I began collecting restaurant recommendations from riders at some point early in my Uber tenure. If someone seemed particularly chatty, I would ask if they wanted to tell me a single restaurant that was their favorite. Any place. Just one.

This invariably resulted in someone blurting out one place that was embedded in their culinary soul. Yet, some insisted on giving me three or four. (What mood? Genre? Day of week?) I accepted these, too.

From this single question I’ve gotten HUNDREDS of rider restaurant and food related picks - from locals, tourists, out-of-towners, students, etc. As you might expect, of all the places riders discussed, lobster and ‘lobstah’ rolls were the most talked about. I’ve gotten over 60 recommendations for lobster related establishments in Boston and surrounding regions.

As a Boston area Uber/Lyft driver, we are allowed to pick up rides in any New England state. In this post, and those to come, you will see establishments that are not just in Boston but also in New Hampshire and Maine. If it can be seen by the side of the road it qualifies for the Boston Auto Tour.

I will break it all up into a series to make it easier to digest.

HOW THE HUMBLE LOBSTER CLAWED ITS WAY UP THE BOSTON FOOD CHAIN

By Edward Moran and James Lantos

Baltimore has its crabcakes, Philly its cheesesteaks, and Alaska its king crab. That’s pretty stiff competition for Boston, whose chief culinary boast used to be “the home of the bean and the cod.” That 1910 toast by John Collins Bossidy served notice to the nation that the Athens of America was--despite its Parker House rolls and hasty pudding-- pretty much of a culinary backwater.

After all, ain’t it the truth that, for generations, Bostonians and Bay Staters thought the closest thing to gourmet heaven was their traditional Saturday evening repast of baked beans, heavy on the molasses? It is only in recenter years that lobster—and its lobster roll offshoot—has established its pedigree as one of Boston’s signature culinary offerings.

Such was not always the case for the homely lobster, which was since colonial times considered a dish fit only for prisoners, household pets, and the poor. That’s possibly because seafood in general was associated with the poor Irish Catholic immigrants who began flooding Boston after the Famine in the mid-19th century. It took a century or more for the lobster to claw its way up to the tables of the rich and famous, so that in 2004 David Foster Wallace could famously write “Lobster is posh, a delicacy, only a step or two down from caviar.”

Two things happened to facilitate the aristocratic rise of the lobster from peonage to aristocracy on the American table. In the late nineteenth century, the Transcontinental Railroad began serving the dish as a kind of “mystery meat” on its cross-country trains, hoping that passengers from far-flung regions would have been unaware of the lobster’s lowly reputation in New England. Their ploy worked: before long, Southerners and Midwesterners began to think of lobster as a epicurious item from “Back East.”

Then, in the post-WWII years, the Maine lobster industry began pursuing aggressive marketing campaigns that portrayed the lobster in a kind of rags-to-riches scenario: here’s a creature harvested by crusty old sailors with corncob pipes and mackinaws that’s now the food du jour preferred by starlets and socialites alike. (Maine, after all, had been part of Massachusetts until it became a state all its own in 1820, so its Boston pedigree cannot be entirely disputed.) There is something quintessentially American in this saga.

The same can be said for the more modest lobster roll, which emerged in the mid-1900s as a kind of poor cousin to its relative born with a silver lobster fork in its mouth, served up with drawn butter to bib-wearers wielding sacred utensils like claw crackers. The lobster roll is proletarian all the way, served up in top-slit hot dog buns and often with a slathering of mayonnaise. It is fast-food for the plebs on the move: too busy to engage in the leisurely rituals of a lobster feast.

There are two types of lobster rolls: Maine Style (its very name connotes salt-sea authenticity) and Connecticut Style (a name suggesting a more suburbanized approach to the dish). The Maine variety is made of steamed lobster meat that is left to cool and then lightly seasoned with mayonnaise. It’s served at room temperature or chilled. The Connecticut version is served warm, usually with drawn butter instead of mayonnaise.

Food historians claim, in the Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, that the Connecticut style was actually the original lobster roll, served up as early as 1929 at Perry’s Restaurant in Milford. The Maine variation seems to have originated around 1970 at roadside stands Down East, such as Red’s Eats. Both varieties are nowadays served up at hostelries throughout New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, as well as eastern Long island, where lobstering is also part of the local economy.

So, maybe you enjoy your lobster in a chic supper club in Manhattan, or maybe at a salt-sprayed emporium on the Maine Coast. Or maybe you just grab a pair of lobster rolls after surfing at Revere Beach. Whatever the venue, you’ll be savoring a tasty treat that has risen from its lowly origins to being one of the Boston area’s signature dishes.

Lobster and Lobster Rolls, Pt. 1

A Ride In Arlington & The Secret Panoramas Of Boston

Screen Shots - Long Rides