Provincetown Seafood Cookbook

“The Rosetta Stone for Bourdain scholars… . The text is energetic, passionate, oracular, wide-ranging, deeply grounded in the town’s seafaring history and the culture of its chowder-eating Yankees… . Mr. Bourdain clearly saw a kindred spirit and maybe, too, a model for how a cook with an omnivorous curiosity.” —Pete Wells, New York Times


“The Provincetown Seafood Cookbook is something I go back to read often. It’s grounding. It’s not so much a cookbook as it is a piece of cultural anthropology. A sincere love letter to a very special place that maybe doesn’t totally exist anymore. I bought my copy in 1991 when I first moved to the Outer Cape from New Jersey. The stories it told helped me connect to this spit of sand on a mystical, pagan level. It teaches respect for a place, the people, a simpler lifestyle, ceremony, for the ocean and for the fish. The recipe for Squid Stew (page 151) is as simple and true as it is transcendental. This book is the closest thing to a bible in my house. First published in Provincetown in 1975, it was long out of print, but it’s once again available (Seven Stories Press, 2018). Do yourself — or any cook who cares about this place — a solid and grab a copy.” —Tony Pasquale, The Provincetown Independent

Howard Mitcham was a legendary author, chef, artist, and poet. His three major cookbooks, Provincetown Seafood Cookbook, Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz: A New Orleans Seafood Cookbook, and Clams, Mussels, Oysters, Scallops and Snails, have influenced a generation of chefs.

Born in Winona, Mississippi, Mitcham graduated from Greenville High School with his friend, the writer Shelby Foote. At the age of 16, Mitcham became deaf from spinal meningitis. He earned a degree in art and architecture at Louisiana State University, then moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, where he ran the Jane Street Gallery in the 1940s.

Many of Mitcham’s friends learned sign language to converse with him. For those who didn’t know sign language, Mitcham carried notebooks and pens for written communication. He co-authored a food column for the Provincetown Advocate with Jan Kelly, who described Mitcham as “brilliant and never boring.”

Mitcham died on August 22, 1996, at the age of 79.

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