When in doubt, dine local, Newton writer says (2024)

Tammy Wilson

The impossible happened Saturday while wandering through the Foothills Folk Art Festival in Newton. What caught my eye most wasn’t paintings or carvings or pottery, but the Cousins Maine Lobster food truck.

What constitutes an authentic lobster roll varies by whether you’re in Maine or Connecticut or someplace else in New England … sort of like Carolina people bickering about barbecue. But a lobster roll in downtown Newton?

Prices were not advertised which is a sure sign that they’re high.

I’ve seldom met a lobster roll I didn’t like but having been spoiled with the genuine article in coastal Maine, I had a hunch I’d be disappointed. Visiting Freeport some years before, I discovered the McDonald’s version back in 1992. At the time, lobster was plentiful and cheap and so it became a drive-thru item.

I hear that McDonald’s has offered its “McLobsters” as a summer standard, but I’m not rushing back for one. No, if I make it back to Maine, I’ll order that sandwich at a local diner or, better yet, a family-run shack along a beach highway.

As I stood there on Main Avenue (of course!) wondering whether to order a lobster roll, it reminded me of an occasion in Maine some years ago when my fellow graduate students decided it would be a great idea to order “Southern barbecue” in Brunswick, Maine.

I declined. Years of travel have taught me a lot of things, and one of them is to eat locally whenever possible. That’s not to say you can’t be unpleasantly surprised. Back in 2007, I was craving a clam plate in Newport, Rhode Island. Flo’s Clam Shack came into view — rustic ambiance, an old wooden boat parked out front. “Famous for clams since 1936,” the sign read.

The clams I had that afternoon were famous, all right.

Hours later, I was turning green and well, if you ever eat a bad clam, it doesn’t matter if you’re eating previously frozen or clams that have been dug that morning. A bad clam is bad to the bone.

Still, the odds are better if you hone in on local menus.

Take Kansas City, for instance. You’d be a fool not to try some burnt ends or other form of barbecued beef. Yes, even if it’s not mustard or vinegar-based. When in Kansas City, do as the locals do.

And then there are crab cakes. Good ones are extra moist inside, made of little more than crab meat. Hard to come by outside Maryland or Delaware. Friends in both places have taken me in search of the world’s best crab cake, and I’ll have to say the competition is fierce up there.

I developed a taste for crab cakes when I moved to the Eastern time zone some 40 years ago. I’ve had those tasty fried patties in a lot of places, including Phillips signature location in Annapolis’s inner harbor as well as a funky diner a friend knew about in South Baltimore. But to me, the best cakes served at Friendly Farms, a family establishment near Upperco, Maryland, tied with the cakes served at Tidewater Hotel in Easton. Both are worth writing home about. They aren’t cheap. What you want is mostly lump crab, and the good stuff is running over $75 a pound.

Which brings me back to the common-sense rule. When out of town, ask a friend or the hotel clerk or the cabbie where they would eat if this were their only chance to dine locally. You may be steered to a hole in the wall or a place that seems pricey at first glance. Then again, if you have only one chance to enjoy a great meal, you might as well make it count.

The last time I drove “home” to Illinois, I noticed Blue Springs Café advertised with giant billboards along I-70. Foot-high meringue pie, they claimed, “as seen on Food Network.”

I love a good homemade meringue pie, be it in lemon, banana, chocolate or my all-time favorite, coconut meringue with toasted coconut flakes on top. I was raised on this Midwestern staple that could be found at most any family restaurant with a pie case.

When I scoped out Blue Springs, it was too early for lunch, so I had no interest in ordering pie. Which was a good thing. The building was a retired Stuckey’s that didn’t draw high ratings. “Drive on by the mile-high pie,” one reviewer said.

Which illustrates another rule of thumb: restaurants that are more interested in quantity vs. quality aren’t a good bet.

Part of me regrets not stepping up to the lobster truck on Saturday, because it’s not every day that Maine comes calling.

I’m not knocking the idea of bringing lobster rolls to the folk festival. In fact, if I’d known they were coming, I would have scheduled my visit a bit later in the day. Still, there’s something off about having a lobster roll on Main Avenue instead of the Maine coast. Call me a food snob. Part of what makes one appreciate regional foods is eating them in their place.

A Maine lobster roll begs to be enjoyed at a rustic picnic table with a crisp breeze off the water and gulls calling overhead. Or in a small diner where the wait staff sounds like Stephen King, if you remember what he sounds like.

I’m not sure a fresh lobster roll would taste the same in Newton, even outside on a nice spring day.