Tramel's travel blog: Lobster BLT & leather shopping in beautiful, rainy Camden, Maine
We sat down for lunch Wednesday at Peter Ott’s on the Water, a seafood restaurant on the wharf of beautiful Camden, Maine, and the Lobster BLT jumped off the menu.
In Maine, you can get your lobster in many ways. Lobster pizza. Lobster quesadillas. Lobster stew. Lobster mac’n cheese. Lobster tacos. Lobster ice cream. Lobster risotto (be still my heart).
America has no stronger state/food connection than Maine with lobster, though I suppose Idaho’s potatoes, Maryland’s crab cakes and Louisiana’s gumbo want a seat at the table.
Maine lobsters are a billion-dollar industry. An estimated $890 million worth of lobsters were harvested in 2021, and virtually every restaurant, no matter the type of food, carries at least one lobster item. And when they don’t, the eateries feel the need to publicize it – in Bar Harbor on Tuesday, I saw a sign in front of a Chinese food joint with a hand-written sign that said, “No Lobster.”
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What to know about Maine lobster
Lobster facts and figures are abundant in Maine. Many restaurants tell the lobster story on their menus.
∎ Lobsters can live to be 100 years old (are we eating old lobsters or young lobsters?);
∎ During Colonial days, lobsters were plentiful and were the food for the poor (the ultimate example of irony);
∎ A lobster’s brain is in its throat, and lobsters taste with their feet (insert your own joke here);
∎ Lobsters are a great source of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids (we’ve got a language malfunction when something called “fatty acids” can be good for you);
∎ 3½ ounces of lobster is only 96 calories and about two grams of fat (give me 30 ounces);
∎ Lobsters can grow up to four feet long and weigh as much as 40 pounds (after the wallet hit from three days of eating Maine lobster, I figure a 40-pounder would set you back about the cost of LeBron James’ new contract);
∎ Lobsters aren’t red; in nature, they can be green, yellow or even bright blue. They turn red when cooked (who wouldn’t?).
But bottom line, lobsters are incredibly tasty. Locals buy lobster from fish markets and cook them themselves, saving a bunch of money. Seems the best way to go, because it’s not like restaurants are doing the hard part by boiling the lobsters for you. The tough job remains, when you have to break the shell and extract the luscious meat yourself.
Hence, the popularity of the lobster roll, the soft-bread sandwich stuffed with lobster meat. Frankly, lobster rolls are a better deal. They are not labor intensive.
Anyway, Maine has figured out how to market lobsters in a variety of ways, and so there sat the Lobster BLT on the Peter Ott’s menu. Trish the Dish and I were hooked.
She ordered the Lobster BLT, I ordered the large fried haddock, then we shared the entrees.
And the Lobster BLT was exactly as billed. A bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, only with lobster chunks serving as the base. Scrumptious. Simply scrumptious.
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The haddock was great, too. Haddock is kind of like Tony Casillas playing with the Boz. Everybody raves about the lobster Boz, but the haddock might be the best thing that comes out of the Gulf of Maine.
And haddock is much cheaper. The haddock dinner, even the large, was $28. The Lobster BLT, with a side of fries, was listed as market price; turns out the market price was $37.
The Portland Press Herald offered a tutorial on market price fluctuations. “The price of lobster is generally higher in the spring because supply is low. Many lobstermen are still gearing up for the season and fewer are out harvesting. Further, only more expensive hard-shell lobsters are sold, because lobsters haven’t molted yet. Once the lobsters start shedding, soft-shell lobsters become available. Those fetch a lower price at the dock, because there is less meat in the shells.”
I’m sure I have failed to adequately describe lobster’s impact on the state of Maine. Every restaurant serves lobster. Seemingly every street corner has a lobster shack, be it a legitimate shack or just a restaurant with a walkup window. Lobster imagery dominates commerce.
In Oklahoma, we’ve got tons of Mexican food culture and tons of barbeque culture, and it’s nothing like Maine’s lobster culture. Not even close.
Lobster is expensive. It’s a delicacy. But it tastes great, and it’s one of the reasons you come to Maine.
Coastal villages in Maine worth the trip
Of course, another reason you come to Maine is for the coastal villages, and we thoroughly enjoyed Camden.
The Penobscot Bay town of 5,200 triples in population during the summer, as vacationers descend, many of them wealthy Northeasterners from Boston, Philadelphia and New York. The historic High Street district features 19th-century homes, the Camden Public Library’s landscaped amphitheater and the restored Camden Opera House.
Camden’s scenic inner harbor, where we had lunch, is filled with a variety of sailboats, and the outer harbor is home to Curtis Island, with its 1830s lighthouse.
The inner harbor is filled by the Megunticook River, which rushes water over a spillway after meandering through the scenic town.
And Trish the Dish found the shopping much better in Camden than in Bar Harbor, with all kinds of unique stores that were a big upgrade from the typical tourist traps.
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The day was gloriously vintage Maine. Rainy and in the 60s. We weren’t really prepared for the rain – the Dish had a cloth jacket, I had a sweatshirt – so we found a rain jacket for her and a cool hoodie for me at Fat Face, a British chain popular in the northeast U.S. We thoroughly charmed the sales associate, because I found a gorgeous coat and put it on (with no intention of buying it) and followed the Dish around the story for probably 60 seconds before she said something, “Have you seen anything you like?” Then she finally noticed the coat, and we both roared with laughter. It’s a running joke that I could paint my face purple and green stripes and she wouldn’t notice. The Fat Face employee was smitten with our revelry. We do have a good time.
We went into The Leather Bench, a leather store, family-owned for 52 years. Two brothers and a nephew run the place, and all were in the shop on Wednesday. It’s open seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, so it’s not a seasonal operation.
Unbelievable store. Jackets, bags, purses, wallets, briefcases, hats, belts, all kinds of leather goods. With that rich aroma. I could have stayed in there for hours.
A computer bag caught my eye, and I splurged. My current computer bag is big, bulky and not terribly functional. I’ve used it for seven or eight years, and it’s a constant source of frustration. At least twice a day.
Now, I’ll have a bag that is incredibly utilitarian, fabulous-looking and every day will remind me of a great afternoon in Camden, Maine.
Where is the University of Maine?
Our morning was good, too. Before leaving for Camden, we drove through downtown Bangor, an old city that remains a major commercial hub, being Maine’s third-largest city (32,000). Then we ventured up to the Bangor suburb of Orono, home of the University of Maine.
Not counting college students, Orono is a town of 11,000, with about that many Maine U. enrollees.
I just GPS’d University of Maine, and it took me straight to the Black Bears’ football stadium. I’m a sucker for any kind of gridiron, so we got out for some pictures, including Maine’s Memorial Gymnasium, a magnificent vintage fieldhouse, which is maybe 100 yards from the football field. Alas, the Black Bears no longer play basketball at Memorial; they play in Bangor, with a new coliseum planned. Bummer.
The rest of the campus was not particularly stunning. Looked more like a series of government buildings than the typical collegial university. And the University of Maine wasn’t established until 1865. It beat OU and OSU by only 25 years, even though Maine beat Oklahoma to statehood by 87 years (1820).
After leaving Camden late afternoon, we drove the five miles or so to Rockland, which we had come through late Monday afternoon. A local had told us Rockland was superior to Camden, but no way. Camden was much more charming. The Dish shopped a while, but everything closed up at 6 p.m.
So off we went to Portland, with a detour to check out Boothbay Harbor. We had heard quite a bit about it. We arrived in Boothbay at dusk and went looking for the harbor. Couldn’t find it. Literally couldn’t find it. Directional signs were everywhere for all kinds of things, including the Maine State Aquarium. But no harbor signs.
We headed down three primary roads that seemed promising. None led us to the harbor. Mapquest or GPS didn’t help.
I read a story Tuesday about a woman who had visited Bar Harbor and wrote the chamber of commerce complaining that there were too many tourists and wanted the town to do something about it. Yes, a tourist complaining about too many tourists.
But Boothbay apparently has done something about it. It made the harbor disappear, or at least difficult to find. I guess I could have pulled over and asked somebody at a Subway or an ice cream shop, but by then, my exasperation was ruling the day. I said screw it, Boothbay’s loss.
We rolled into Portland about an hour later and checked into our downtown hotel right on the water. The Portland waterfront is easy to find. More of Maine to come.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Maine lobsters a billion-dollar industry as state's primary identify
