This is the Connecticut clam shack you probably dream of: A blue-roofed frame structure surrounded by picnic tables, with a menu that favors locally sourced seafood but also features burgers and foot-long hot dogs. The clam strips are crisp, freshly-fried, and delivered in abundance, served with lemon wedges along with good, crinkle-cut fries. The lobster roll is another must. The place closes for the winter sometime in December until early spring, so check Instagram for exact dates.

Sure you can find a good clam pie at any of New Haven’s famous pizzerias — Frank Pepe’s white clam pie is well-lauded — but Modern serves a pizza inspired by clams casino. It features minced bivalves on a charred, coal-oven crust, with green peppers and bacon; a winning combination of smoke and brine if ever there was one. The place was founded in 1934, so maybe it’s not so modern after all.

From raw clams to chowders to pastas and pizzas, the clam-centric menu has been long established, which is why finding a new and novel clam dish is such a delight. That was my reaction when I first tasted garlic clam bread at the Queensboro, a neighborhood bistro in Jackson Heights. This soft flatbread doesn’t feel like a pizza, and the garlic flavor is way forward, though melds with the bite of clams and the pucker of lemon.

For 24 years, Main Street Imperial has been regaling customers with home-style Taiwanese food, the specialties of which overlap with mainland Chinese food, but with some startling differences. One lies in the use of basil, a flavoring more often associated with Southeast Asian food. Clams with basil is a dish pungent with the licorice-y herb, and the mild bitterness of the clams forms the perfect flavor complement.

This fundamentally great Spanish restaurant, an updated facsimile of an actual restaurant in Spain, always has shellfish on its shifting menu. Keep a weather-eye out for razor clams, which are only seasonally available, but in the their absence don’t miss the fideos — angel hair noodles browned to be crisp on top resting on, and mainly concealing, a bed of a dozen or so in-shell Manila clams.

For the true clam lover, few places are as good as the West Village restaurant known only as the Clam. The menu usually flaunts several clam recipes, including, at various times over the years, raw littlenecks on the half shell, clam chowder, spaghetti with red clam sauce, clam pizza, clams in chowder sauce, and clams stuffed with pancetta. Likewise, there’s a near-legendary clam dip, served with potato chips made in-house.

You can really steam clams in just about any liquid, and beer or wine are popular choices. But at East Village mainstay Beron Beron, which replaced Sapporo East (one of the neighborhood’s first Japanese restaurants) in 2014, the cherrystones are steamed in sake, which adds a wonderful musky flavor to the bivalves.

In southern Italy, and now in Italian-American cuisine, few dishes are as prized as clams oreganata — delicate littlenecks heaped with breadcrumbs flavored with oregano and garlic. The clams are sometimes minced for easier eating before returning to the shell, so make sure there’s plenty of bread to sop up the juices, which are, in many ways, the best part of the dish.

Long Island, especially along the south shore, is littered with fabled restaurants specializing in clams. Some of these places are seasonal, but others are year-round. Founded in 1939, Bigelow’s is one of the latter, serving lots of clam specialties in the New England-style, including full-belly fried clams. The Ipswich softshells are cooked to a golden brown perfection, offered with coleslaw and lemon wedges.

You might as well be in Maine the moment you step into Nick’s Lobster House, near the terminus of Flatbush Avenue on Mill Basin, with views of houses on stilts across the water from the outdoor deck. The New England clam chowder is damn near-perfect — not too thick or thin — and plenty of minced chowder clams fight with potato cubes in the roiling, off-white expanse.

Right by the Dongan Hills station on the Staten Island Railway, Lee’s Tavern was founded in 1940 and is a cozy, wood-lined refuge. It’s also the principal proponent of the borough’s bar pie style, with pizzas that come in two sizes, featuring a crust firm enough that you can hold a slice with one hand while drinking a beer with the other. Available in red or white, the clam pie is perhaps the best at using that shellfish in the borough, though Denino’s gives it a run for its money.

Standing at the foot of the bridge that leads to Sandy Hook and the length of the Jersey shore beyond, Bahrs is a restaurant and marina, with a less formal dockside eatery called Moby’s that’s open during the season (which ends sometime in October). Both restaurants offer steamers — softshell clams steamed in their shells (and, in this case, in a net), presented with clam broth and drawn butter for your dipping pleasure. The taste is sweet, chewy, and ultra-briny.