PROVINCETOWN — In the mid-1970s, Anthony Bourdain and I both found ourselves in Provincetown for the summer. I believe it’s safe to say we had very different experiences. I was in diapers, holding on to my parents’ hands as I tried to stay upright in the gentle surf. He was a dishwasher at the rough-and-ready Flagship restaurant, now defunct, inhaling kitchen culture and other intoxicating substances under the tutelage of P-town’s pirate-cooks.
The new movie “Tony,” opening in area theaters Aug. 14, explores this formative period in the life of the chef, writer, and TV host. Actor Dominic Sessa (“The Holdovers”) portrays him as a sulky, slouchy young man who aspires to literary greatness but mainly just wants to get with the girl he’s followed here.
“Provincetown was (and is) essentially a small Portuguese fishing village all the way out on the fish-hooked tip of the Cape. During the summer months, however, it became Times Square/Christopher Street-by-the-Sea,” he wrote in “Kitchen Confidential,” the memoir that helped make him famous nearly 20 years before his death by suicide. “This was the ’70s, remember, so factor that in when you conjure up the image of a once quaint New England port town, clogged with tourists, daytrippers, hippies, drifters, lobster poachers, slutty chicks, dopers, refugees from Key West, and thousands upon thousands of energetically cruising gay men.”
I’d like to think Bourdain and I crossed paths on the dunes then, or that I gummed food from a plate he washed. More likely, I experienced something closer to his Provincetown when, years later, I too followed friends here, crashing at their crummy apartment. They worked aimless retail jobs — a candy shop, a jewelry store — that allowed them to spend the summer with fellow queers and artists, carousing and beaching and getting on one another’s nerves. Today, they would be too busy competing for prestigious summer fellowships, and they wouldn’t be able to afford the rent anyway.
But under the surface, P-town remains P-town, weird and wonderful. And it’s not hard to recapture the flavor — literally and figuratively — of the place where Bourdain began to find his place in the world.
The closest you can get to the Flagship, referred to as the Dreadnaught in “Kitchen Confidential” and now a private residence, is by creeping real estate listings. (The old bar, made from a fishing dory, still appears to be intact. On the other side of town, Liz’s Cafe, Anybody’s Bar has its own dory bar, if you want to relive the experience.)
But across the street is Ciro & Sal’s. In Bourdain’s day, it was just Ciro’s; he called it Mario’s in writing and described its cooks with reverence. No need to map the place; just follow the waft of garlic down an alley paved with crushed white shells. Cofounder Ciriaco “Ciro” Cozzi eventually also bought the Flagship, where Bourdain then tried out for a job working the broiler, inspiring one of the best cooking scenes in “Tony.” Let’s just say it didn’t go well. What it did do was light a fire under the aspiring cook to go to the Culinary Institute of America, to be as good as the kitchen crew at Ciro’s.
The restaurant today is owned by Larry Luster, who started working there in 1967. It was and is particularly known for veal, butchered in house and pounded into cutlets in the kitchen. It becomes vitello scaloppine al marsala, vitello piccato, vitello parmigiana. It’s served as a chop with risotto and spinach. Go perfectly old-school with vitello Milanese, the crisp breaded cutlet served with a side of buttered pasta. It’s just what you want in this dining room with its brick nooks, slate floors, white tablecloths, and raffia-wrapped Chianti bottles hanging from old wood ceiling beams. (For brunch, head outside to the lovely garden for a chicken cutlet sandwich with spicy vodka sauce, burrata, and basil on house-made focaccia.)
“Tony” cruises Commercial Street, as any good visitor will, showcasing locations including The Governor Bradford and the Lobster Pot. Right next door to that iconic seafood restaurant with its neon lobster sign is the Old Colony Tap, a dive bar for all comers and the setting for another memorable scene in “Tony.”
Spiritus Pizza, where “the girl” of the movie (Nancy, who in real life was already Bourdain’s girlfriend and would become his wife) works, slings slices and pies until an hour after the bars close. The outdoor patio offers a shady afternoon oasis, but it’s between the hours of 1 and 2 a.m. when the pizza tastes best. Founder John Yingling, a Bourdain consort from back in the day, used to let him sleep on top of the walk-in there.
“I cannot tell you how frequently I dream about Spiritus Pizza,” Bourdain tells Yingling in a “Parts Unknown” episode that pays a visit to Provincetown.
Another local icon is the Provincetown Portuguese Bakery, this year marking its 90th anniversary. It always draws a crowd for its sweet bread, Portuguese pastries, linguiça-and-egg breakfast sandwiches, and kale and linguiça soup. The must-order is a malassada, doughnut-adjacent fried dough, piping hot with craggy surfaces dusted in sugar. Watch it being made in the bakery window. Pasteis de nata are tiny, flaky tarts filled with warm, wobbly egg custard. The pastries are good here in the way only fast-moving, fresh-made pastries can be.
At the Portuguese Bakery, along with other spots in town, you can pick up a copy of Howard Mitcham’s classic “Provincetown Seafood Cookbook,” first printed around the time Bourdain landed in P-town. (He wrote the introduction for a new edition, reissued shortly after he died.) A friend gave Bourdain a copy the day he started working as a cook. Within it are recipes for many of the dishes he ate on the Cape, including a squid stew featured prominently in “Tony.” Visitors tend to think of P-town as a summer playground, but Portuguese culture and the fishing industry are its heart and backbone; Bourdain never forgot it, and he didn’t let his readers and viewers, either.
“I should recall for you the delights of Portuguese squid stew, of Wellfleet oysters on the halfshell, New England clam chowder, of greasy, wonderful, fire-red chorizo sausages, kale soup, and a night when the striped bass jumped right out of the water and onto Cape Cod’s dinner tables,” he wrote in “Kitchen Confidential.” Some of these tastes and experiences are harder to find now (and a Portuguese restaurant striking the pitch-perfect balance of modern and traditional cooking and seaside veritas would do so well here, it is hard to believe no one is running it).
The night of the striped bass is also in the movie, portrayed with the same magic with which Bourdain wrote it. During striper season, which begins in mid-June and peaks at the end of July, the fish appears on many menus around town. But the best thing to do is cook it yourself — and, well, catch it yourself. Bourdain did both, but if that’s not in the cards, visit a local seafood market such as Mac’s in Provincetown (and elsewhere), Cape Tip in Truro, or Hatch’s in Wellfleet. There are striper recipes in Mitcham’s cookbook, of course. Mac’s will also make you up a clambake to go, with cooked and cracked lobster, steamed littlenecks, chowder, corn, and more. Eat it on the beach, as they do in “Tony.”
Some of the movie’s spirit you might not want to recapture; tortured adolescence and its trappings can be best left in the rearview. Of course, you can visit the places in the movie, or re-create some of its scenes. But to experience the Provincetown of yore, the one Bourdain knew, it’s not necessary to be so literal. The best way is to talk to people — the guy who sits next to you on a bench and considerately asks if you mind if he smokes “something,” the woman you run into by the cemetery when you’re trying to find the house where friends are staying. This is how you hear Provincetown’s stories, each of which could be its own movie.
Or eat somewhere like Sal’s Place, looking out over the water. Type As should stay away. The place will drive you nuts. Sometimes the food is wonderful, sometimes less so. You have to call for reservations, and you’ll only get through after 27 busy signals over the course of several days, if you’re lucky. “Cash only, darling,” drawls the voice on the other end of the line, before disconnecting abruptly. But the free-spirited charm of liberally flowing wine and garlicky linguine vongole, the inevitable running into someone you know, the seaside party of it all feels just right.
One place that best captures Provincetown’s historic “all oddballs welcome” charm right now isn’t even in Provincetown. It’s in Wellfleet. Chef-owner Tony Pasquale, who ran Truro’s Terra Luna for 30 years before closing in 2023, opened Skully Joe’s last June.
Under the name Tony Scungilli, Pasquale also hosts “The Squid Jigger’s Blend,” a Wednesday radio show on WOMR featuring a “sonic collage of way gone pre-psychedelic garage thrown in with some murky superfuzz post-grunge shamanistic screaming life rantings, the sweetly fecund sounds of low tide surf guitar noir, some down low distorted reverbed revivalist tube amped snake oil, the romantic cynical conceptual continuity of obscure Frank Zappa guitar tunings, goofy-ass white boy emoh hip drop humpty bumps and the existential flotsam and jetsam that spurts forth from Iddy Biddy Records and the sand dunes and salty air of ol’ Cape Cod...”
Imagine a restaurant fueled by that spirit — but far, far more relaxed — and you’ve got Skully Joe’s. (Skully Joe is an old name for dried cod. There’s a section in Mitcham for that, too.) The motto here is “Keep Clam and Cash Only.” Pasquale spins vinyl on the turntable behind the bar, serving up Slack Tide martinis (made with clam juice and pickled clams) and other house cocktails. An actor from the theater next door ducks in, still in costume, for a gulp of his wife’s wine.
The menu highlights seafood: scallops with Ritz crackers, sherry, and butter; quahog pie; a tower of oysters, clams, sardines, squid salad, and more called The Kraken. Made-to-order oyster stew, buttery and smattered with fresh herbs, is deeply satisfying. There’s a Portuguese current here, too: You can (and should) get your oysters with piri piri sauce. The menu notes that vinha d’alhos, skewered marinated pork, comes served with pickled cabbage and “saudade” — the Portuguese word that has no perfect English translation but encompasses a bittersweet blend of memory, longing, nostalgia, missing someone or something you once loved.
It’s the right note to end on here, after following a beloved, complicated ghost through a place from the past where he once started to know who he was.
Ciro & Sal’s, 4 Kiley Court, 508-487-6444, www.ciroandsals.com
Liz’s Cafe, Anybody’s Bar, 31 Bradford St., 508-413-9131, www.lizscafeptown.com
Mac’s Provincetown Market, 85 Shank Painter Road, 508-487-6227, www.macsseafood.com (Other locations are in Wellfleet, Eastham, Chatham, and Dennis.)
Old Colony Tap, 323 Commercial St., 508-487-2361
Provincetown Portuguese Bakery, 299 Commercial St., 508-487-1803, www.provincetownportuguesebakery.com
Sal’s Place, 99 Commercial St., 508-487-1279, www.salsplace.co
Skully Joe’s, 15 Kendrick Ave., Wellfleet, 774-383-1700, www.skullyjoes.com
Spiritus Pizza, 190 Commercial St., 508-487-2808, www.spirituspizza.com
Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @devra_first.