Back Eddy

Smoke at the Southcoast pass

Wood smoke does the first work for Chris Schlesinger, James Beard Award winner at Back Eddy in Westport, before the plate leaves the pass. His cooking has long treated flame as a tool, not theater: heat for structure, smoke for seasoning, spice for lift. At Back Eddy, where he has been co-owner since 1999, that method meets a waterfront New England seafood room with its own tempo, close to the water and tuned to the appetite that gathers around it. Schlesinger came to this station after training at Northeastern University and The Culinary Institute of America, then working as chef at Sakonnet Golf Club in Rhode Island. His public identity was shaped by East Coast Grill in Inman Square, Cambridge, where he was chef and restaurateur from 1986 to 2012, and by other co-owner roles in Cambridge and Waltham. The line that matters here is not a repeated format. It is a discipline: direct food, clear seasoning, live fire held close to the center of the plate.

Seafood held to flame and season

The kitchen works from a seasonal New England seafood frame, with fried clams, bacon wrapped scallops, and wood grilled swordfish named among the signatures. Those dishes tell the method without needing a manifesto. Clams take to the fryer and arrive as a measure of timing; scallops need the bacon to render and protect without masking the sweetness underneath; swordfish can stand at the grate, where smoke and char give the cut its edge. Schlesinger’s broader cooking language brings barbecue, spicy food, and internationally inflected seasoning into that seafood register. The point is force of flavor with enough control to keep the fish in charge. Back Eddy also carries a curated wine program, which gives the room another kind of bench work: choosing bottles that can sit beside salt, smoke, fat, and shellfish without asking the food to soften itself. The house does not turn that into a grand thesis. It works a la carte, plate by plate, through season and appetite.

The room near the current

The room has the lived surface of a local place: beadboard walls, old floors, water views, and a lively noise that comes from people already at ease. Back Eddy’s standout feature is not only that it sits by the water, with boat access and a dockside raw bar, but that the setting shapes the rhythm of the meal. The counter and the pass answer to a room that can feel casual without losing intent. Sunsets draw the eye outward, then the food pulls it back to the table. The restaurant’s counterclockwise current-inspired approach gives the place a directional idea, but the stronger sensation is simpler: seafood, fire, and a room full of motion. In that setting, Schlesinger’s cooking keeps its old preference for immediacy. The wood grilled swordfish belongs to Back Eddy because the water is right there.