The compromise between a billionaire and a Nantucket clam shack we can all learn from - The Boston Globe (2024)

You may also remember that Johnson didn’t take it so well when a pair of popular local restaurateurs got approvals to open a clam shack in the longtime commercial space next door to the downtown cottage. The clam shack was replacing what had been a fish market and ice cream shop.

He never actually sleeps in that cottage. Why would you when you have a 13,000-square-foot home nearby? But he launched a whisper campaign among his rich neighbors about the “nightclub” opening in their midst. He sent emissaries to harangue town boards. When none of that worked, he filled court dockets with eye-glazing legal tripe.

He successfully stopped the project in its tracks, earning negative media attention from around the world. When was the last time Town & Country, the Daily Mail, and Sports Illustrated were on the same story?

Johnson didn’t seem to care. If the saying about Harvard Square is that you can’t fling a hardcover book without hitting an author, in this crowded downtown, you can’t toss a Patek Philippe without striking someone on the list of Forbes billionaires. And they are generally not OK with not getting their way. Or at least Johnson isn’t.

That, though, was last year. This year, it’s a much different story.

Gabriel Frasca, the owner of the acclaimed Straight Wharf Restaurant, greeted me on a typically gray Nantucket afternoon recently and guided me next door to Straight Wharf Fish, the most famous unopened clam shack on the planet. Last I was there, in June 2023, it was a half-baked construction site that carried the scent of defeat. Now it’s a thing of beauty.

As a work crew ran through a punch list ahead of the upcoming opening, Frasca led me on a tour. There were tiled walls in muted hues, a stylish brick floor, five fryolators in a state-of-the-art kitchen — “Cadillacs,” Frasca calls them — and an elaborate common table in the center of the tasteful dining room facing a wall of glass with water views.

“There are no rope knots on the walls,” Frasca said of the modern decor. “There’s not an anchor to be found.”

Out on the shallow deck, which hangs over Nantucket harbor, Frasca walked to the corner closest to the Johnson cottage and declared, “The demilitarized zone.”

A heavy canvas tarp hung between the Straight Wharf Fish deck and Johnson’s place just on the other side, dimming light and absorbing sound, and a wooden structure sat in front of the tarp to hold plants and prevent any diners from sitting too close to the cottage. It didn’t look like much of anything, and yet it represented something novel, even radical, these days.

Far from dockside on Nantucket, the nation and the world are in a fairly dangerous place. at the moment. There are no mere opponents any more, only mortal enemies. Slogans have morphed into brute insults. Self interest trumps mutual interest at almost every level of civic life. And compromise is considered the ultimate sign of weakness or impurity by those who are willing to shout the loudest and the longest.

Again, this is just a clam shack, albeit a very chronicled clam shack, but a year ago, it seemed ready to fall victim to all those familiar forces. Charles Johnson’s antics cost Gabriel Frasca and his partner a full season of business and threatened to destroy four years worth of plans, and in the restaurant business, plans and dreams are often one and the same.

And then a funny thing happened. The clam shack’s landlord, Steve Karp, picked up the phone and called Johnson. Karp is the chairman and chief executive officer of New England Development, which owns a fair chunk of Nantucket. He asked Johnson to join him for a walk.

“I called him out of the clear blue sky,” Karp said in a recent call. “I said, let’s just walk around and see what your problems are.”

Johnson, to his credit, obliged, so they took a tour around the dormant clam shack. “The issues were there,” Karp said. “They were good points.”

As Karp noted, there were no lawyers, no fear of who was getting the better deal, no talk of costs. He moved the HVAC units to the other side of the building and put up the thick canvas tarp between the decks. And just like that, the suits were dropped and they had a deal.

I sent an email to Johnson recently with no expectation of a reply. A day later, a note arrived saying, “We were never opposed to the opening. The acrimony was greatly exaggerated. Our concerns were mostly with noise, hours and odors and these were resolved satisfactorily.” He signed it “Charlie Johnson.” Maybe I’m getting too caught up in the spirit, but I feel like “Charlie” may be a new friend.

Back to Garbriel Frasca, the amiable restaurateur who never wanted any of the drama and attention. He would much rather speak eloquently of the perfect fried clam.

“We’re going to get extraordinary clams from Ipswich, a fresher, drier clam,” he said. He described the batter as “a simple, gluten-free dredge.” He extolled the importance of plunging it in hot oil for the perfect amount of time.

The menu, he said, will include crudo, tuna poke, a smash burger, and “the onion rings with caviar that you didn’t know you needed.”

Looking back, he recalled those moments when he was ready to give it all up. “Opening a restaurant is an act of lunacy in the best of times,” Frasca said. “To get this deep into a legal battle, is it necessary? Do we need it? Is this really worth it?”

He’ll know this week, when the doors open for the first time, but really he knows already that the answer is yes. He does have another wish involving Charlie Johnson, and that is that he come to Straight Wharf Fish for dinner one night, not in a neighborly expression of peace, but because the clams and everything else are just too good to resist.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at brian.mcgrory@globe.com.