This is an interesting editorial from the Boston Globe. What do you think about it?
Tasty Testing
By: Brian Mcgrory
Don’t get me wrong: I love Maine. I love the beauty of its harbors, the sensibility of its people, the cleanliness of its air.
But I have to ask: Who’s the certifiably obnoxious lunkhead up there who devised the “Certified Maine Lobster” program that the state began putting in place this month?
In short, the state, worried that “Maine lobster” has become too generic a term, has begun tagging all its lobsters with a logo affixed to their knuckles and plans to distribute posters to restaurants declaring that only Maine lobsters are served inside.
Look no further than Kristen Millar, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, for evidence the program has gone too far. “Make sure your lobster is from Maine,” she said at the kickoff. “Don’t buy an impostor lobster.”
Impostor lobster? So what they’re saying is that the men and women who work out of Cohasset, Scituate, Rockport, Hingham, Gloucester, people who go out in cold and heat, sun and rain, on seas that are calm and rough, that they’re hauling up pretend lobsters?
First thing I did was call Ed Hook of Hook Lobster on Atlantic Avenue, which carries lobster from everywhere. Hook knows lobster like Bill Gates knows software, so I asked what the difference was between lobsters from Maine and Massachusetts. “Nothing,” he said.
Maybe the people at the Maine Lobster Promotion Council could certify that.
Then I did something that I don’t recommend you try at home. I bought two buckets of lobster meat: one made up of Maine lobsters from the famous Clam Shack in Kennebunk, the other entirely of Massachusetts lobsters at Captain Marden’s in Wellesley. The Clam Shack churns out the best lobster rolls and fried clams in creation; Marden’s is purveyor to many of Boston’s elite dining establishments.
With the two unlabeled buckets in an Igloo cooler, I called on three of the city’s most famed chefs for a blind taste test. First stop, the fashionable Restaurant L, where Pino Maffeo, as gregarious as his food is refined, beckoned me into his kitchen.
He placed tails from the two buckets side-by-side on the stainless counter. “This looks like Maine,” he said, grabbing one. “The color is darker.” He picked it apart with his hands and took a bite.
Then he tasted the second. “This one has a brinier taste,” he said. He pointed at the first bucket and declared, “That one’s sweeter. Overall, I like it better.”
It’s from Massachusetts. Score one for the home team.
At the sophisticated No. 9 Park, Barbara Lynch is basically my idea of the perfect woman, not alone for how she makes her knee-buckling tagliatelle Bolognese. She met me in the café and cut right to the chase, sampling from both buckets with a careful eye and utensils.
Within seconds, she tapped a bucket with her fork and said Maine. Without waiting for a response, she added, “I like it better. It’s great. It’s so cold and salty, it’s like the ocean.”
It’s from Maine. Tie score.
Ken Oringer is the personable chef-owner at Clio, one of the most celebrated restaurants in town, though on this night I carry the Igloo into the dining room of his lively Spanish restaurant, Toro.
He took his time sampling the lobster, eyeing it, tasting it, regarding it. Of the first bucket, he said, “You can taste how clean the water is, very crisp, very natural. It’s simple, like lobster should taste, sweet and mild.” It’s from Massachusetts.
Of the second batch, he said, “This has a saltier flavor, fuller, richer. It’s Maine?”
It is.
I ask which he prefers, the moment of truth. “They’re both delicious,” he diplomatically replied. “For lobster in the rough, Maine is a better one. For a higher-end restaurant, the Massachusetts one. It’s milder, sweeter. It adapts to sauces.”
So in a scientific study, it comes out a tie, reason enough to ignore Maine’s obnoxious stunt.
I’ll conclude with a slogan, counter-intuitive as it might sound: Massachusetts, when sweetness counts.
Source: Boston Globe Editorials