Originally published in the Hartford Courant July 2024
Connecticut is the birthplace of the submarine, the Colt revolver, the Frisbee, the can opener and the cotton gin. But the state’s most important contribution to American culture is the hot buttered lobster roll. In fact, considering that in-a-roll with butter is the way most people eat lobster today, I’d argue that Connecticut is much more richly deserving of the Lobster Land name than Maine.
This is a recent development in Connecticut’s 235-year history. As a reporter covering food for the New Haven Register in the 1980s, I was always at a loss when asked to opine on Connecticut’s signature foods by magazine writers who must have wished they had called someone else. Half the dishes I could think of were not unique to Connecticut and/or were based on spurious origin claims. I mean, New Haven pizza is great but Italy deserves at least partial credit, right?
The more unique offerings — shad, shad roe, steamed cheeseburgers — aren’t even liked by most residents. I mean, how many people bite into a juicy cheeseburger hoping for something like meatloaf? (Which is what a steamed cheeseburger most closely resembles, if you’ve heeded all the haters and refrained.)
As for Connecticut’s Nutmeg State moniker: That is apparently based on shady Connecticut salesmen’s skill at passing off wood “seeds” as scrape-able nutmeg during Colonial days, an era where that spice seems to be permanently mired, judging from its use in eggnog, rice pudding and many other dishes you’ll never see on TikTok.
Connecticut’s lack of culinary identity is related to the state’s lack of identity in general. Connecticut is sort of the Florida of New England, in the sense of being home to a lot of people from elsewhere. (The Connecticut state motto — “Qui transtulit sustinet”— “He who transplanted still sustains” — acknowledges the problem while trying to lend a positive spin.)
Traditionally people come to Connecticut to go to expensive schools, where they acquired rich-people accents that many people mistake for Yankee.
There is also the state’s much-discussed geographic divide between the rich people who live in the West and work and worship sports teams in New York; and those who live in New Haven-on-east who think of themselves as New Englanders and root for the Patriots and the Red Sox.
But whether rich or poor, from West or East, almost all Nutmeggers agree that lobster rolls should be hot and bathed with melted butter. It’s the only way you can get them at local lobster roll legends the Lobster Shack in East Haven, Liv’s Shack in Old Saybrook, Lobster Landing in Clinton, and Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale in Madison and Westbrook. Asked about mayo lobster rolls, Lobster Shack owner Nick Crismale responded, “That’s like putting mayo on caviar. Why would you do that?”
Nutmeggers’ take on this dish dates back to the 1920s at a Milford restaurant whose name I did not know until after I wrote a story about lobster rolls for the Register in 1996 and received a boatload of mail and phone calls from people who remembered Perry’s.
All those stories now on the Internet calling Harry Perry the inventor of the hot buttered lobster roll? I trace them back to my follow-up interview with Harry’s stepdaughter. I sent that story to Dictionary of American Food and Drink author John Mariani with the suggestion that he update his mayo-centric lobster roll entry to include Perry’s. Which he did (brilliant food writer and judge of food writing talent that he is).
My original story also noted the Great Lobster Roll Divide: From Connecticut-Rhode Island border on up through northern Maine at that time lobster rolls meant one thing and one thing only: cold lobster mixed with mayonnaise and diced celery nestled on a lettuce-topped hot dog bun i.e. a lobster salad roll.
That’s why the most striking non-clam-related discovery of my recent visits to New England seafood shacks to research my new Great Clam Cake and Fritter Guide was of the number of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine clam shacks that now offer hot buttered lobster rolls credited to Connecticut as an option to mayo (and sometimes rolls with mayo and butter, presumably for the FMOers).
Let’s pause from all the hand-wringing over Bridgeport election chicanery, climate change et al. to celebrate one thing that is actually better than it used to be.
Apparently while I was away in my new hometown of Philadelphia eating cheesesteaks in the first decade of the aughts, high-end chefs like Jasper White and Rebecca Charles and high-end food mags like Gourmet and Food & Wine got interested in lobster rolls and their preparation and acknowledged the obvious: Lobster has always been eaten with hot drawn butter because it’s better that way.
The cold mayonnaise salad lobster roll was, by contrast, a Depression-era creation of Mainers of modest means to disguise lobster meat of less than optimal quality. It evolved into a way for lobster shacks to profit off rolls containing as much mayo and celery fillers as lobster.
This is not the lobster dish of affluent, post-agricultural, post-industrial, post-cooking-at-home America.
Americans today are all about better-quality authentic eats that are also easy and convenient. And they’ll pay up to get it.
That explains why lobster rolls are at once now one of the most expensive and most popular dishes on seafood shack menus.
It also explains why The Clam Shack in Kennebunk, Maine, now sells four times as much lobster as the seafood in its name and 10 times as many lobster rolls as whole lobsters.
(Delicious as they are, clams and lobster in their natural states are the opposite of Instagram and user-friendly.)
Here’s another possibly surprising fact: Most clam or seafood shacks in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine that now offer the option of a hot or cold lobster roll — which is most — sell far more Connecticut rolls than locally traditional mayonnaise ones. This is true of Arnold’s in Eastham, Mass., which claims to have started the hot buttered takeover of Cape Cod shacks in 2008, and the iconic Red’s Eats lobster shack of Wiscasset, Maine.
So, after more than 20 years away, I can now say that Nutmeggers have finally brought something wonderful to the New England table.
Maine may still be king of catching New England lobsters. But Connecticut knows what to do with them.
Wear your butter stains proudly.
(Photos courtesy Arnold’s of Eastham, Mass. and Liv’s Shack of Old Saybrook, CT)