Maine Lobster, a Summer Feast 

Maine and lobster go together like wine and cheese or bread and butter. You really can’t have one without the other.  The state and its signature crustacean are practically inseparable. Just as you can’t have New York City without hot dogs, Boston without baked beans or New Orleans without gumbo, it’s practically impossible to have Maine without lobster.

There are a couple reasons for the long and successful union between Maine and lobster. For one, Maine is the largest lobster producing state in the U.S.  For another, Maine is America’s quintessential summer getaway, attracting thousands of Americans from New England, the Mid-Atlantic and across the country to its miles of rocky coastline and sandy beaches. All those hard-working vacationers need sustenance, and few dishes fit Maine’s laid back summer life better than lobster, pulled fresh from the Atlantic, steamed for 10 or 15 minutes till the shell turns fiery red, then served up with drawn butter at a seaside shack or a romantic waterfront restaurant with white tablecloths and candlelight.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. On an early English voyage to Maine in 1605, James Rosier waxed rhapsodic about lobster. “We got about thirty good and great lobsters,” he wrote in his diary, “which …showeth how great profit fishing would be.” What Rosier planned to do with all those lobsters isn’t clear. But, early English colonists used them to fertilize their fields and feed the poor, namely widows, orphans, servants and convicts. Perhaps it was the law of supply and demand that turned the abundant lobsters into poor man’s food. Or that perverse streak in human nature that makes what’s plentiful less desirable. Or maybe it was simply that the colonists’ tastes ran to heavy meat dishes they were used to eating in England.

History soon proved, however, that you can’t keep a good lobster down. Sooner or later, someone was bound to crack one open, sample the delectable white flesh and declare, “This is delicious!” That happened in the early 20^th century when robber barons like J.P. Morgan began touring the Maine coast on their yachts. Along with clams and other fresh seafood, Morgan and his cronies began eating steamed lobster. And given that other perverse streak in human nature that likes keeping up with the Joneses—not to mention the Morgans, Astors and Carnegies—lobster suddenly became wildly fashionable. Canning, combined with the cachet given lobster by these early 20th-century captains of industry, popularized the crustacean around the country. By the time World War II rolled around, lobster had become a delicacy. The post-war G.I. Bill funded many fledging lobster operations and, in 1950, the first air shipments of lobster began around the country. By 1969, the per-capita lobster consumption in America had nearly doubled.

Today, lobstering, Maine’s most valuable fishery and America’s oldest continually operating industry, is closely protected. To maintain sustainability of a product that’s probably as important to Maine’s tourism industry as its pristine beaches, there are limits to how many lobsters can be caught and how big they must be. They cannot be caught by dragging or diving, but must be caught by trap only. Also closely monitored are egg-bearing females responsible for future generations. Lobstermen are required to throw them back, and many voluntarily notch the tail with a “V” as a signal to other lobstermen. Some might chafe at the strict laws, but they insure that Maine lobstering and Maine lobsters will be around for centuries to come.

Eating lobsters, of course, is more fun than reading about them. Nearly 150 years after the first lobster “pound” appeared on Vinalhaven Island in 1875, there now are lobster pounds up and down the Maine coast, where you can pick one out right from the tank, take it back to your summer cottage and steam it. Or you can leave the heavy lifting to the locals. The Maine Coast has scores of seafood restaurants, ranging from casual pubs to fancy digs, not to mention the quintessentially American lobster shack.

Waterfront or roadside, the lobster shack is a clapboard or cedar-shingle affair where you walk up in your bathing suit and flip-flops, stand in line, and then place your order at the counter. A top choice is the lobster roll, usually a white New England-style hot dog roll with a split top, filled with chunks of fresh lobster meat that’s been tossed with a little mayonnaise or, as purists prefer, simply spritzed with a little lemon juice. If all that outdoor activity has worked up a killer appetite, order the works: A starter of steamers or raw clams followed by a steamed lobster with drawn butter, a side of coleslaw and corn on the cob. If it’s a fancy lobster shack, you can either eat outside at a picnic table or inside at a table with a red-and-white checked vinyl tablecloth. If it’s not quite that fancy, you enjoy your lobster—along with your clam chowder or fried clams—at a picnic table. If it’s a real bare-bones place, you take away your bag of goodies to your car, boat or beach blanket.

As any local or longtime visitor will tell you, eating at a Maine lobster shack is a summer rite of passage. Everyone has a favorite, depending on how far it is from a favorite beach, inn or summer cottage, how the lobster is steamed (in plain or sea water or beer), whether or not mayonnaise is used in the lobster rolls, whether you eat inside or out, and how fresh the lobster is (an almost ridiculous criterion, considering that most lobster shacks are on the water or real close to it, and get daily deliveries from local lobstermen or their own lobstermen).

You can enjoy a good lobster roll, fresh-cooked whole lobster, and, in most cases steamers and clams at just about any lobster shack on the Maine coast but some have become legendary. In Kennebunkport, where former President George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara summer, there’s The Clam Shack, which keeps its lobsters in tanks of seawater pumped in from a nearby tidal river and prides itself on using hand-shredded meat in its lobster rolls. At Estes Lobster House in Harpswell Neck, a shack surrounded by Harpswell Sound and Potts Harbor, you eat outside and torches are lit at night. In Georgetown, about 20 minutes from Bath, near Reid State Park, is highly rated Five Islands Lobster Co., a lobster pound where you choose your lobster from a tank, it’s cooked for you, and you eat outside on the windy promontory. The highly touted Red’s Eats in Wiscasset is just a roadside hut on the south side of the Route 1 Bridge, but lobster roll-loving patrons put it in the same category as a Michelin starred restaurant. In Spruce Head, family-owned Miller’s Lobster has tables right next to the water. On a peninsula south of Rockland, there’s Waterman’s Beach Lobster in S. Thomaston, where lobsters are steamed over salt water, and you eat them on a tented deck or at one of two dozen picnic tables. At Young’s Lobster Pound, the picnic tables overlook Penobscot Bay. Bagaduce Lunch in Brooksville, also on Penobscot Bay, is a top spot, too.

Another way to eat Maine lobster, especially if you don’t want to sit inside, banter with your friendly server, or put on a nice shirt and slacks, is at a clambake. This, for the uninitiated, features clams, but actually the focus is on lobsters, which are steamed, not baked. Some inns put on clambakes for their guests, and there are probably more than a few independent outfits that do them, too. One possibility is Cabbage Island Clambakes in Boothbay Harbor. Theirs begins with a tour of the harbor aboard the Bennie Alice, and ends with a cruise to 5 ½-acre Cabbage Island in Linekin Bay. There the lobsters are steamed under rock-covered seaweed. Each guest enjoys a seaside meal of clam chowder, two lobsters, steamed clams, corn on the cob, Maine new potatoes and blueberry cake.

If you’re determined to eat your lobster at a casual, chic restaurant or a really fancy place, Maine has plenty of those, too. What’s more, in addition to steamed lobster with drawn butter, you’re likely to find such traditional Maine lobster specialties as baked stuffed lobster with bread and seafood stuffing, lobster pot pie and lobster stew, and sometimes more innovative dishes like lobster mac ‘n cheese, lobster paella and lobster tacos. There’s also “lazy man’s lobster,” lobster removed from its shell and usually bathed in a savory sauce.

If you’re  looking for a casual restaurant, try Barnacle Billy’s, a piratical kind of place that overlooks Ogunquit’s picturesque Perkins Cove and serves rum punches with its lobster. If you’re shopping at L.L. Bean in Freeport, across the street are Linda Bean’s Maine Kitchen and Topside Tavern where you can try a trademark “lobstickle,” a marinated split lobster tail on a stick. For fancy dining in Kennebunkport, try The White Barn Inn, a Relais & Chateaux property that serves dinners of steamed lobster and other specialties, and also prepares picnic hampers with lobster rolls for its guests. Also in town is the venerable Kennebunkport Inn, known for its lobster pie, featured on the Food Network, and its lobster white pizza, which earned a place on the “O” list of Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine. A little less fancy, but no less famous, is Shaw’s Fish & Lobster Wharf Restaurant in New Harbor, which sells about 10,000 lobster rolls annually and was featured in the 1999 Kevin Costner movie, “Message in A Bottle.”

You’ll find fresh Maine lobster just about anywhere along the Maine Coast. But, if you’re one of those people who thinks the catch can never be fresh enough, do what many of the locals have been doing for generations: hop on a lobster boat, take to the water and haul up a few traps yourself.

www.visitmaine.com

The area code for Maine is 207.