Cape Cod brings to mind so many images — pristine beaches, refreshing summer sea breezes, bustling seafood shacks that serve fried clams and lobster rolls. But sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s much more to the Cape than this.
And, yes, there are many reasons to head there in the off-season, including for dining out at places open all year long.
In the case of restaurants and bars near the Cape Cod Canal, it’s actually quicker (depending on traffic) to get there from downtown Boston than it is from Provincetown, which tends to prove a point that heading to lunch or dinner on the Cape isn’t the long drive that Bostonians think it is when it’s not peak summer season.
The first towns you encounter when crossing the canal onto the Cape are Bourne and Sandwich, the former more a quiet residential town that also reaches onto the mainland, the latter a charming old community that caters to tourists and history lovers alike.
Bourne isn’t really seen as a destination spot for dining out compared to other Cape Cod towns like Wellfleet, Provincetown or Falmouth, but it has a number of good restaurants and bars that, again, have the advantage of being relatively close to the Greater Boston area.
One of these spots had been virtually unknown to visitors to the Cape, though the Trading Post Lounge in Bourne Village has gotten noticed of late thanks to the bar pizza craze (more on this in a bit), bringing more and more people to this old-school roadhouse in a quiet little town center about a minute from the rotary by the Bourne Bridge.
If you approach the Trading Post Lounge from the rotary, the first thing you’ll see is a classic Budweiser “King of Beers” sign out front, hanging from a rusty old pole that has seen better days. A handful of spaces for cars can be found here while a parking lot with more spaces can be found in the back, and turning left to get to that lot, you’ll see another sign on the back wall of the bar that says, “Locals and Non-locals Only” and a picture of a slice of pizza inexplicably sitting in a martini. The Bud sign and this image seem to practically scream “dive bar” and may make some people decide to keep driving, but the Trading Post, while indeed having some dive-like tendencies, is actually a welcoming place that borders on being family-friendly.
Residing in what looks like it could have been someone’s house at some point, the Trading Post Lounge has a few different sections inside, including a U-shaped bar as you walk in, an area facing the bar that has a pool table, tables and booths and, further back, a dining room with tables of all sizes and windows that look out at the village center.
The overall atmosphere is rather rustic, with wood paneling on the walls; old wooden tables that have lots of dings, dents and scratches; a wooden ceiling and various hanging lights; sconces; memorabilia and knick-knacks making the place feel a little like someone’s living room.
Some say that a true dive bar doesn’t serve food (or if it does, it’s best not to order it), and if you go by that strict definition, this is more confirmation that the Trading Post Lounge is by no means a dive, even though it may look like one. The bar food is quite good here, with the buffalo wings and the handcut fries being very impressive (the fries are good enough to make into a meal if you want to go that route).
But it’s the bar pizza that brings so many to this place, as it’s great enough to put it into the upper echelons, along with places like the Lynwood and Hoey’s in Randolph, Cape Cod Cafe and Home Cafe in Brockton, Poopsie’s in Pembroke and lesser-known standouts like the Next Page Cafe in Weymouth, Smitty’s in Taunton and O’Toole’s in Whitman.
If you’ve ever seen a Lynwood pizza, it looks like a culinary work of art, with its golden cheese (cheddar is used on bar pizzas) and perfectly laced crust, and the pizza at the Trading Post has this same look, having the slight extra thickness that the Lynwood is known for, which makes it less cracker-like and more like a rich and buttery shortbread-type crust.
Toppings include pepperoni, mushroom, salami, pepper, hamburger and linguica (the last of which is a nod to the Portuguese population found on the South Coast and parts of the Cape), and one of the most popular picks here is the “Heavy Hitter,” which includes hamburger, pepperoni, ricotta and hot honey.
By the way, this being bar pizza, they top out at around 10 inches, so the general rule is one per person, since they’re so small.
Drink options at the Trading Post Lounge include the usual beer, wine, mixed drinks and spirits, and among the beer offerings you might see are local brews including from such beermakers as Mayflower (Plymouth) and Whalers (South Kingstown, Rhode Island).
Driving from the Boston area to Cape Cod for pizza, wings and an adult beverage may sound a bit odd, but as mentioned, it really isn’t that long of a trip to the very start of the peninsula, especially during the quiet months of the winter and early spring. And because the Trading Post Lounge represents the “old” Cape, it’s a great place to go to if you want to catch some of the flavor of the non-touristy side of this popular summertime destination.
Trading Post Lounge, 12 Trowbridge Road, Bourne, MA, 02532. tradingpostlounge.com