This guy is a thief or an idiot.
But let me begin my story as follows. I'm throwing a party for my mother who is turning eighty. On the menu is lobster rolls (more on this later). I've got quite few other things on there as well. I've made thousands of lobster rolls in my life and cooked thousands of lobsters because I worked in the restaurant business for over a decade. So there's the setup.
I walk into this place and ask about whether they have large lobsters. Why large? Because the ratio of meat to shell gets better as the lobster gets bigger and they don't get tougher (contrary to what one might think). In other words, the bigger it is, the better the deal...
So the guy behind the counter says, oh sure, we have a bunch and proceeds to pull a 13lb pound lobster out of the tank. I'm thinking is a pretty impressive specimen and I can work with it. At the same time, in the back of my mind is another voice that is saying, "the water in that tank looks disgusting and the lobster may be huge but it looks barely alive." I did not listen to that voice. I said I'll take it. The guys behind the counter says, can I cook it for you? Here, the answer is always going to be the same. "Hell no." Seafood places always cook the hell out of lobsters and they turn to rubber bands. So even if all you want is steamed lobster, cook it yourself. It's as difficult as putting your lobster in a pot for about 8 minutes a lb (not the 20-30 they give it). Besides, you can eat lobster raw (it's a delicacy in sushi--if it's fresh) and when you are making lobster rolls, if you do it the right way, you par-cook the lobster which allows you to get the meat out of the shell, and then you finish it in a pan with butter before plopping it on your roll.
Here's where things get ugly. I get home and put the lobster in the fridge (Fresh lobster should say alive and ready to go for at least a couple of days in the fridge--if not more). The next day I cook the lobster for about thirty minutes. Enough time for it to get color and to loosen the flesh up. I then pull it out. I immediately know there's something wrong. The claws of this massive animal now weigh nothing. I break the tail off and the tail is essentially empty except for this little pile of shriveled soft goo. All the rest of the animal has completely dissolved and is now in the pot. None of this smells particularly good.
I already know what has happened but I do a little research to confirm. The answer is simple. Lobster that is old, dead and/or dying breaks down and the flesh essentially liquifies. So it's clear that this $180 lobster (yes, you read that right) was almost dead when I bought it and had been swimming around in this tank (or another tank) for a very long time.
I call Cap'n Frank's up and a perfectly nice woman answers. I explain the problem. She says she has to wait for the manager. I call back later and the manager in question doesn't even have the common courtesy to come to the phone. Instead, I speak to her, she relays the questions across the store to him and he yells back at her (furiously). I can hear him the whole time. His argument is that I didn't cook the lobster long enough, that he had offered to cook it, etc. He finally offered to give me a two pound lobster as compensation. I told him no...though my terms were a little more vulgar--sorry to the kind woman who was the intermediary but his behavior throughout this whole process was so insulting an unprofessional that there was no place of this to go but down.
Anyway, let me go back to the beginning of this epic yarn. I've been cooking lobster for decades. The meat of an "under-cooked" lobster does not turn to mush. It is translucent and sticky, like a raw shrimp. If you are a serious cook and you want to work with lobster meat that you are, say, going to cook into a dish (like lobster pasta, or thermidor, etc.) you par-cook it. The outside of the meat that is up against the shell gets cooked which allows you to remove the meat while the inside stays raw. Then you can chop it up, and sauté it (it only take a couple of minutes) until it is cooked through. Do this in butter with a little garlic, finish with chives, throw it on homemade brioche rolls.
Instead I'm told I don't know what I'm doing.
A) even if that were the case, and it's not, that's not how you treat a customer who just spent $180 at your shop.
and
B) either you have no clue what you are talking about in which case you should be in another business
or
C) you know exactly what you are talking about which means you knew the product was inedible. Which makes you a thief.
Either of these cases add up to a place that nobody should be frequenting.
Now back to the filthy water in the live tank. I should have followed my instincts from the very beginning and backed out of the place as soon as I saw that.
Let this hard lesson be a warning to you: buyer beware. read more
