What a difference a clam makes. The fresh linguine vongole on the menu at San Lorenzo restaurant in the recently opened Hotel St. Vincent is revelatory. Beyond the house-made pasta — and beyond the heft of the toasted garlic in buttery sauce topped with ribbons of parsley and fried breadcrumbs — there are those clams. Although littleneck clams are usually the stand-ins for this dish, it’s the manila variety that brings the wow to San Lorenzo's version.

“It’s about really good clams and we use manilas,” says Jedd Adair, vice president of culinary operations for McGuire Moorman Lambert Hospitality, the Austin, Texas-based restaurant and hotel operators behind St. Vincent. “Manilas have more natural clam juice, more subtle brininess, which makes our vongole brothier.”