When someone says “lobster†some words that might come to mind are delicacy, fancy, luxurious and most dismally, market price.
However, it wasn’t always this way. Formerly regarded as “the cockroach
of the sea†and fed to servants, migrants and even people’s cats,
lobster was the laughing stock of seafood. Regarded as a dish fit only
for the poor, even having lobster shells in your house was looked upon
as a sign of poverty. Yet today lobster is seen as the poshest of the
posh, the cousin of caviar. So, how the hell did this happen?
It starts with industrialization. When the railways began to expand
across America, transportation managers realized that if no one apart
from people who lived on the coast knew what lobster was, trains could
serve it to inland passengers as if it were a rare, exotic item. This
plan seemed to work as people started demanding lobsters beyond the
railways and it didn’t hurt that around this same time in the late
1800s, chefs discovered lobsters tasted much better when cooked live.
Restaurants, too, got the memo. Then during World War II, lobsters
weren’t rationed like other foods, and so people of all classes began to
eat it and “discover†its deliciousness. By the 1950s, lobster
established itself as a bona fide luxury food item.
