Lobster in a roll @ Luke's

I love short menus. I hate long menus. Long menus normally mean the dishes are brought in and normally of a lower quality than if they were cooked on site. Well that does depend on the chef of course.

Even better are restaurants that do one or two things and that’s it. These places I love.

As far as I can remember I cannot remember eating at a place where they specialise in one or two items and them being bad. I have however eaten at plenty of places where the menus have been like an encyclopaedia. They have mostly been rubbish

Most of the places we ate at in this weeklong trip to New York, all had rather short menus, this wasn’t deliberate, just the way things worked out.

One of the final places we ate at was Luke’s Lobster, this small but slowly growing chain do one thing. Seafood rolls. Lobster rolls, shrimp rolls and crab rolls. Heaven, pure Maine heaven.

As I’d not eaten too many lobster rolls, well let me rephrase that, I’d had one before from a food truck by the seaside and to be honest it was pretty crap. The bun was stale, the lobster meat of what little there was of it was over cooked and under seasoned. This was all topped off with a good dollop of a shop brought low quality mayo. All in all it was a complete waste of £10. I’m still sticking pins into a little doll, cursing that woman.

I’d walked past Luke’s in the East Village a few times, always onto or back form somewhere else, it’s a small shack styled as a Maine lobster hut. Suits every city.

As I said Luke’s do a few things and does them well. You can have the Lobster roll, the crab roll and the shrimp roll, either on their own or with a Maine soda or beer and a pack of kettle chips.

To be honest I wanted it all, maybe we should have gone for a Taste of Maine, which is half a roll of each of them, but we opted for one lobster and one crab roll with a pack of Kettles and soda.

The crab we were a little disappointed with, it was seasoned ok, but it tasted a little too watery. It was a very odd sensation, plus it was far too cold to get a real taste of it.

The lobster on the other hand with its minimal use of mayo and lemon butter, which allowed the lobster to sing and sing it did.

The toasted bun was warm enough to soak up the juices but still hold together. The lobster gently warming a little and the flavours sung all the more for it.

This was as far from my disastrous first experience with the lobster roll as could be, and we were in lobster roll heaven.

I wish we had given the crab roll a miss as it failed to hit similar highs as its lobster mate. I’m also still wondering what the shrimp roll tastes like. Delish I bet.

The kettle chips or crisps were a good accompaniment to the rolls and the Maine sodas made a good diversion form coke.

The only regret was that we only visited Luke’s once, as I could seriously get addicted to that lobster meat. I may have to buy a beast myself and have some homemade lobster rolls.