Cape Cod's Oldest Restaurant Opened Before America Was Even Established

A restaurant making it to a full year after it first opens its doors is rightly celebrated as a success, and it can be considered an even bigger feat in highly competitive places like New York and L.A. Meanwhile, the oldest restaurant on Cape Cod, by comparison, has been around since 1696, 80 years before the U.S. was founded in 1776, and is still going strong. Called the Old Yarmouth Inn, it was originally founded as a stagecoach stop that offered food and lodging for travelers.

The historic establishment is located in Yarmouth Port, which is about midway between Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Provincetown at the very tip of the Cape. It was the last stop for the stagecoach from Boston, and travelers could switch to other stagecoaches that went further out on the Cape to Chatham and Provincetown. Eventually, a train line was completed to Provincetown in the 1870s, marking the end of the stagecoach trips, but the business remained as a tavern and inn. The restaurant pays tribute to its origins with an "Old Yarmouth Inn" sign hanging outside the two-story, white clapboard building that shows a stagecoach being pulled by two white horses.

Fast forward some seven decades, and what's now the main dining room was added to the Old Yarmouth Inn in the 1940s — which is when it began operating as a fine dining restaurant. Throughout its history, it continued to offer guests lodging until just two decades ago, in 2007, when it switched to focus solely on food. 

Today, diners at the Old Yarmouth Inn enjoy their meals in one of three rooms in the building whose front is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. There's the main dining room from the '40s; the oldest, smaller Red Room that's been there since 1696; and the wood-paneled tavern room with a fireplace. The restaurant is open for dinner only, serving what its website calls "classic American cuisine with a contemporary twist," and offers a three-course "Pre-6" early bird special between 4:00 and 5:30 p.m.

The seafood-heavy menu reflects Cape Cod's coastal location and features some traditional regional dishes. They include New England clam chowder, one of the classic seafood dishes everyone should try at least once, clams casino, stuffed quahogs, and local oysters on the half shell. There are a couple of particularly local touches on the drinks menu too. Making use of cranberries, which have been grown on the Cape for 200 years, the Cape Cod Mule adds cranberry juice to the classic Moscow Mule recipe of vodka, ginger beer, and lime juice. There are also a few local draft beers available that are brewed on the Cape as well.

The Old Yarmouth Inn's wine list has been a winner of the Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence since 2010. The award is given to lists of at least 75 wines that are thoughtfully crafted from a range of good sources and align with the menu.