Lobster Rolls!

Sorry, I got sidetracked on the last post.  I meant to talk about lobster rolls. 

John has been preparing some excellent meals here in our small kitchen.  They are often accompanied with blueberry wine.  Yes, blueberries are so ubiquitous that they are squashed up for wine . . . not blueberry-flavored wine mind you, but wine from fermented blueberry juice.  We’ve tried two different winemakers.  One is made by Bartlett Maine Estate Winery and the other is the Winterport Winery.  Both are very different, so we really can’t say which is best, but Bartlett is definitely more elegant (and more expensive!) and Winterport is a regular everyday table wine.  Both make a number of other fruit wines.  Winterport makes an unusual cranberry wine, which as you might imagine is quite tart.  Fortunately, they use enough sugar to tone it down to drinkable.  In fact, it is so drinkable, you might not know you are drinking wine until it was too late.  They also make a strawberry wine that we have not tried yet, so I am looking forward to that.

Oh well, there I go again digressing!  Let’s focus on the topic.  Despite the good meals and good wine here, we do get a hankering for lobster.  Being the lazy sort, I lean towards a lobster roll.  Does anyone not know what a lobster roll is?  You’d find out fast in New England, but especially in Maine.  Basically for the uninformed, it’s picked lobster meat served cold in a grilled hot dog roll.  Sometimes the meat is mixed with mayonnaise (hopefully lightly!) and occasionally some green things, but the best lobster roll seems to be really plain and basic.  John and I have tried four different places for lobster rolls since we got here in May and now seems to be a good time to give our opinion of the best.

Our first lobster roll here was last year at the Lobster Shack at Two Lights.  OK, also for those who grew up elsewhere, a light is a lighthouse.  So at the end of Cape Elizabeth, there are two lighthouses, hence the name.  Don’t ask me why they have two lighthouses.  They have fog horn, too.  It just seems they need all of them.  What’s really important is the Lobster Shack.  It serves a really good lobster roll, plain and unadorned with a squirt of mayonnaise off to the side (for those who must).  And of course they have the Atlantic Ocean, the rocky shore, the crashing waves, sea breezes, sea ducks, the works.  Really, they could be serving beans and franks and you might still want to go there.  You need to get there early, because a line forms quickly around lunch time.

To the other extreme, John and I took the bus into Portland one day (whole other story, a trip to town and a show for only $1.50!) to reacquaint ourselves with downtown and eventually have lunch at recommended restaurant named Maria’s, which was touted as having very good and plentiful Italian food.  After a good long walk, we arrived at Maria’s at noon ready for a good plate of paste, but the door was locked.  The time was right, just nobody was there.  We walked around the block a couple times, knocked, nobody there.  Spoke a delivery man, said he didn’t see the owner truck, but that he’d probably be coming along sometime soon.  Well, there are only so many times you can walk around the block.  These things seem to happen in Portland (people are more laid back), so John and I headed back towards the waterfront area looking something to eat.  Along the way we passed through the financial district (Portland is very compact, so we are only talking about walking a few blocks), and spotted the Grill Room.  Hmm! Interesting menu, so we stopped in and of course we ended up having a lobster roll.  Now this was a really gussied up lobster roll, lots of lobster meat on toasted focaccia bread with garlic aioli.  Hey, it was really good, but it was an entirely different thing.

Heading back to the more traditional, we read about another lobster/seafood place in South Freeport (or just south of L. L. Bean’s), the Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster Company, right on an inlet off Casco Bay (off the Atlantic Ocean).  This place was right at the town landing, so had a much more “boaty” environment . . . lots of boats, fishermen, and the ubiquitous kayakers with kayaks in tow.  And to top it off we got a very good lobster roll, plain and simple.  Still, we didn’t think it surpassed what was becoming our standard at the Lobster Shack.  Also, the young fellow, about 13 or 14, who acted as the parking attendant/busboy at the place said although the food was good, he thought the place was a bit on the expensive side.  Obviously, the kid must have been the owner’s son or had some other form of job security.  Indeed it was a little bit more, $15.00, compared to the other places, where it was more like $14.00.

Then there was one more place.  Going back and forth for Freeport and most points north we have passed one place that doesn’t look like much, but then that is often what makes things attractive.  Basically, it was a lobster and crab shack on U.S. Route 1, but backed on an exquisite tidal marsh.  Still, we always passed by until Nan, someone we often speak to over at the Maine Audubon Sanctuary, recommended it as one of her favorite place, although she leaned towards their crab roll.  John is fond of Maine crab too, so soon after the recommendation, off we were off to (not to passed by but to actually spot at) Day’s Crabmeat and Lobster.  Day’s is very basic with one side selling crabmeat, clams, and lobsters au naturel, packed for your preparation and consumption at home and with the other side selling prepared food that you buy and then have two choices, take it home to eat or sit on a picnic table in the back and eat it looking out at a gorgeous tidal marsh.  We sat, John with a crabmeat roll and me with a lobster roll, and both with a Sea Dog Root Beer (brewed and bottled right in Portland).  Everything was fantastic.  Now they did use a little mayonnaise in with the lobster meat, but really just enough, really a perfect balance.  Oh, by the way if you look closely at the picture, that’s right, whole lobsters were selling for $5.29 a pound that day.  Since then we’ve seen it below five dollars.

After four tries, it would be hard to make a decision on the best, but maybe we’d have to say the Lobster Shack at Two Lights with Day’s as a close second.  Or maybe we’ll just need to try them all over again.

All for now!

PS:  We just returned from a store and saw Maine rhubarb wine.  I mean, pleeeeasssse! you Mainers don’t need to make everything into wine!