Restaurant and Food Service Blog

Lobster roll at Legal Seafoods

I just got back from a trip to Boston and the first thing I needed was a good lunch. I was hungry and when in Boston you need to go for seafood. Legal Seafoods was just across from my hotel. As I was enjoying my lobster roll and Sam Adams, it made me think more about the regionality of food and the carbon footprint that we are creating.

With so much of our food being trucked and shipped across the country, I can find strawberries just about any time of year at my local megamart. Sometimes they are very good and most times they are aweful. It is to the point where my kids expect to have any fruits during the course of the year. They simply don’t understand the seasonality of foods or comprehend it.

But there is also a regionality of food that we in the US seem to not have like in the past. Smokey Bones had a blueprint to produce barbecue joints across the country. On some levels, it seems to make some sense as the menu offers a wide array of different barbecues. But overall, the reason why Smokey Bones never really took off like many anticipated was that barbecue is provincal. In the Carolinas, where I live, there is a debate on even how Eastern Carolina barbecue is to me cut, chopped or shredded. And the barbecue can change from county to county.

The lobster roll and Sam Adams for lunch was awesome. I am not sure if it was because I was really hungry. But I think because it was fresh. My waiter was pushing a special that day which was a fish from New Zeland. I am glad that I stuck with the lobster roll instead.