If ever in the Portland area, the Bite into Maine food truck (Portland Head Light) has the best lobster roll in the city, IMO.
OT: One can no longer boil a lobster alive in Switzerland
- Thread starter Class of 67
- Start date
If ever in the Portland area, the Bite into Maine food truck (Portland Head Light) has the best lobster roll in the city, IMO.
Yeah, but a dolphin once told me that lobsters can sign with the best of them.
Now you're just being shellfish.
BTW, what's the difference between a dirty bus stop and a lobster with boobs?
Portland is my home town. I haven't tried the truck, but I know which one you mean.
I was worried about it being a tourist trap, but after asking several locals (all of whom gave the same answer--Bite into Maine) I decided to try it. Amazing stuff--not the cheapest lobster roll, but worth every penny.
Side note: I love Portland. Why the heck did you move?!?!?!
My folks moved to PA when I was 17- in hindsight, I should have stayed behind. I never loved PA, and still love Maine. I'm old school on lobster rolls- no mayo allowed. There are three ingredients- lobster, roll, and butter. A small leaf of lettuce is acceptable, only to keep the butter from soaking the roll.
I hear you--Maine is one of the most beautiful "things" I've ever seen. Two Lights State Park is probably my favorite so far.
The wife and I went for the first time a couple of years ago--she always wanted to go for some reason, I was never "in" to it. Ended up planning it as a surprise anniversary trip and as soon as I set foot in Portland, I fell in love. We plan to go every year in leaf season, and try to do a puffin trip one of these summers.
We talk about moving there all the time. Not sure the opportunity would ever present itself, but if it does, it's one we'd strongly consider. There aren't a ton of well paying jobs outside of health care and LL Bean, so we'll see what happens.
God I wish I could visit the Post House Tavern. Nothing like eating spaghetti there as a kid watching those crustaceans float around.
I was at a bed and breakfast off the coast of Maine. The proprietor told us about a time not too long ago,(80 years) lobster was so plentiful, there was a state law enacted that you could only feed lobster to prisoners three times a week.
David Foster Wallace, in considering the Lobster Question (“Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”), noted that the issues of “whether and how different kinds of animals feel pain, and of whether and why it might be justifiable to inflict pain on them in order to eat them, turn out to be extremely complex and difficult,” and many can’t actually be resolved satisfactorily. How do you know what agony means to a lobster? Still, he said, “standing at the stove, it is hard to deny in any meaningful way that this is a living creature experiencing pain and wishing to avoid/escape the painful experience… To my lay mind, the lobster’s behavior in the kettle appears to be the expression of a preference; and it may well be that an ability to form preferences is the decisive criterion for real suffering.”
And lobsters are a trickier case than other more complex creatures, since they’re freaky and difficult to empathize with. As we speak of higher-order creatures who have anatomy and behavioral traits more closely paralleling our own, there is at least good evidence to suggest that various nonhuman animals can experience terrible pain. (Again, hardly anyone would deny this with dogs, and once we accept that we just need to be willing to carry our reasoning through.) Once we accept that these beings experience pain, it next becomes necessary to admit that humans inflict a lot of it on them.
(Jeremy Bentham’s formulation is still powerful and hard to escape: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?“)
The difficulty of avoiding this conclusion is what disturbed David Foster Wallace during his time at the Maine Lobster Festival. He realized that it seemed preachy and extreme, but as a thoughtful and philosophically rigorous individual, he couldn’t escape the morally troubling implications of boiling lobsters alive. The lobsters just didn’t seem to want to be killed, and however normalized the practice may be, however easily we may take it for granted that these creatures are of little moral worth, once you begin to scrutinize these assumptions, to see that they’re built on very little, and that a creature does seem to be experiencing something resembling pain, it becomes tough to defend our actions.
And lobsters are a trickier case than other more complex creatures, since they’re freaky and difficult to empathize with. As we speak of higher-order creatures who have anatomy and behavioral traits more closely paralleling our own, there is at least good evidence to suggest that various nonhuman animals can experience terrible pain. (Again, hardly anyone would deny this with dogs, and once we accept that we just need to be willing to carry our reasoning through.) Once we accept that these beings experience pain, it next becomes necessary to admit that humans inflict a lot of it on them.
(Jeremy Bentham’s formulation is still powerful and hard to escape: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?“)
The difficulty of avoiding this conclusion is what disturbed David Foster Wallace during his time at the Maine Lobster Festival. He realized that it seemed preachy and extreme, but as a thoughtful and philosophically rigorous individual, he couldn’t escape the morally troubling implications of boiling lobsters alive. The lobsters just didn’t seem to want to be killed, and however normalized the practice may be, however easily we may take it for granted that these creatures are of little moral worth, once you begin to scrutinize these assumptions, to see that they’re built on very little, and that a creature does seem to be experiencing something resembling pain, it becomes tough to defend our actions.
Last edited:
Lobster is terribly overrated and overpriced. Hell, you have to dip it in melted butter. Give me prime rib anytime, and I don’t care how the cow was slaughtered.
