THE TOWN www.off-cape-escape.com

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Brant Rock is a tiny fishing and resort village. It does have a small market with the basics in foods and supplies, and it does have a wonderful little fish store that prides itself on being open 365 days a year. It may not have a Burger King, but it does have five good restaurants within a couple blocks of our house. Cosmo's serves a very good breakfast and lunch right across the street from us. Arthur and Pat's draws people from all over the South Shore, attracted to its inspired breakfast and lunch menu and personable staff (and incidentally, they also offer on Friday nights during the summer a wonderful gourmet dinner, BYOB, for which I think you might need reservations.) Venus II, built anew also after the Perfect Storm, upgraded its reputation from a biker bar to a pizza, Italian-American restaurant-lounge (if you like garlic in your food, they probably offer the world's best garlic pizza.) The Lobster Tale is one of two places we usually end up eating in the afternoon or evening...it's got an easy bar atmosphere which sometimes gets too busy. The cooking is generally good to excellent, with a variety of foods from Black Angus prime rib and hamburger to chicken and seafood dishes. Haddad's Ocean Restaurant, run by Chuck Haddad in an old building that seems to get flooded with every huge storm, has the best seafood chowder and fried shrimp we have ever tasted. Virtually all the seafood there is incredible.

Green Harbor is the next village south of Brant Rock. It is somewhat more upscale, but it has no commerce other than a small general store, a fish store, and a bar that sometimes offers rock or country artists for an evening of entertainment. It has a wonderful expanse of beach that makes for a good, long hike in the morning. Green Harbor is also the commercial fishing harbor between the villages of Brant Rock and Green Harbor. Small fishing boats, from lobster boats to small tuna boats, bring their catch in. We've seen up to eight hundred pound tuna being hauled in at the Green Harbor Marina, to be bought by offshore Japanese boats for ten to forty dollars per pound.