It's often said that tastes in food change only gradually and grudgingly. This is especially true for dishes so popular they become cultural icons. To many people, nothing says summer like a boiled Maine lobster served with melted butter or in a roll with a touch of mayo. How then to account for the profusion of exotic lobster fare popping up here and around the country?

At Ben and Bill's Chocolate Emporium in Bar Harbor, Roy Gott has been making lobster ice cream (and more than 80 other flavors) for the last four years. He explains that the shop “was looking for a way to differentiate ourselves from everyone else, show that we make everything from scratch. Then one day a customer said, ‘You have everything but lobster ice cream!' The owner said, ‘Come back tomorrow, and we'll have that, too.'”

He did, and they did.

“Some days it sells well and some days not,” Gott continues. “Most people view it as a thing they can talk about with their friends from away. They can say, ‘I've eaten lobster ice cream in Maine.'”

“Just because something can be made doesn't mean it should be,” quips chef Michael Gagne of the Robinhood Free Meetinghouse in Georgetown. Lobster has a subtle flavor and is difficult to work with, he observes. But even he likes to make an unusual Caribbean cocktail: lobster salad with onions, celery, red pepper, jalapeño, and cilantro, served on one of his signature 72-layer biscuits.

Jeff Fournier, who grew up surfing in Ogunquit and who vacations on Maine's Long Island, is one of the wild men of the lobster world. At 51 Lincoln in Newton, Massachusetts, he serves chocolate-dipped lobster claws—blanched and drizzled with a semi-sweet chocolate sauce spiked by cayenne and paprika. He also makes fresh pappardelle noodles with lobster roe in the dough, “so you can see and feel the roe,” he says. He serves them topped with poached lobster meat in a champagne butter sauce.

Many people won't touch lobster roe. “It has a stigma like tomalley,” Fournier says. But the roe-filled noodles “give the dish texture and a deeper lobster flavor” and have been surprisingly popular.

Hugo's Chef Rob Evans doesn't shy away from lobster roe, either. He mixes it with ground lobster and tapioca starch to make a paste “that looks God-awful. But when we steam it, it turns bright red. Then we chill it, slice it in thin pieces, dehydrate it, and flash fry it so that it puffs up about five times the original size,” he says. He serves these exotic crimson crackers with lobster sous vide (a newfangled technique that involves cooking in a special, temperature-controlled pouch) with lemony olive oil.

“I enjoy letting people experience familiar flavors in new ways—like seeing the same thing through new eyes,” Evans says.

Another fan of unusual lobster dishes is Chris Svalesen. The so-called “gypsy chef,” he “cooks somewhere, wanders off, and finds a new place to start cooking, then wanders off again,” one restaurant critic wrote. But he plopped down on the internet long enough to leave one of his calling cards: a recipe for lobster martinis (see recipe). His poached lobster is served in a martini glass with mango vinaigrette and curry remoulade.

At SeaGrass Bistro in Yarmouth, Chef Stephanie Brown prefers not to buy anything out of state. For “a fun summer dish inspired by local farmers,” she says, she makes lobster chili with native organic corn and tomatoes, cumin, coriander, garlic, shallots, and chili powder. At Solo Bistro in Bath, Esau Crosby offers deep-fried lobster spring rolls and a spicy dipping sauce with roasted cashews and coconut milk. And Tom Gutow at the Castine Inn makes lobster pastrami—his version of lox, smoked over maple chips, marinated in a variety of spices, cured with salt and sugar, frozen, and then thinly sliced like a carpaccio, which he serves brushed with sherry and drizzled with a lobster roe mayonnaise.

For truth in advertising, it's hard to beat “Angry Lobster,” an Asian-style lobster tempura dish invented by Chef Paul Booras at Legal Seafoods' Test Kitchen in Boston. He was trying to come up with unusual ways to prepare lobster but “was in a bad mood,” reports publicist Chris Haynes. “So it was either his wife or the lobster that was going to get fried. His wife is very grateful he experimented with the lobster!”

Of all the lobster dishes I've tasted, my favorite is the Maine lobster tamale created by Chef Sean Wesoky at Masa, in Boston. He makes the tamale with polenta, goat cheese, and ground lobster, and serves it in a pool of tart cherry molé with garlic and sesame seeds. Atop the tamale sits a lobster tail rubbed in serrano pepper and charcoal-grilled so that a smoky sweetness permeates the lobster. Wesoky calls it “a playful Southwestern take on the lobster roll.”

And perhaps the most unusual dish of all is one that author Trevor Corson has yet to eat. Corson, who wrote The Secret Life of Lobsters, says his favorite weird lobster dish was some Chinese pot-sticker dumplings he made with a group of friends. But “I've just finished a new book on sushi, so I suppose next I'll have to try lobster as nature intended—raw!”

© 2007 Portland Magazine Colin Sargent, Editor & Publisher editor@portlandmonthly.com Click here to subscribe