Tag Archives: Lobster

New England: Boston, MA.

We ended our trip with three days in Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to the Red Sox game we met up with a couple of Julie’s friends for one evening and then basically hit the Freedom Trail parts of the other two days. On Friday we walked about half of the trail starting in Boston Common and ending up at the Old State House and site of the Boston Massacre. The walk is pretty easy to do (probably much easier when it’s not in the upper 90’s). I managed to find 2 minute podcasts for each of the stops on the tour via AudioViator.

On our last day we soldiered on and rather than sitting around in our hotel until our afternoon flight we decided to take a cab out to see the USS Constitution and then hit one last lobster place for lunch. Both were well worth it. USS Constitution is basically the end of the Freedom Trail at the Boston Navy Yard and in addition the USS Cassin Young was also on display.

Neptune Oyster

Wow. Neptune Oyster. One of the best meals this vacation. Steamers and a warm butter lobster roll.

We hopped a cab from the Boston Navy Yard and headed over to Neptune Oyster for lunch. Neptune Oyster was recommended by one of Julie’s friends and we planned on going for dinner one night but it just didn’t fit. We pretty much gave up on the idea until Sunday morning and figured if we got there when they opened it would leave just enough time to get to the airport. This is one of the better choices I’ve ever been a part of. This was by far the best meal of our trip. The place is really small so it fills up quick but there is bar seating as well as tables. Julie ordered the Little Neck clams which were cooked in a white wine garlic sauce (right up my alley). I actually had about four of these bizarre creatures and I survived. Then we both ordered the warm buttered lobster roll. This was my first lobster roll and it was unreal. I really can’t stress this enough: This was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten anywhere. And it was huge. In the future I will never visit Boston without eating here.

Neptune Oyster is located in Boston’s Little Italy neighborhood. The place gets real busy at night and was packed when we were there at 11:30am on Sunday morning. They don’t do reservations but you can put your name in and they’ll call you when your table is ready. Considering there are many other places in the area I would recommend finding a place for a drink and then waiting for your call.

It’s not often that the highlight of a seven day trip occurs three hours before your flight leaves for home. It happened this time.

New England: Bar Harbor, ME

After leaving Portland we headed about three hours north to Bar Harbor, Maine to catch our ride on the Margret Todd in the early afternoon. The ship is one of the largest wind powered vessels operating in New England. Shortly after setting sail we had issues with one of the sails so we were down to three instead of the normal four. The ship basically sails out into Frenchman Bay for an hour and then heads back into Bar Harbor. There’s a morning cruise, afternoon cruise which we took and a sunset cruise as far as I can tell all of them were BYOB. To me the coolest thing about the trip was seeing all the lobster boats out in the bay.

Thurston’s Lobster Pound

After our cruise we headed about an to the other side of Bar Harbor (about an hour car drive) to Thurston’s Lobster Pound. Which unlike the other lobster shacks we visited had parking issues and about a 30 minute wait. As usual though it was worth it. Thurston’s is right on the water and unlike the other places we’ve been you paid by the pound not the lobster. So each lobster was measured as you ordered and that was what you paid. As you can see in the photograph above they use one giant steamer to cook all the seafood on the back of the porch. Basically everything you order is thrown into a bag (lobster, corn, clams etc.) and each bag has a number that corresponds to your table. This way all your food is cooked together and is done at the same time.

Side Note:

* Originally we didn’t plan on going to Bar Harbor but on Thursday before we left town the New York Times had an article in the travel section titled ‘36 Hours in Bar Harbor, Me.’ so we decided to skip the second night in Portland and head a little farther north. This of course made our drive the next day twice as far but it was worth hitting another town. All four of our stops in Bar Harbor were from the article.

* On our way out of town we stopped at Cafe This Way for breakfast and Julie found a way to get Lobster in her eggs benedict.

Lobster Bake

After extensive research and a couple of days of planning we pulled off our first Lobster Bake.

The Ingredients:

8 two pound lobsters
40 little neck clams
4 ears of corn
6 red potatoes
4 links of italian sausage
1 bag of rockweed seaweed
A bunch of kosher salt

The Plan:

We planned to steam everything together except for the lobsters. I don’t have a pot big enough to do 8 lobsters and all the other stuff so we decided to boil the lobsters four at a time in their own pot. Since we were doing all this outside we just fired up the grills and put the a pot on each grill until the heat was right.

First we put water into both pots with a good amount of kosher salt. Then we started the steam pot first, using a steamer rack, I set the the majority of seaweed down first, then the potatoes and corn. On top of the corn I put the rest of the seaweed and then I put the sausage on top. Finally we added the little neck clams which we put in cheese cloth to keep them together. This did leave room to probably do four lobsters but not the whole eight. I let the steaming go for about 30 minutes and then I began the boiling on with the other pot. Once I got the second pot to a boil I put in 4 lobster and when they were done I moved them over to the steam pot while I finished the other 4 lobster in the boil. This way everything was hot and done completely at the same time.

Side Notes:

* The full set of pictures are on Flickr here.
** The rockweed is key, regular seaweed won’t really cut it. Rockweed has small pockets of air throughout the leaves that burst and produce steam as it heats. This is what really brings the smell/taste/vide of the sea to the lobster boil.
*** When I do this next year I’d like to either get a bigger pot or split the whole process equally into two pots. That way I could steam all of the lobster with the rest of the food.
**** We got all of our seafood from Dirk’s Fish and Gourmet Shop here in Chicago. We were able to place an order for everything we wanted on Monday and it was all ready to go and fresh Saturday morning. Dirk’s was on point enough to give me a call first thing in the morning to let me know that the Great Neck Clams I ordered weren’t good but they could substitute them for Little Neck Clams which were farm raised. This was a plus in my book as I didn’t have to worry about cleaning the clams and getting all the sand out.
*** The aftermath:

Black Hand Productions

By Nik Bronder

Tag Archives: Lobster

New England: Boston, MA.

New England: Bar Harbor, ME

Lobster Bake