Why I Don’t like Lobster

I was eating seafood with some friends a few nights ago when I noticed a few of them ordered lobster from the menu. Ordering lobster for many of us is a big deal. What other food besides caviar carries the prestige of a lobster dinner? “Should I really get it? It’s so expensive..,” they ask. But, usually the rich, sweet taste gets the better of them and they splurge in spite of the cost.

But I don’t like lobster.

I told people at the table the story of why I do not like lobster. They thought it was pretty funny. So I thought I’d share it with you too.

When I was about 22 I had a roommate named Scott who worked for a food packing Company. Specifically, he worked in the fish packing department in a large cold walk-in refrigerator. He would go in every morning with a snowsuit on which he wore all day long. He came back after work smelling like fish which wasn’t pleasant, but he did put his snowsuit out in the laundry room so the house wouldn’t smell like fish.

Anyway, one day I came home from work and found that Scott was practically jumping up and down with excitement over something. “Brad, call everybody you know, we’ve got all the lobster we can eat and more!!”

I wasn’t sure what Scott was talking about, but then he showed me this huge ice-packed case of lobster tails the boss sent home with him. “The boss said they had to be cooked and eaten in the next day or so. Let’s have a party!”

Remember that prestige thing? Suddenly, I too was caught up in lobster fever. Wow, not only was I going to get my first taste of lobster for the first time, I could be one of the heroes who let friends and family indulge as well… Life is good!

We knew very little about how to cook lobster, but I knew you were supposed to boil it. So I put a large pot full of water on the stove to boil.

While the water was heating, we both got on the phone and called everyone we knew. I called friends. I called family. Nobody was home. If we did reach someone, inevitably, they had plans. I called people I hadn’t seen for years. Scott called his ex-wife. Nobody could break away to get in on this rare opportunity to eat as much lobster as you could possibly want. Even our other roommate had to work!

So we thought we should eat some anyway. We boiled about 8 lobster tails. But there was still most of the case left!

After chowing down on the first 8, we started to become creative. “Hey let’s try broiling some in butter” I said. So we threw and eight more lobster tails into the oven to broil. Delicious! But not quite as yummy is the first four. In fact, I might have only eaten a bite or two and made an excuse to get back on the phone to call more people.

Luckily, a friend did stop by so she got to partake in the “lobster-fest”. But we still had plenty left to cook.

This is where it gets really bad. We boiled and broiled until it got boring, but what should we do with so many more tails?

That’s where the beer and our lack of lobster cooking expertise became all too obvious. It might be a sin what we did with the lobster tails during the next cooking cycle. We came to the brilliant conclusion that the best thing to do now was to substitute lobster for hamburger in our two boxes of Cheeseburger Macaroni Hamburger Helper. Yes, that Hamburger Helper.

You might be thinking, we can look at this idea in one of two ways:

1. We are idiots.
2. We are absolutely so well off financially, we can cook lobster in hamburger helper; lobster is just THAT prevalent around our house.

In case you were wondering, Lobster Helper is a dish you’ll probably never forget… It’s not exactly terrible, but the lobster tail mixed in with the high quality herbs and spices, does have a twang that embeds itself in your brain for the rest of your life.

So that’s my story. I don’t like lobster. It may have been a good thing it happened, because I’ve saved many dollars at dinner over the years. But it is kind of sad to not be able to enjoy it anymore…

-Brad Isaac