Are all lobsters created equal?

The delicacy taste subtly different up and down the Maine coast. Or does it?

Thurston’s Lobster Pound, Bass Harbor Maine

My wife asked me an intriguing question last week. At least it qualified as an intriguing question when you’re well along in a marriage and she was doing her best to uphold her part of the contract by making conversation. Or maybe she was genuinely interested.

We were sitting at Thurston’s, a lobster pound overlooking Bass Harbor on Mount Desert Island in Maine, and I was about to tear into my steamed one-and-a-quarter-pound hard-shell lobster. Or perhaps I’d already wrested the meat out of claw No. 1 with a lobster cracker and one of those slim, complimentary plastic lobster picks, dipped it in butter and deposited it in my mouth.

By the way, do people, other than toddlers, use lobster bibs anymore? I don’t. They often come with the meal but I rarely see anyone wearing one. They seem a 1950s anachronism, though the gesture is appreciated.

Debbie’s question was this: Did the lobster splayed before me taste better, worse, or about the same as the lobster I’d had the previous evening at a restaurant in Rockland, Maine? As I alternated bites of butter drenched lobster meat, potato chips and coleslaw I gave the question careful thought. At least to the extent that my brain was capable of processing anything beyond the feathery delight of fresh lobster with the accompanying sides.

Frankly, I’d have much preferred french fries to potato chips, but that’s a separate issue and one I’m not prepared to address quite yet.

Lobster rolls are a different kettle of crustaceans. If Debbie had asked me whether the lobster roll I had at Bagaduce Lunch the previous afternoon, a roadside stand in Penobscot, was superior to the one I thoroughly enjoyed on our first night in Maine at McLoons Lobster Shack in Thomaston — in total I consumed two lobsters, two lobster rolls and one lobster salad during our week-long trip — I might have been able to answer with greater confidence. That’s because there’s far more discretion involved in the preparation of lobster rolls than there is in whole lobsters. Beyond whether to boil, steam, bake or fry them.

Some rolls have more or less lobster meat, more or less claw than tail meat. And then there’s the recipe itself. What’s the ratio of mayo to lobster? Do they include fillers like celery, which I strenuously frown upon? And did you request butter rather than mayo. Or perhaps both?

One could probably even devote a college dissertation to the type of bun employed. What’s preferable — a classy brioche bun or a standard hot dog roll? And toasted, and possibly buttered, or not?

After dignifying my spouse’s question with way more thought than necessary — by now I’d downed the second claw and was wrestling to extricate the tail meat, a delicacy that represents a dietary definition of nirvana — I answered that I thought the previous night’s lobster was marginally better.

But that might have simply been circumstance. We’d been looking for a place for dinner. But our first choice, the Dip Net restaurant overlooking the Monhegan ferry dock in Port Clyde, was closed for the night, as were most of the other local restaurants, because they were staffing a fundraiser on behalf of some worthy cause. Though, I don’t know what could be worthier than supplying my lobster fixation.

After rooting around unsuccessfully for a place to eat in Rockland we chanced upon Hill’s Seafood, where my lobster was succulent and included both fries and coleslaw. There’s frankly no comparison, in my opinion, between a lobster accompanied by french fries and one where you’re handed an individual serving size bag of potato chips.

I love potato chips. But fries turn a lobster into a meal and something more. It’s like the difference between a solo performer and two-part harmony. The tastes and textures play off each other. Lobster, by definition, is an indulgence. Lobster combined with french fries, especially well executed fries — light brown and slightly crisp, not beige and starchy — overloads the senses. It makes you happy to be alive. It makes you believe that nature isn’t indifferent to human suffering, after all.

I suppose there’s also the issue of terroir, the characteristic flavor the natural environment lends food and wine. I couldn’t find much, if anything, online addressing lobsters and terroir, which sort of surprised me. If nothing else the ocean was colder off Mount Desert Island than it was in Tenants Harbor, the first stop on our journey, and a couple of hours further south.

When I went swimming in the ocean in the latter it was cold but refreshing. Taking a dip further north on a day trip to Great Gott Island, with the mountains of Acadia National Park rising across the sea, came with trigger warnings from my central nervous system that it refused to be held responsible for my stupidity.

Lobsters are obviously better acclimated to the Gulf of Maine than I am but it seems logical that the differing water temperatures, not to mention their diets — whatever lobsters scavenge — might cause crustaceans up and down the Maine coast to taste subtly different from each other.

My father, a gourmand, was convinced that European lobster couldn’t compare to its American cousin. His opinion had to be taken with a grain of salt, or rather salt water, because he’d gone to camp in Maine and had fond memories of the experience. But I’d have to agree with him. French Breton lobster, for example, while I wouldn’t snub it, is chewier and sweeter than Maine’s finest. And altogether inferior, if you ask me.

The reason Maine lobster powers the state’s tourist economy is that it engages the senses on multiple levels. Most of all, it manages to meld sophistication and complexity with the shoot-from-the–hip working class ethos of something like a cheeseburger. It’s no coincidence that french fries go equally well and elevate both lobsters and burgers.

My final lobster in Maine actually came in the form of a picnic salad on Gott’s. Our friend Pedro Leitao, a gifted amateur chef, spends July in Seal Harbor, Maine, and cooks so much lobster during his vacation that he buys it in bulk, keeping the critters caged and well fed off his moored Boston Whaler until he’s ready to cook it.

The biggest problem with lobster, as with similar controlled substances, is the despondency you feel when you run out. But Pedro makes so much lobster — most of it choice tail meat deliciously blended with mayo and dill and probably other ingredients — that he’s able to create an unprecedented culinary tourist experience. There’s no cause for anxiety because there’s always way more lobster than even the most dedicated glutton can consume.

Pedro courteously also supplied the picnic with a 14-oz. party size bag of Cape Cod kettle chips. When you don’t have to stress over how much lobster is left, potatoes — french fries or chips — become an afterthought.