Serving history with the 'chowda'

Legal's has outgrown Inman Square. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

WHEN PEOPLE think of Boston, they think of seafood, so the first place I would take a visitor would be to Legal Sea Foods for some "chowda" and a history lesson. I would explain that the restaurant chain actually started in Inman Square in Cambridge, two blocks from where I grew up.

While they savored the "chowda" experience, I would wax nostalgic: "It was a crowded little shoebox of a place about 30 feet long and 15 feet wide with sawdust on the floor and flanked on either side by open display cases full of freshly caught fish, laying in rest, on crushed white ice. Their big round eyes stared up at the patrons as if to say, 'It all happened so fast. First thing this morning I'm trolling for breakfast off the coast of Gloucester, the next thing I know I'm in a pile of ice in Cambridge.' "

We were practicing Catholics, so every Friday my mother would send me or one of the kids down to Legal for the fish and chips special - a huge pile of fried haddock and french fries for only 99 cents. All you could eat and save your soul for under a buck.

There were as many Catholics at Legal Sea Foods on Friday afternoons in the 1960s as there were at St. Mary's Mass on Sunday mornings. If the church wants to boost attendance these days, it should bring back the 99-cent fish and chips for the flock.

Jimmy Tingle is a comedian.