July 26, 2024 — Few foods evoke summer in New England like the lobster roll. The sandwiches are as iconic as lighthouses and the dropped r’s of the northeastern U.S. region’s unique Yankee dialects. Once a lowly work lunch for fishermen, the lobster roll is in such demand today that Hannaford supermarkets has announced a $10 version of the coastal classic, available across stores until Labor Day.
“As New England tourism has grown, the rise of the lobster roll has gone along with it,” says Evan Hennessey, chef-owner of Stages at One Washington and the Living Room in Dover, New Hampshire. “It’s this incredible, flavorful, quintessential right-from-the-ocean New England food that—and here’s the key part—you can walk around and eat.”
History of the lobster roll
Lobster didn’t always have such cachet. The crustaceans were once so abundant that they could easily be caught in shallow waters. “For a long time, [lobsters] were just local food—stuff you ate if you lived on the coast,” says Boston University food historian Megan Elias.
Branden Lewis, chef and sustainability professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, says that English and Portuguese sailors, shipwrights, and fishermen created the earliest iteration of the lobster roll by tucking the discarded trimmings of tail and claw meat between pieces of bread.
Lobster recipes didn’t gain cultural capital until the country’s nascent elite began vacationing along the East Coast, especially in states like Rhode Island, where they built summer “cottages.” The rolls were a mainstay until the early 1960s, when the country found itself besotted by the “proper” cooking techniques of Julia Child.
New England’s iconic sandwich came back into fashion in the 1990s, with the renewed interest in American regional foods. “By then, lobster is even more expensive,” Elias says. “There are even fewer of them. So it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s regional and it’s also hard to get, so it must be cool.’”