I’m about to do something I will probably regret, but here it is anyway: there is a place 45 minutes east of New York where, come the summer, you can buy lobster straight from the guy who sells it wholesale to all the best restaurants in the city, at a fraction of the retail price.
Every year it’s the same: we get in the car, drive out to Long Beach and, just as the seagulls start to hover in numbers, pull off the highway and down a shabby-looking road with abandoned buildings and vacant lots on either side. When the road runs out, there’s a lonely-looking structure with a name painted on the side – Jordan Lobster Farms – and a concession stand out front, selling surf’n’turf at the regular prices.
The key is to walk around the back, to the shed where they keep the lobster tanks – scores and scores of lugubrious creatures, moving around in the underwater gloom – and ask one of the men in plastic overalls and gumboots to fish out a specimen and weigh it for you. If you know to ask, they will deliver. (And because you’re buying at source, you can ask for things you wouldn’t dream of asking in a restaurant: “Do you have a girl lobster? I like the roe.”) They will boil it and split it and bring it out to you at one of the picnic tables overlooking the water, where you will glance at the other diners and feel smug about beating the system.
Don’t ask me how this loophole has evolved. I have no idea. And the gift of this place really isn’t mine to give; I was let in by someone who has known about it for years and whose identity must be protected. The whole scene is like the movie Eyes Wide Shut, but with more crustaceans.
The place brings me so much joy, however, that I can’t keep it myself. Last year, when I was pregnant, I ate a 3.5lb monster all by myself. I felt bad about the roe.
And now it’s nearly that time again, the first Saturday of summer that hits 80 degrees – and with it, my favorite question of the year: “Wanna go to Jordan’s?”
I do.
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Jordan Lobster Farms, 1 Pettit Pl, Island Park, NY 11558; (516) 889 3314
