Broiled Haddock the Cape Ann Way

Broiled haddock on Cape Ann is not the same dish as broiled haddock in Boston, and the people running the fish counters in Gloucester will tell you why if you ask. The shorthand version is short enough to fit on an index card: butter, Ritz, sherry, paprika, six minutes under a hot broiler, lemon on the side. Get any one of those wrong and you’ve made a different fish. The dish is provincial in the literal sense. It belongs to a stretch of coast about thirty miles long, from the Annisquam River around to Halibut Point and back down through Rockport. Cross the Annisquam Bridge heading west and the recipe starts drifting: more breadcrumbs, more herbs, more lemon on top. By the time you’re in Boston it’s a different preparation entirely.

Why Haddock, Not Cod, on Cape Ann

Gloucester has been a working commercial fishing port since 1623, which makes it the oldest in the country. The Cape Ann Museum’s fishing-history archive is the place to confirm that, along with the harder fact that what came off the boats and onto the family table for most of those four centuries wasn’t cod. Cod gets the statehouse seal and the tourist menus. Haddock is what the families actually ate. There’s a practical reason for the distinction. Haddock has a cleaner, sweeter flake, closer to the bone, less assertive, and structurally tighter than cod. It holds together under a hot broiler. Cod, by contrast, wants to flake apart the moment heat hits it, which is why most Boston cod recipes hedge with breadcrumbs and a lower oven temperature. Cape Ann broiled haddock doesn’t hedge. The fish is strong enough to stand up to 500°F directly overhead, and the recipe is built around that fact. ** Cape Ann uses dry sherry, a tablespoon or two brushed over the fillet before it goes under the heat. Boston-style swaps in white wine, usually whatever’s open. Sherry is sweeter, nuttier, and concentrates rather than evaporates under high heat, which is the whole point. The crumb. Cape Ann tops with crushed Ritz crackers, soaked in melted butter to the point of being a paste. Boston-style reaches for panko or seasoned breadcrumbs. The Ritz is not a shortcut. It’s the recipe. The salt-and-fat profile of the cracker is doing work that breadcrumbs can’t replicate, and anyone who tells you to substitute panko has not eaten the dish as it’s supposed to be eaten. The lemon. Lemon goes on the side, never on top. Squeeze it before the fish hits the table and the acid cooks into the butter, dulls it, and makes the whole plate taste muted. Bring the wedge to the table and let the eater apply it bite-by-bite if at all. The heat. Six inches from a 500°F broiler element, no flip, five to six minutes. The fish is done when it just turns opaque at the thickest part. Pull it earlier than you think.

The Causeway Rule

The Causeway Restaurant on Essex Avenue in Gloucester serves the canonical version: butter-and-Ritz, no breadcrumbs, lemon on the side. The Gloucester Daily Times has covered the place for years, and the kitchen has held to the same preparation across decades and ownership changes. If it arrives with panko on top, the kitchen has compromised. If it arrives dressed with herbs (parsley, dill, anything green), the kitchen has compromised. If the lemon has already been squeezed across the fillet before the plate leaves the pass, the kitchen has compromised. The dish is austere on purpose. Adding to it doesn’t elevate it. It just turns it into something else.

The Recipe (Cape Ann Broiled Haddock)

Serves three to four. Takes about ten minutes start to finish. Ingredients

• 1.5 lbs fresh haddock fillet, about 1.25 inches thick at the center
• 4 tbsp salted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup Ritz crackers, crushed (about 14 crackers)
• 2 tbsp dry sherry
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges, to serve Directions

1. Position a rack 6 inches below the broiler element. Set the broiler to high (500°F).
2. Butter a baking dish large enough to hold the fillet flat. Lay the haddock skin-side down (or flat, if it’s already skinned). Pat the top of the fish dry with a paper towel.
3. Brush the sherry evenly over the top of the fillet.
4. In a small bowl, mix the crushed Ritz with the melted butter until the cracker is fully saturated and holds together loosely. Spread the mixture over the fillet in an even layer about a quarter-inch thick.
5. Dust the top with paprika.
6. Slide the dish under the broiler. Cook 5 to 6 minutes, until the topping is deep golden and the fish is just opaque at the thickest part. Do not flip.
7. Plate the fish, lemon wedges on the rim. Don’t squeeze. Let your guests decide. A note on the fish: get it from a counter, not a supermarket case. On Cape Ann that means Captain Joe & Sons or Intershell in Gloucester, or any of the working fish markets between there and Rockport. If you’re inland, ask whether the haddock is day-boat. If the answer is a shrug, buy something else.

Where to Order It in 2026

The Causeway is the canonical version and the one to start with. The wait is real (the room is small and the regulars know the rotation), but the dish is what the room is built around. For the family-restaurant take, Lobsta Land sits just off Route 128 at the Gloucester end of the Annisquam Bridge. The version there is closer to a hybrid, slightly more crumb than the Causeway purist would allow, but it stays inside the tradition. The Studio sits on Rocky Neck with a working-harbor view that’s hard to argue with. The kitchen is more ambitious than the Causeway and the menu wanders into preparations that aren’t strictly Cape Ann, but the broiled haddock holds the line. Halibut Point Restaurant in Rockport runs the pub version (Ritz, butter, broiler) at a bar where the regulars have been ordering it the same way since the room opened in the 1970s. And then there’s Roy Moore’s Fish Shack on Bearskin Neck in Rockport, which runs a counter operation off the back of the lobster pound. The room seats maybe twenty people at picnic-style benches and the haddock comes out on a paper plate. It is, by some distance, the closest you can get in 2026 to the version that came off the boats and onto a Cape Ann family table in 1955. If you’re planning the trip, do it in the shoulder seasons, late spring or early fall, when the boats are running, the dining rooms are open, and the summer crowds haven’t yet pushed the wait at the Causeway past an hour.