Here’s How Eventide Oyster Co. in Maine Makes 700 Lobster Rolls a Day
Eventide Oyster Co. in Portland, Maine, makes one of the best lobster rolls in the country. Its brown-butter version is a perfectly savory and sweet take on the coastal classic, with flavors that stand out in a crowded market. But behind the sandwich is a whole lot of work.
Even before a lobster roll gets assembled in the kitchen, the restaurant has to acquire its crustaceans. That’s where Ready Seafood comes in. The company processes 500,000 to 600,000 pounds of lobster every week, the marine biologist and fisherman Curt Brown told Eater’s Vendors series in a new video. And some of that lobster goes straight to Eventide, among other restaurants in Maine and around the world.
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“Lobster is the economic driver of the coast of Maine,” Brown said. “Communities rely on this fishery for their survival. Without the lobster fishery, Maine would be a very different place.”
Ready Seafood catches many of its lobsters off the coast of Cape Elizabeth, before sending them to a processing facility. There, the lobsters wind their way through various machines after being broken down into tails, claws, bodies, and other parts. While diners are probably most familiar with lobster tails and claws, the other parts of the animal are also useful. The fishery turns bodies and legs into minced lobster, which can be used in ravioli, arancini, and egg rolls, among other foods. And Ready Seafood is hoping to find ways to take advantage of the valuable minerals found in lobster shells.
Of course, more traditional uses of lobster are more than welcome, and Ready Seafood enjoys working with its restaurant partners in Maine. “Being able to work with chefs and the culinary side of lobster is something that we’re really proud to do,” Brown said. “Eventide is an amazing restaurant. They take our lobster product and they put their own spin on it.”
At the restaurant, chef de cuisine Jared Leaman-Farley receives lobster every morning. After it’s poached in the commissary, it comes up to the kitchen in five-pound bags. That meat is then coated in a brown-butter sauce with a little salt and some lemon juice. Once ready, the lobster is placed in a homemade bao bun and topped with chives.
“The richness of the butter, that nice, nutty flavor, all of that really just complements the lobster meat well,” Leaman-Farley told Eater. “We sell about 700 lobster rolls a day in the summer.”
That’s an impressive amount of lobster to be going through each day. But for Brown, it’s really just the icing on the cake. He’d much rather be out on the water, doing the dirty work so that the rest of us can enjoy Eventide’s delicacy: “One of the things I love most about being on this planet is being able to untie my boat and harvest lobsters.”
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