If you ever have the opportunity to visit Maine in the summer, particularly Mount Dessert Island (home to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park), you’ll be treated so weather most Texans would beg for in late October. More importantly, you get to eat your fill of one of the best sandwiches on the planet, the lobster roll.
Thanks to Maine’s bounty of plentiful lobster, a shop or truck or house selling fresh crustacean on a buttery brioche roll is on damn near every corner. On a recent trip to the area with friends, I was able to experience this uniquely New England delicacy first hand. And it got me to wondering if we have anything close to it in Houston.
I wrote about the delightful roll at Maine-ly Sandwiches back in 2018 as part of my ongoing love affair with anything crammed between two pieces of bread. I loved it because I love lobster and I love buttered bread, so no brainer. Having now had the “real thing” on the northeastern Atlantic coast, how would it compare. Before getting to that, let’s talk about what makes a lobster roll a Maine lobster roll.
The counter at Beal’s Lobster Pier in Southwest Harbor, Maine.
Jeff Balke
On Mount Dessert Island, a beautiful forested dot on the map where you often drive in and out of Acadia without even realizing it, there are a handful of things you can find without trying: fire wood (they often refer to it as camp wood), which you can honestly use year round, fresh pies and eggs, something people sell out of their homes and churches for extra cash, and lobster right out of the Atlantic.
While crossing over onto the island, we saw no fewer than five places with giant lobster pots outside of them, steam billowing out of the tiny smokestacks. In most places, you pick your lobster fresh from an open aquarium of sorts. They steam it and you can get it to go or eat it on the spot. For the rolls, you don’t pick an actual animal, but it’s still fresh and delicious.
The warm, buttery roll at Beal’s.
Jeff Balke
The typical roll is four to six ounces of lobster meat served on a brioche roll with the sides sliced flat and cooked on a flattop in butter. The lobster can be served any number of ways: hot, cold, in butter, with mayo, spicy, mixed with crab, with lettuce and without. The standard is lobster heated in butter and plopped onto the roll just like that. Maybe a squeeze of lemon and that’s it. Trust me, the warmed in butter version is better than cold with mayo (how it is served) even if you like the idea of it.
I ate a handful of them while on the trip, the first at a diner-slash-candy-shop called Goldenrod, in the quaint little beachside village of York on the way up from Boston. Theirs was great though the lobster bisque and clam chowder were better, the best we had the entire trip in fact.
The famous roll at Thurston’s Lobster Pound with lobster stew in Bernard, Maine.
Jeff Balke
The two standouts were Beal’s Lobster Pier in Southwest Harbor and Thurston’s Lobster Pound in Bernard. Both on the water where you can literally watch the tides rise and fall 10 feet in a single day. Both were buttery and delicious. I lean only slightly towards Beal’s version because it was unadulterated with nothing on it but butter, and just out-of-this-world good, but Thurston’s, which is frequently ranked as one of the best in Maine, was no slouch.
The dozens of traps stacked all over the island and houses adorned with colorful floats that serve as buoys to mark where traps are dropped, aren’t just there for decoration. They are used year round to harvest one of Maine’s most important exports and it was readily apparent that every bite of lobster we got was pulled from the water not long before we ate it.
Upon returning to the brutal heat of Houston’s summer, I thought it was only fair I head over to Maine-ly and see if it compared. It’s pretty unfair to trade a harbor side haunt in 70-degree Maine for a strip mall off a freeway in 95-degree Houston, but it’s what we got.
While not a perfect lobster roll, Maine-ly’s is damn close to the one’s in New England.
Jeff Balke
What I will say about Maine-ly is that they absolutely got the concept right. The soft buttery roll sliced on the sides and the sweet chunks of fresh lobster are on point. Like most things in our state, there was more meat than typically served in Maine itself. There, the rolls are pretty small and even four ounces could set you back $30 or more. So, the $18 price tag at Houston’s lobster roll spot was a welcome sight.
And while it certainly scratched the itch, with all due respect, it’s not Beal’s or Thurston’s. They provide melted butter on the side, but having the lobster warmed in the butter is really tough to beat, and it didn’t feel like it was seasoned beyond a bit of cracked pepper. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but there’s something about the lobster in Maine that has better flavor — maybe it is the fresh-from-the-Atlantic nature of it, but it’s…different.
Still, I’m not mad at Maine-ly Sandwiches. It’s more than passable and is a lot cheaper than a journey to Bar Harbor. But, if you want the real thing, unfortunately, you’re going to need to take a trip. Believe me, it’s worth it.