Food Porn Friday: Attend the tale of LOBZILLA

Lobzilla: An impulse buy the size of a Dachsund

When you think of impulse buys at the grocery store, maybe you think of that Snickers bar you didn’t realize you really needed until you got to the checkout lane.  Or a copy of People magazine with the latest news on Kimye and the royal baby bump.  Or perhaps some orange Tic-Tacs.

When my mother has an impulse at the grocery store, she comes home with a boiled lobster the size of a dachshund.

“It was such a good deal, I just had to do it!” she said, holding up this terrifying creature from the murky deep, showing that its claws were literally the size of her head.  The left one in particular (clearly this behemoth was a southpaw) must have weighed three pounds on its own, and I shuddered to think about being on the receiving end of a pinch when this fella was among the living, waiting stealthily in some concealed spot on the ocean floor for some poor fishy bastard to pass by, and then WHOOMP!  CRUSH!  This lobster’s massive claw didn’t get that big by doing preacher curls at the JCC, that’s for sure; it’s a physical specimen death and destruction, and an awe-inspiring testament of the fact that, when you’re not at the top of the food chain, something terrifying and deadly awaits you around every turn.

Lesson learned: Just roll with it.

I thought, for a second, about feeling bad for this monster, whom I decided to dub “Lobzilla.”  He’d made it this far, why couldn’t the lobstermen leave him be?  Then I remembered what I’d learned recently about the life-cycle of lobsters: They do not die of old age.  In order for a lobster to go to the big blue ocean in the sky, death has to come to it, not the other way around.  Until then, they just continue to grow and crush and kill and eat.  Forever.  If we didn’t do our part, perhaps, in a few centuries, Lobzilla would indeed become kaiju-sized, taking down cruise-ships and aircraft carriers with a left claw as big as a skyscraper.  No, his time had come.

We had to do right by Lobzilla, of course.  Nothing that grand should die in vain.  The question was, what should we cook with all that wonderful lobster flesh?  We could repeat the “crustacean detonation” from our New Year’s Eve menu, or perhaps make some lobster ravioli from scratch, or a traditional lobster Thermidor.  Nah, I figured, I don’t feel like being particularly refined.  What I really wanted, more than anything, was a lobster roll.

Where we have the po-boy, New England has the lobster roll, an unassumingly brilliant combination of lobster — preferably huge chunks of it — mayonnaise, lemon juice and a sprinkle of Old Bay seasoning, served on a buttered, grilled hot dog roll with shredded lettuce.  In the sandwich universe, it is a bright, shining supernova, when executed properly.

In the end, was it worth it?  Wholeheartedly, yes.  If not to satisfy my yen for lobster rolls, then certainly to prevent the eventual downfall of modern civilization at the death-dealing claws of a monster lobster.  I did it for the sake of humanity!

And you?  What would you do with an 8-pound lobster?

Native New Orleans food writer Scott Gold, author of The Shameless Carnivore and a blog by the same name, has written for Gourmet, Edible Brooklyn, The Faster Times, and other publications. His Food Porn Friday column for NolaVie offers a weekly mouth-watering photo designed to start culinary conversations in the Big Easy. Catch his weekly food column for The Advocate here.