A Lobster's Tale

There are certain givens in life: If you own a Rolex, then you’ve got one bitchin’ great watch to tell you what time it is. If the car you tool around town is a Porsche, then you’ve got a few jealous glances coming your way, for sure. And if your house that overlooks the canyon has eight rooms or more, then your palate is probably used to being treated to what are considered some of the more expensive treats on the menu at fine restaurants. And those treats would of course, include…lobster.

For myself I’m pretty much willing to try anything once. There is a certain weight to that statement after living for a year in Korea and three years in the Philippines. For example, a step in the preparation of some dishes in Korea includes burying rotten cabbage in clay pots over the course of the summer, which, under the hot Korean sun, puts a scent in the air that is never confused with a bed of roses. In all fairness though, once prepared, kimchi is quite tasty, whereas balut, or a Philippine rotten egg, is not.

That being said, we come back to lobster. My dad loved seafood. My mother and sister’s were so so. With the exception of tuna fish and clams. I didn’t love seafood. Tragic if for no other reason than I’m a native New Englander, growing up near the beach and fishing whenever I could. But as a lad in my teen years, I gave lobster its first try. It was a wash, a no go. Hated it. Everyone else raved about it. And that, I might add, is the general consensus that lobster is a delicacy, and one should embrace it. Nope, I thought it sucked. Over the years I gave it four more tries. More than anything else (food anyway). In such places as Maine (reputedly the best), a couple of different locations in the Pacific, and Boston. And my opinion has never waivered. Lobster sucks. In life, it is a scavenger that hangs around the ocean floor where all the ocean shit is and in death whenever I’ve tried to eat lobster, or crab, I’m thinkin’ this is like ocean shit, I’m sorry! I don’t get it. I don’t see the draw. Even with the melted butter. I’m sorry, get it outta here.

I truly believe that lobster has such a great reputation because of myth built up around it, that it is somehow special. Sorry, but the way I see it, it ain't happenin'. What I find annoying is how folks will go on about how great it is. “Maybe yours just wasn’t good”. You’re right, it sure wasn’t, and that would include every other time as well.

On the seafood front I'm trying to expand my horizons and have started preparing seafood that so far has worked out okay. Because fish is good for you, blah, blah, blah.

Hey, you like lobster, fine. I don’t. And I’m not missing out, either.

If this had been about pizza, it would have gone in a much more positive direction, oh yeah.