The 21st Highlands Annual Clamfest–a feast for clam connoisseurs and people who just love a summer festival loaded with games, music, food and drink–begins Thursday, July 30 and runs through Sunday August 2nd along Bay and Waterwitch avenues in Highlands.
There will be a midway of rides and games, ongoing entertainment with seven different bands and a 120-foot-long tent that festival organizer Carla Cefalo calls “a succulent seafood court.” The seafood will be supplied by area restaurants, including Francesco’s and Chilango’s.
A beer and wine garden, also featuring sangria, will be set up at the corner of Waterwitch and Bay.
On Saturday, August 1st, the Highlands Community Singers will belt out their theme song, “Happy As A Clam,” one of the traditions of the four-day fest.
The competitive events take place on Sunday.
Lusty Lobster, a local seafood purveyor (that also sells live Maine lobsters), will sponsor a clam-shucking contest. Each contestant must bring his or her own shucking knife. Each entrant receives a dozen clams. When the signal is given, the shucking begins, and whoever cleanly shucks their dozen the fastest wins.
Note the emphasis on the word cleanly.
“There are rules. It has to be neat,” Cefalo stipulates. “The clam [body] has to be on the shell. You can’t just slop them all over.”
Prizes include a trophy, t-shirts and a bushel of fresh Jersey clams.
The shucking is followed by an even more closely judged clam-eating contest.
Each competitor is presented with 100 steamed clams in their shells and exactly five minutes to devour them all. It’s not as easy as it may sound. So far the record is 94 clams. To consume all 100 you’d have to maintain a pace of no less than one every three seconds.
“We take it very seriously,” Cefalo says. “We don’t allow you to use butter or [drink] water, and we watch very carefully. If a clam happens to fall out and they pick up an empty shell, we pull it out and throw it on the ground. That one doesn’t count.”
The clams are donated by Certified Clam, a Highlands company that purifies New Jersey clams to guarantee they are free of sand and impurities. The clams spend 48 hours in purge tanks filled with filtered sea water. The clams naturally purge themselves of all contaminants. At the end of the process, they can be certified bacteria-free. Certified Clam says its purge facility is the largest of its kind in the United States. The company provides more than 40 million clean clams a year to distributors, restaurants and supermarkets–more, it claims, than any other company on the East Coast.
The family-friendly Clamfest is sponsored by the Highlands Business Partnership, a volunteer offshoot of the local Chamber of Commerce. All proceeds from the event go to improving parks and recreational facilities in the borough.
Admission and parking are free, and the event will be held rain or shine.
21st Annual Highland Clamfest
Thursday July 30th 6 PM-10 PM
Friday July 31st 6 PM-11 PM
Saturday August 1st 12 PM -11 PM
Sunday August 2nd 12 PM – 8 PM