clams casino

noun

variants or Clams Casino
plural in form but singular or plural in construction
: clams on the half shell typically topped with bacon, bread crumbs, green pepper, and Parmesan cheese and baked or broiled

Examples of clams casino in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
The new restaurant will serve as a neighborhood tavern and will feature trendy live-fire cooking and menu items like tableside Caesar salad, clams casino pasta and martinis. — John Metcalfe, Mercury News, 18 Aug. 2026

Word History

Etymology

perhaps after the Narragansett Pier Casino, a resort and restaurant in Narragansett, Rhode Island

Note: According to a claim repeated in a number of print and online references, the recipe for clams casino was devised in 1917 by the maître d' and restaurateur Julius Keller (1864?-1945) for Mrs. Paran Stevens, a well-known socialite, at the Narragansett Pier Casino, a resort and restaurant in Rhode Island. (Note that the word casino ca. 1900 denoted a building for a variety of social amusements, not necessarily involving gambling.) In his autobiography, Inns and Outs (New York, 1939), Keller himself tells this story, though he assigns no date to it. (The 1917 date does not fit with the other details because Marietta Reed Stevens, "Mrs. Paran Stevens," died in 1895.) Contemporary evidence supporting Keller seems to be lacking. "Soft Clams a la Casino," for 50 cents, appear on a menu dated January 17, 1900, from the restaurant of the Central Park Casino in Manhattan (preserved in the New York Public Library's Buttolph menu collection). A recipe for "Clams à la Casino," with bacon but no bread crumbs, green peppers, or cheese, appears in the 1903 volume of The Delineator, a women's magazine (p. 731), as part of a post-Easter luncheon menu. See further the discussion by Lynne M. Olver in "The Truth about Clams Casino," Gastronomica, vol. 9, no. 1 (Winter, 2009), pp. 88-90.

First Known Use

1908, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of clams casino was in 1908

Rhymes for clams casino

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Browse Nearby Words

clamp strake
clams casino
clamshell
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Cite this Entry

“Clams casino.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clams%20casino. Accessed 28 Aug. 2026.

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