Maine-ly Food, Part I: What's for dinnah?

I have a new friend, Howard Solomon, in Bowdoinham Maine and have visited him a number of times over the last year. While the coast is beautiful and the small towns are picturesque, I had no intention of visiting Maine and not sampling local foods, whatever that turned out to be. You won't be surprised that it included lobster. But Maine's seafood stock (pun intended) is loaded with more than lobstah.

Maine's summer is short, so there is no Portland Tomato or Eastport Pepper. There are Maine potatoes, blueberries, and maple syrup. And you can fish most of the year for something, so chowders are staples. So is its pronunciation, as you see by this sign in Bowdoinham:

What kind of fish was in the chowdah was a mystery, but you can bet it had potatoes and milk as a base. In fact, making chowder at home is pretty easy when you have access to the following stuff--"fish parts 29¢/lb", "lobster bodies $1.50/bag"--sold in many seafood markets. I made a nice lobster stock for later:

This specials board from a Portland diner was a delight, with a lot of local catches-of-the-day: haddock baked and chowdered, local Jewell Island scallops, crabcakes, and steamed lobster. I assume that the nachos listed first would be a welcome change in Maine from all that boring, ordinary lobster. (Note to my New Orleans connections: shellfish are never ever boiled like they are in Louisiana; they're always steamed. And neither is anything herbed or spiced.)

The big deal here is the so-called lobster roll. It's basically lobster meat usually with mayo (alternately butter) on a soft hotdoggish roll. Lobster roll aficianodos argue whether a leaf of lettuce should go on the roll, but the anti-lettuce people tend to prevail. It's mostly a summer treat, an in-hand sandwich for warm-weather coastal slumming. If the lobster is fresh, it's wonderful. In my limited experience so far, most places use all claw meat, like the first one below from this diner (which cost $12.95). When I asked about it, their argument to me was that the claw meat is sweeter, and the red color is more visually appealing. Personally, I think it's because the claw meat is cheaper, so the profit margin is higher--tails get shipped to out-of-state markets, claws get put on lobster rolls. Ka-ching.

(Important Note: Lobster tails are technically not tails, but thoraxes, but they would never be called that because it's a dreadful word with no sex appeal, and it sounds like an animal from a Dr. Seuss story. Compare: "I'm eating some tail tonight" vs "I'm eating some thorax tonight." Hmm?)

But in Eastport, my friend there, Mary Jane, took me to a seafood shack that she swore made the best lobster rolls (which cost $13.95). You could watch them haul the lobsters in. I had one there that was mostly "tail" meat, garnished with a hunk of whole claw meat. In addition to mayo and butter, they also offered the option of miracle whip, I suppose for those watching their waistlines. In which case, I'd suggest they forego the chips and the sloppy slaw. I vote it the best I've tasted so far (which includes 4 different ones). The lobster guy wasn't bad, either.