the mussles and the clams are served plain steamed and there are 2 kinds of melted butter, plain and tarragon garlic butter....DH loves them and when we went in Oct he ate 7 huge pail fulls.
I am so not ladylike when it comes to eating clams! The shells will be a bit open, so I just pull em apart and use my fingers to pull out the clam. I then shake the clam in a small bowl of water to rinse (not everyone does this...my father and brother can't be bothered with it) and then bathe it in drawn butter. I've actually only ever eaten them at home, so I might try the fork method at a restaurant...unless I look around and find that I am surrounded with savages like myself.
Oh, and make sure you pull off the covering thing on the neck. It'll just peel back and off. I'm not sure of the technical term for it!
Not gristly...sometimes sandy and gritty. When I open up a clam and see that the belly is really big, I hand it off to my boyfriend. He'll eat anything. I stick with the smaller ones and I rarely have an issue with the gritty sand. They're so delicious, though!