A Kream ‘n’ Kone love letter as seen through a daughter’s eyes.

When Cape Cod Life asked me to write a piece celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Kream ‘n’ Kone, I contemplated the best way to approach it. My family has owned the Kream ‘n’ Kone for 33 years, but how could I capture the impact that a restaurant can have after 70 years? What it signifies to its local community or to the thousands of people who journey back summer after summer for the familiar salty flavor of the perfect fried clam? To be frank, I couldn’t. What I could do was write a love letter to the Kream ‘n’ Kone to celebrate what it has meant to me and my family.

In 1953, the Haidas and Brokam families first opened the Kream ‘n’ Kone on the corner of Sea St and Rt. 28 in Dennisport. Immigrants from Greece who were family friends, they initially served only soft serve ice cream but quickly added hamburgers and hot dogs, and eventually incorporated fried seafood onto the menu. This evolution was immortalized in the neon blue sign that towered over the parking lot, where a watercolor hamburger sandwiched between pale red letters proclaimed, “Kream ‘n’ Kone: the Finest Fried Seafood Anywhere.” As the menu expanded, so did the restaurant. Eventually, the squat, white building had a dining room with 16 gleaming wooden booths, a long service counter and a glistening chrome kitchen. The hand painted menu hung above the cash registers, behind which the walk-up window remained for folks who wanted to grab a soft serve cone on the go.

My parents, Angelo and Angela Argyriadis, became...