Food Cart Review: Maine Street Lobster Company

Lobster roll (Photo credit)

Review: If you're in Portland, and you go to Red Lobster, you're wasting your money.  Actually, that's not a good analogy, because it really applies to any Red Lobster.  In Portland, it's especially true because of the amazing cart that is Maine Street Lobster Company.  I got a good-sized lobster slider and a cup of Boston-style (cream-based) clam chowder for ten dollars.  It was delicious.  The lobster here is shipped in from New England regularly so it is fresh.  They cook it well, too, with plenty of butter.  If you're looking for cheap lobster, go no further.


Geography: The story of lobster as food is a somewhat surprising one.  In ancient times and in Great Britain, lobster was as much of a delicacy as it is now.  In the United States, it started out differently.  At first, it was considered nothing more than cheap junk food, or bait.  It was reserved for people in poverty who could only afford lobster, and also for prison inmates.  Today, this sounds ridiculous, but back then, it was the equivalent of a Happy Meal that no one liked.

This changed with two events: the Civil War and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.  It became a food for soldiers in the Civil War, and became more widely accepted afterwards.  But what made it into a delicacy was the Transcontinental Railroad.  Many people in the western United States had not heard of lobster.  People going to the West Coast thought that if they served lobster to people on the West Coast, they could act as if it was a delicacy, and drive the prices sky-high.  They were right.  By the 1950s, it was considered a rich person's food instead of bait.


Photo credit:

1.   By Lee Coursey [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons