by: James Simpkins
I don’t really like lobster. Being a chef, this makes me
somewhat of a pariah among colleagues as lobster is known as a dish in the
upper echelon of gourmet cooking. But almost everyone I know has that one
little ‘thing’ about what they put-or won’t put- in their mouths. Mine’s
lobster. Now that I think about it, it’s just the tail I don’t care for. If I
could just order the claws, I would not only be content, I’d be a fan! But in
100% of my dining experiences that has never been an option. I was hoping (to
no avail) my lucky break would come this past weekend in Canton, CT where the
29th annual Canton
Volunteer Firefighters’ Lobsterfest ‘09 kicked off on Friday, August 14th.
A big fund-raiser for the station, I was told originally it was “someone’s hare-brained idea” that turned
into a smashing success. Apparently its current incarnation is a lot better
executed, however; the joke around the station is that it’s taken all twenty
nine years to figure out how to do it efficiently. After seeing the production first-hand,
it is no joke. Here are just the mainstays of what they ordered this year:
·
5,000 wild-caught lobsters from Maine &
Massachusetts
·
100+ bushels of local sweet corn (from The Pickin’ Patch in Avon, CT)
·
15 ½ barrels of Budweiser beer (that’s about
2500 bottles)
…and LOTS of
chowda to go with it. Sadly, this was concentrated clam chowder from SYSCO and
the only culinary snafu of the event. I wondered, though, of the 5,000 lobsters
that were ordered, how many do they actually use?
All of them.
The guys at
the firehouse told me that in the last four years they haven’t had a single
lobster leftover—and they ordered 4,000 each year. This time around, determined
to grow their numbers and break that glass ceiling, they added another 1,000
and crossed their fingers. The event starts Friday night, then all day
Saturday, and from 9am Sunday until they’re gone. With 1500 lobsters sold on
Friday night alone (just four hours), it was no contest.
The cover
price of $18 will get you a whole lobster, an ear of corn and a generous
portion of clam chowder, with other fixins available around the area, like Ben
& Jerry’s ice cream, hamburgers and hot dogs (for the ‘turf’ crowd) as well
as a separate room dedicated to solely to dessert. I showed up on Saturday
around 6:30pm, paid my $18 and waited in line about 10 minutes. I felt
fortunate to have picked a good time to come as later I heard stories of lines
down the block hundreds of people deep with a wait of an hour or more. With
such a festive atmosphere, great people-watching and live music from the field
across the street I can imagine time flies, but still, no one wants to wait in line. Conveniently, the
food line goes right by the beer tent and I forked over an additional $2.50 for
a cup of Bud. It tasted great—and I don’t even like Budweiser. That’s when I
realized what makes this such a great event for the Farmington River Valley and
the Canton area in particular: It’s not about the lobster.
Sure, some
people will go anywhere for cheap food, and certainly the Lobsterfest price tag
is easy to bear even with in our struggling economy. But I don’t think it’s
the value that’s the draw. With attendance at the event roughly twice the
population of Canton itself, maybe it offers folks a chance to come and participate
as they wish, and more importantly, as they are. When’s the last time you ate lobster in your favorite jeans with
a plastic cup full of Budweiser? I know it was my first time, but for
Lobsterfest veterans, this was old hat. And I loved the delicious irony of the
culinary pro learning from unpaid amateurs (the 'fest is staffed by all volunteers) how lobster can be done.
Maybe that’s
my real problem with lobster: I always have to eat it in restaurants. Because
you’re expected to use utensils, it’s often split down the middle or presented
in such a way that you don’t have to touch it with your fingers. I’m more of a
hands-on eater and like to have contact with my food--a barbaric practice in uppity eateries. But who needs a fork when you eat lobster? And do we
really need corn cob holders? Not this guy...
Acknowledging
this, I made sure I had my wet-nap handy and dug in. One lobster, an ear of corn, a bowl of
(bad) chowder and three Budweisers later, I started happily counting the days until
next year. 
The Canton Volunteer Firefighters' Station is located at:
14 Canton Springs Rd. Canton, CT 06019 (860) 693-8120 www.cantonfireandems.org
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