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Cooking Up a New Restaurant with an Old Name

Restaurateur Richard Moncure, a member of Washington and Lee’s Class of 1979, isn’t one to let a natural disaster keep him down. In 2003, he lost his popular Happy Clam restaurant in Colonial Beach, Va., to Hurricane Isabel. Now he’s prepping a new restaurant in Fredericksburg, Va., dubbing it the Happy Clam at Barefoot Green’s.

As this article in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star notes, the Moncure family has been in the restaurant biz for a couple of generations now. “I raised all my children in the business,” he told the paper. “My nieces and nephews, my mother and father were involved. It’s a lifestyle.”

The name of the new restaurant comes from a Fredericksburg character, an often-shoeless waterman named Green who peddled his catch in Fredericksburg. He ran the Barefoot Green fish market in downtown Fredericksburg five decades ago. Subsequent businesses in the area have borne his catchy name.

The Moncures located their first Happy Clam in Fredericksburg. Richard opened his branch in Colonial Beach while he was a student at W&L. In addition to cooking up seafood to serve customers in the new location, he’ll sell fresh fish and local produce, both in the store and over the Internet. “I’m going to know where the product comes from and will evolve the menu toward what we’ve traditionally eaten here—the Rappahannock’s bounty,” he said.

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