially in Italian neighborhoods, if you ask where The Olive Garden is. IHOP and Krispy Kreme may be the biggest names crossed off of the Dunkin' Donut's hit list.

Today, we shall examine a few businesses which have that sort of regional recognition. Some people explore the world. Some people explore regions of it. If you are a regional tourist, look at this as a sort of Bucket List. You should be familiar with all of these businesses we are about to discuss, You can get your Local card pulled, otherwise.

Someone who never went to the Cape as a kid might not know the Thompson's Clam Bar jingle, while someone from Harwich might think that Peaceful Meadows is a pet cemetery. View these places as a sort of Mendoza Line. Thompson's never expanded regionally, and Peaceful Meadows might be an ounce of Swagger away from being listed down below.

I broke this list up by Barnstable/Plymouth/Bristol County, although it could very easily be Cape Cod/South Shore/South Coast. I had to stretch up to Mansfield to fatten the South Coast category, but it's still Bristol, babe.

Here we go...

Barnstable County

Cape Cod Potato Chips

Cape Cod Potato Chips were first made in Hyannis, in 1980. The guy who founded CCPC had a $3,000 potato slicer, and had taken a one-week class in potato chip-making.

They use a kettle (as opposed to a conveyor belt like other chip-makers) to produce a crunchier potato chip. They were very unique in the industry when they appeared, and the business blew up like the Maine. Kettle chips are very prominent now, much because of CCPC.

They were bought out by Anheuser-Busch in 1985. They bought it back in 1996, before selling it again to Lance Inc. They do $30 million annually in sales. At one point, they were selling 80,000 bags of chips a day.

You might break off a tooth if you get one of the bottom-of-the-kettle chips, but there are worse reasons to go to a dentist.

Cape Cod Baseball League

Cape Cod doesn't have a monopoly on minor-league baseball. You can drive to Pawtucket and see higher-level minor league ball. Maine has the Sea Dogs, which is a cooler name than those used by any other local team. Brockton has or had the Rock Lobsters, and Plymouth has a team.

However, to paraphrase Ric Flair... if your team isn't in the Cape Cod Baseball League, you're playing catch-up ball, no matter what you tell yourself.

You're also sort of shorting yourself if you're on Cape Cod and not checking out a CCBBL game now and then. They've been in business since 1885, and are as integral to a proper Cape Cod vacation as swimming and lobster rolls.

They have ten teams running from Wareham to Harwich, and the season starts on June 10th.


Four Seas Ice Cream

Four Seas (not 4 Cs, that's Cape Cod Community College) Ice Cream has been in business since 1934. Cape Cod has always had a sweet tooth, even during the Great Depression.

Four Seas ranks highly on a national recognition scale, as many tourists have made sometimes daily trips to Four Seas a part of their vacation routine.

They were a seasonal business for some time, but they began selling ice cream to various shops and restaurants, and demand soon brought about year-round work.

Cape Cod Creamery also merits a mention in this field... but when they were naming ice cream after Cape Cod towns, they gave us Bourne Butter Pecan. I can't forgive that kind of slight.

Try to not eat Chappaquidick Chocolate Chip when driving, especially with people from Hyannis Port.

Christmas Tree Shops

If you want to see a man's facial expression collapse, get one trapped in a car and bring up the prospect of a "quick" stop at the Christmas Tree Shops. Dude may throw himself out onto the pavement at 65 mph.

However, mention it to your girlfriends when you all just cashed paychecks, and you have a pretty good night out planned... as long as said plan involves a stop somewhere for vineyard-based fortification.

Girls still are the primary arbiter of where the spending money gets spent, which is why the Christmas Tree Shops expanded all over the region, and why there is 24/7/365 sports programming on the telly back home where the husband hopefully got to stay.

The CTS was founded in Yarmouth in the 1950s, and- like Four Seas- was a seasonal business for a while. That all changed, and, well... Don't You just Lovvvve A Bargain?

You can bring your dog into the CTS, as long as it's one of those wussy purse dogs. Don't show up with your Rotty, and an eager Border Collie could do thousands of dollars worth of damage in there.


Barnstable Municipal Airport

They got a TV show out of Cape Air, which trumps almost everyone (see Captain Phillips, below) on this list.

Founded in 1928, it spent World War II being used as a base for anti-submarine planes. It is now Cape Cod's major airport.

You can land a 727 there, something I was not aware of.

Cape Air has a 91 plane fleet, including 83 Cessnas.

If you want to enjoy island life on Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod without the getting-on-a-boat stuff, you're going to have to visit the Barnstable Municipal Airport.

Business picks up in the summer, as is often the case with Cape Cod businesses. Be sure to file a flight plan and stuff.


Massachusetts Maritime Academy

The Massachusetts Maritime Academy is only one small college, but it has a ripple effect throughout the globe. They touch a lot of businesses, as Harvard does. However, MMA guys get their hands a lot dirtier than (most) Harvard guys do.

Founded in 1891, MMA cranks out Merchant Marines. They then spread out to an untold number of businesses, shipping their products across the seas.

In that sense, the single-entity MMA is actually like a McDonald's or something similar. It's just that, instead of franchising out hamburger stands, they franchise out their developed talent to anyone

Speaking of McDonald's... unless all of those Chinese-factory-made Happy Meal toys float over to America on tsunami waves, there's a good chance that you can't even run a McDonald's without a few MMA grads.

Grads include Captain Phillips of Captain Phillips fame amd Emery Rice, who is credited with firing the first American shot of World War I. Rice also picked up a Navy Cross for ramming and sinking a U-Boat.

We'll buy him a pie from Monument Beach House Of Pizza for that!

Iconic Regional Businesses: South Coast

Be sure to check our SOUTH SHORE and CAPE COD versions of this article. Same into, different businesses.

Life has bounced me from Boston to Quincy to Duxbury to Worcester (back) to Duxbury to Monponsett to Cape Motherlovin' Cod. I've seen them come and go, friend.

One thing that I noticed as I hopped around was that some business chains I got used to in one spot would either not exist in another spot, or some other product in the same field would be dominant in this new region.

I'd also see businesses that started in one spot springing up everywhere. That's always nice to see, especially with something you grew up loving... it sort of affirms your sense of good taste for you.

One other phenomena I'd see is that, while my friends and I might favor one particular local place or another, we'd have a regional default option. To use an example with a powerful business not born of these parts... we both might want a burger. I like Schmuckburgers over on Main Street. You like Ye Olde Slaughtered Cow on the State Road. However, there's always McDonald's.

Massachusetts is a funny place. We like things a certain way. There is an impressive list of otherwise nationally prosperous franchises who flop in Massachusetts. Pizza Hut, Papa John, Little Caesar and Domino's all struggle in Massachusetts, as locals often prefer their town's House Of Pizza. Locals laugh, especially near the coast, if you ask where the Red Lobster is. You might get punched, especially in Italian neighborhoods, if you ask where The Olive Garden is. IHOP and Krispy Kreme may be the biggest names crossed off of the Dunkin' Donut's hit list.

Today, we shall examine a few businesses which have that sort of regional recognition. Some people explore the world. Some people explore regions of it. If you are a regional tourist, look at this as a part of Bucket List. You should be familiar with all of these businesses we are about to discuss, You can get your Local card pulled, otherwise.

Someone who never went to the Cape as a kid might not know the Thompson's Clam Bar jingle, while someone from Harwich might think that Peaceful Meadows is a pet cemetery. View these places as a sort of Mendoza Line. Thompson's never expanded regionally, and Peaceful Meadows might be an ounce of Swagger away from being listed down below.

I broke this list up by Barnstable/Plymouth/Bristol County, although it could very easily be Cape Cod/South Shore/South Coast. I had to stretch up to Mansfield to fatten the South Coast category, but it's still Bristol, babe.

Here we go...


Bristol County

Honey Dew Donuts

Honey Dew and Marylou's make a tough dollar fighting for coffee sales (Honey Dew doubles down by going after the donut market, too) on the home turf of Double D. Honey Dew has fought hard enough to scatter 165 locations around Massachusetts.

They started in Mansfield, are now based in Plainville, and they own interior Bristol County. They have done a very good job of establishing themselves in Boston. Dunkin' kicks the spit out of them, but the people who like Honey Dew better are a loyal and dedicated bunch.

You can survive quite nicely like that, especially if you make a decidedly different donut than Double D does.

No one said it was easy, but Honey Dew is faring well enough for themselves. I want to see them cross paths with Marylou's somewhere, just to see who wins.


Gaspar's

Gaspar's is the largest manufacturer of Portuguese smoked sausage in the USA. Most of this is via their sales of Linguica and Chourico.

They have been whipping out the sausage for 4 generations from their Meat Mecca on Faunce Corner Road in North Dartmouth. They started in 1923.

Linguica is smoked sausage, made from smoke-cured pork, garlic and paprika. It is the go-to meal for any Portuguese person, but white people can shovel it down, too.

In Brazil, it is served with rice and beans. In Massachusetts, it is generally sliced open and grilled.

IMHO, it's the best pizza topping.


Minerva

You could very easily scratch out "Minerva" from the heading, fill in "Rose & Vickie's" or "Venus Cafe" and pretty much tell the exact same story. Someone of Southern European heritage starts a pizza joint, has some luck, wins over the locals and expands somewhere in the region.

Minerva started out in 1969, in Wareham. They carved out a nice niche serving Wareham, Onset and Marion. They expanded west, into Fall River, and east, into the Cedarville section of Plymouth.

Rose & Vickie's has Manomet, Cedarville and Marion. The Venus chain, which numbers all of their franchises other than the original Venus Cafe in Whitman, also has the Venus II in Brant Rock and Venus III in Hanson.

I have friends who eat 7 meals a week easy out of the Cedarville Minerva. They eat enough that their dog, Joe Biden, has grown accustomed to it. He eats enough of it that we re-named him "Joey Takeout."

"Joey Takeout" sort of morphed into a joke among my friends and I, and we work Joey Takeout references into our phone conversations... always with ominous overtones that are funny if you know that Joey Takeout is a ragamuffin Shih-Tzu dog and not the dangerous Sicilian mobster who we make him out to be.

Granted, this is a lot funnier if you have reason to believe that the police are tapping your phone. Somewhere in Plymouth, there is a police file on a non-existent gangster with transcripts like "Joey Takeout gets a bite out of everything coming into the White Cliffs."

Titleist

Golfers know all about Titleist golf balls, which enjoy a fine reputation among golfers and have been spoken for by many of the great ones.

Titleist got started just like every other business did, even yours... a MIT grad missed a putt, blamed the ball, had his dentist friend X-Ray the ball, and then transitioned a rubber-making company into golf ball production factory. They did $1 billion in sales in 2003.

Titleist, originally the Acushnet Process Company or something like that, is now based in Fairhaven. Staying true to their Original Recipe, every single ball made by Titleist is X-Rayed to ensure that the center is balanced.

The cursive "Titleist" logo scrawl on the golf balls belongs to Helen Robinson. She was a secretary for the Acushnet Company who was known for her exquisite penmanship. They gave her a pen and a scrap of paper, she hit it in one take, and her writing has appeared on every single product that the company has produced ever since. Her writing has appeared on more balls than Jasmine St. Claire.

I think that this is Helen Robinson. She looks like she was about to get taken off to see the Wizard.

Trucchi's

William Trucchi opened a supermarket off Tremont Street in Taunton with $500 that he borrowed from his parents. The Great Depression went down shortly after, but Italian grocers don't get Depressed! Especially in Taunton!

They have six stores scattered from Taunton to West Bridgewater to Abington to Middleboro to New Beffuh.

This is no mean feat in this age where a Super Wally opens down the road and every business nearby dies.

Angelo's, A&P, Shaw's, Star, Purity Supreme... supermarkets come and go, change names, and all sorts of stuff. Trucchi's keeps trucking along.


Fishing

The port of New Bedford is America's leading fishing port, with landings valued at $369 million. They have 30 wholesale processing plants, and employ 4400 people.

New Bedford lands 117 million pounds of product, including 50 million pounds of scallops. During the height of the season, 500,000 pounds of scallops move through New Beddy in a day.

Gloucester has the Gorton's Fisherman and the George Clooney movie, but New Bedford has the money. The port, and the economic activity associated with it, haul in $1 billion a year.

New Bedford has whatever you need to get fishing done. New Beige has chandlers, ice houses, welders, net designers, boatyards, gear builders, engineers, maritime attorneys, insurance brokers, settlement houses and every other conceivable shoreside marine support business.

They also have pretty girls hanging around the docks while we were shooting.

Milk Truck Crash On Herring Pond Road

Expect delays in Southern Plymouth as a Garelick Farms milk truck has crashed into the forest off of Herring Pond Road.

Police are posted up on either side of it. Traffic is slowed, but this is a relatively isolated road. It may take them a while to get it out of there.

There could be some power line difficulties, so if your power is out in Cedarville, that's why.

If you're expecting your milk delay in Bourne or Wareham from Garelick's, you may be waiting a while.

Be careful with the police. This cop below was losing his mind. I saw him throw a punch at a truck driving by him, while screaming "MFer!!!" at it. I think he would have done a foot pursuit if he wasn't the waving-cars-past-him cop at a dangerous accident site.

I'm sure the target of his rage deserved it. I could never be a cop. I'd shoot someone. It's why I don't teach anymore... I have issues with patience.

Anyhow, that's why I have rotten photo angles and so forth... he was grilling me as I drove by. I like the cops to be pleased with me, so I parked the car somewhere safe, walked back and took the horrible pics you see here.

Pizza Wars: Monument Beach Pizza

Bourne Pizza Wars: Monument Beach Pizza

Representing the M-O-B 

(Editor's Note: Monument Beach Pizza is under new management, although he strove to keep things basically the same. I don't know if he looks like slim Kevin Smith or not.)

This column is forever in search of the best pizza on Bourne. It is a never-ending quest, as Bourne covers a lot of ground, and different regions of the town swear by different pizza shops. The Bourne Pizza wars are fought on battlefields both on the map and in the tummy. The battle you read of today was fought at Monument Beach Pizza.

We feel that the local House Of Pizza restaurants are reflective of the community. Leave the sushi joints to the inland yuppies. People like that get nothing but a beating in Monument Beach.

Man must eat, and more = merrier. Go down to Hyannis if you want a piece of tofu on a lettuce leaf served by some emo college kid. Go down to the Em Oh Be if you have a rumbly in your tumbly, and order your food from some local who looks like a more-in-shape Kevin Smith.

"Kevin" gets props early in the article, because he scored some points for his employer early in the meal. There were a couple of autistic kids in the MOB when we were there, and he happily allowed one of them to whale away on the cash register a bit. It made the kid happy, even though Kevin's register may have had $387284776013666.99 in sales that day.

This column has long felt that every local kid should work a summer pumping gas, hustling pizzas around, or anything that gets you in touch with a broad cross-section of the public. Kevin passed his test that day, and that was even before he had to process two nosy reporters snooping around and bothering the other customers.

Some restaurant critics prefer to keep a low profile, and stealthily investigate an eatery Phantom Gourmet style. Not me. I like places to be hustling when I dine there, and few things get a crew busting it more than a reporter snooping around.... especially if the owner happens to be managing that shift. I walk in snapping pictures, asking questions, interrogating the other customers, openly discussing the menu, checklisting the kitchen, and whatever else I have to do. I like people to get to steppin'.

MOB (all of the employees and regular customers refer to the place as "the M-O-B" or "Mo Beach Pizza") has been under her current ownership for about 4 years. At various times in the building's history, it was a post office, a general store, a fish market, and a few other things which I'd have in this article if I wrote it the day I went there. The owner insisted upon keeping the building the way it was, a wise decision IMHO.

It looks very much like an old-time general store when you walk in, which is always good for some points with me. You don't want a pizza place where the guy spends too much time decorating. You want a place that looks like a first generation Italian-American allowed his wife in for one half hour only to tidy up and direct the painters.

The crowd there was us, a crew of mechanics, and some COMCAST worker guy.

There are some obligatory old-tyme photos of the building from back in the day, and I have the impression that President Cleveland probably did some shopping in whatever store was in that building back when Bourne was the site of the summer White House.

The menu is of the New England Sub Shop mode, and I think that 80% of the people who go into a sub shop already know what they want anyhow. They did have some unique choices among the specialty pizzas- we saw "Salt Works," which was bacon and dill pickles, and something called the Ronk Steak Pizza that featured au jus sauce.

In the end, we got a Linguica Pizza and Onion Rings. Linguica is an important pizza topping, kinda distinct to Swamp Yankee Massachusetts... a sort of Portuguese Pepperoni. It is popular in the Northeast, on the West Coast (linguica pizza is called Portuguese Sausage Pizza once you go where there are no Portuguese), Hawaii and Japan. Hawaiians call it Portagee Sausage, and McDonald's serves it with their breakfast menu there. 

Onion rings are more world wide, but we tend to get them a lot because my boyfriend is all into them. No one knows who invented the onion ring (recipes in print for fried onions go back at least to 1802), but A+W popularized them nationwide in the 1960s. They enjoy particular popularity in a swath of New England that runs from Maine through Rhode Island. 

That's a fairly solid New England supper we ordered. I tend to stay away from seafood at sub shops, as I go elsewhere for seafood.

There's a fat slice.

Mo Beach Pizza uses diced linguica, and while I'm not into culinary CSI, I'm pretty sure that they prepared the linguica in-house. While your reporters are from Fairhaven and Duxbury and thus have some bias, we think linguica is probably the best topping.

Linguica as a pizza topping runs the gamut from a sort of ground Alpo-looking topping you see on pizzas sold in places with no Brazilian neighborhoods, to the Mo Beach diced version above, to a strange looking disc you see in places that order it in bulk, to long canoe slices that I actually like best.

This pizza was about 14" (we forgot the tape measure, but I have developed a pretty good eye for these things by now), Greek (pan) style. I'm told that the New York-style style thinner crust pizza goes about 16". You need to use a knife and fork to eat it, always a positive in mine eyes.

I'm only 5'3" or so, but my boyfriend is over 240 pounds. We finished half of it, although we had appetizers first. We had further reporting to do that day, and couldn't afford to have the lay-on-the-floor-after feast that we may have indulged in at home. It is also important to save pizza so we can report on how it tastes cold. We're that hardcore.

They had very good onion rings, which is important in our judging. There were only about 10 or so (my co-author sneeched one before I could snap a picture... I had to arm myself with a fork and directly threaten him in order to get the whole-pizza shot we're ending the article with), but each of them were thick and battered with love... which looks awful in print, but pay that no mind.

These are the best onion rings in town, although we still have a dozen pizza places to try before I actually hand out a trophy.

Our fellow diners worked the menu pretty well for us, although we didn't put the camera on them or anything. Ideally, we let others eat in peace during the Pizza Wars.

The cable guy had chicken wings, and he was a regular to the point where the waitress just walked up to him and said "Chicken wings?" He looked like a very happy man, as he had a plate full of clucker wings working. I almost went over to mooch one off him, (I would have traded 2 onion rings for one), but we couldn't get ourselves kicked out or anything.

The greasers had a variety of subs, and they also appeared to be pleased with their choices. You can always tell when the food is good if a group of men becomes silent shortly after the food is served, especially if the TV has ESPN on. Usually at least one guy is running his lip, but these guys were mowing silently

We were there at an off hour, but they had a pretty good run of business. The delivery girl (more points) had to go out at least once during our time there, and we weren't there that long. 

Here are a few other things I noticed during my time at Mo Beach Pizza:

- Considerable time, science, and expense went into some mundane elements of the store. You'll notice, in the pictures of the slices, that they use technology to keep the crust from getting too greasy.  This involves a sort of ribbed (sorry, the only other descriptive term that comes to mind is "bumpy") pizza tray and even a ribbed pad in the delivery boxes. They elevate the pizza some, keeping the grease from seeping into the crust while concurrently leeching grease from the bottom of the crust.

Whoever invented that should probably own Obama's Nobel prize, no offense meant to the C-I-C.

- "Mo" and "Monumental" work their way into the menu language now and then.

- The onion rings had their own sauce, known as Boom Boom Sauce.

- Boom Boom Sauce is actually a brand made by Ken's (the salad dressing people), and it is a spicier version of the usual New England onion ring sauce. The owner told me that it has sort of branched out into other menu items, as customers frequently request it on chicken, steak, and, in one case, pastrami.

- I won't out myself or my boyfriend, but one of us liked the pizza better when it was cold.

- The owner figured out we were media fairly quickly, and he let himself be questioned willingly enough. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and it is fun to get a shop owner speaking at length about his craft.

- Mo Beach's main competitors are Prime Time Pizza "up on the highway," and Graziella's, which is over on Barlow's Landing. MBP does have a nice section of the village to themselves, though. They are about 50 feet off of Shore Road.

- Speaking of addresses, Mo Beach Pizza is located at 18 Beach Street, in Monument Beach, which is one of the Bourne villages. Hit them up on the phone at 508-759-3210. They also have a Facebook page.