A "Tail" of Two Lobster Rolls: Red Hook vs. Luke's Lobster Roll-Off

This post focuses on one of my great loves: food. I knew I wanted to write about something delicious, but wanted it to be more than just a restaurant review, so to spice things up I had a little competition. Since this summer has been all about the lobster rolls in NYC I thought I would revisit a fav of mine and try out a new spot that I’ve read a lot about. And so the Luke’s Lobster vs. Red Hook Lobster Pound “Lobster Roll-Off” was conceived.

Red Hook Lobster Pound is located in Red Hook, Brooklyn and Luke’s is in the East Village (they also have a UES location that I haven’t been to yet). Each makes its lobster rolls a bit differently, the former with paprika and scallions (@ $15 w/ chips) and the latter with some “secret spices” (@ $16 w/ chips & drink), but one thing that is consistent with both is that the lobsters, as well as the owners, are shipped in fresh from Maine (well the RH owners’ family is from Maine, but it counts!). 

Geography Lesson: Red Hook is in NW Brooklyn, very close to the FiDi (see map). Some fun facts: the area is named for the red clay soil (that I’m assuming is somewhere?) and the point of land projecting into the East River. Get it? Looks like a hook? It is also the only part of NYC that has a frontal view of the Statue of Liberty, since it looks toward France. Good to know.

So the first stop of the day was Red Hook Lobster (actually the first stop was Ikea, where I learned that they no longer have ball pits in the day care area. Very upsetting. Did anyone else spend most of their childhood in the Ikea ball pit? Cuz I did. And it rocked.) Had I not gone to Ikea first, I would have taken the F down to Red Hook. That’s really the best way to get there except for the water taxi, which works also, but first you have to get over to the pier, so it’s your choice. Either way it’s a 20 min walk from wherever you get off to RH Lobster. Basically the location of this place is, to put it kindly, in the BOONIES. It’s not so much the walk that sucked, but that it was a walk through an area that showed little sign of life, minus some overfed squirrels (must be all that organic and free-range food scraps they get to eat). The whole place was just eerie. It reminded me of one of those intro scenes in a sci-fi movie where you don’t know what’s wrong, but you know there’s something, most likely aliens, because it’s just a little TOO quiet. Very Andromeda Strain-esque…

Anyway…Red Hook Lobster. We walked in just in time for some lobster fishing! They’ve got two big tanks of live lobsters in the store front, which I thought was really cool. And they have a giant lobster-themed room next door with picnic tables so you can sit and enjoy your roll. Check out the pics in the slideshow to get the full effect of the décor. I definitely enjoyed the lobster roll, but I think the general creepiness of the whole experience put a damper on it.  Here’s my summary.

What I liked: 1) Live lobster tanks…this lobster is really fresh! 2) Seating area w/ fun decorations to look at while you munch and plenty of space to sit. 3) RH’s lobster rolls are garnished with chopped scallions. Scallions add great flavor and provide a nice little crunch, which I really loved.

What I didn’t like: 1) The area was just too creepytown for me, the street we were on was the only place that had any action: a laundromat and a dive bar. 2) Way too hard to get to, it seems like everyone around there must drive? Luckily there are some other spots where you can find these rolls, like the Brooklyn Flea and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. 3) RH’s lobster rolls are covered in paprika, a spice that I like, but not nearly that much of it right on top of my food.  It was just a little too much and took away from the actual lobster flavor.

DETOUR! Post lobster roll #1 we had to make a pit stop, but RH Lobster had no bathrooms so we went to the bar down the block. It was a bit of a lucky sidestep because I discovered this great Japanese beer called Hitachino Nest White Ale.  It is light, with a bit of citrus, but nothing as strong as corona or blue moon (I’m really not a fan of those). Perfect for a hot afternoon. This was a charming little spot, but I realized it was time to go once my personal space was invaded by a man carrying around an infant and his giant friend who had waist-length dreadlocks that kept grazing my leg. Gross. Onward. 

The fun didn’t stop once we made it to the subway, tho. We were really confused down there, which was us being tired and stupid, but there really wasn’t much signage on the platform! Luckily a, I’m gonna say transsexual, who was not an MTA-worker and was lingering around the station, guided us to where we needed to be. Thanks ma’am/man! Then the train wasn’t running on its normal line which confused us again. Fab. Red Hook just really does not want me to come back. 

Once we finally made it to Luke’s Lobster all was right in the world. The neighborhood was booming with people and there wasn’t too long of a line in the shop. We got our roll and walked over to the park to sit and eat outside. Now although I am clearly a Luke’s fan, I’m going to try to muster up some pros as well as cons. Onto those…

What I like: 1) The lobster! There’s just something about it…maybe they just keep it really cold, but whenever I bite into it I think to myself “this tastes so fresh!” It can really stand alone. 2) The bread was a perfect balance of crispy and soft. Way to go! 3) Luke’s uses these great roll holders that are open on one end so you can cleanly munch away. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like getting food all over my hands. 4) It’s in a great location. Walking distance from my apt (~25 blocks), close to public transport, surrounded by other great spots.

What I don’t like: 1) No seating!! The space is pretty tiny, with minimal seating, and when you’re waiting for your order you generally get crammed in the corner by the chips, where you are inevitably in some chip-chooser’s way. BUT, there is a great park just one block away on 7^th bet Ave A and B and it provides a perfect outdoor lobster roll-enjoying environment…plus, real estate in NY is expensive, so I won’t hold it against you Luke’s. J 2) Although the UES location delivers, the EV location doesn’t! What’s up with that? We need our lobster fill down here too. I hope that’s soon to come.

The fact is, both of these lobster rolls were delicious, but the win for me would have to be Luke’s. It’s not just about the lobster, it’s about the experience too! 

Mmmmm all done!

No keys for this girl. Hell's Kitchen Flea Market!

For my inaugural NYC exploration post I decided to go with something a little off of my beaten path, but not too obscure: the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. It’s not like those traveling markets with look-a-like jewelry and shish kebab stands. This market is always in the same place and is full of unique jewelry, tons of random knick knacks, leather goods and fur coats, ethnic goods, antique cameras, records, trunks, and who knows what else can be found. Technically the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market refers to 3 different markets: the major one is the Hell’s Kitchen Flea, all outdoor, tons of vendors, but you can wander downtown a bit and hit up the Antiques Garage, an indoor market, and then finally the West 25^th Street Market, which mostly resembled a junkyard, both looking and smelling. I definitely went for too much on day one.  I can’t say I really got the full Antiques Garage experience since my feet were yelling at me from the second I walked in—as promised, I walked over to the HKFM and all the way down to 25^th (and back!).  So I’m just going to focus on the HKFM. 

A little history and geography: 

The original market was started in 1976, with only 11 vendors, in a lot in Chelsea.  It was around for 30 years, known as The Annex Antiques Fair & Flea Market, but in 2006, an apartment building displaced the market and the owner decided to break it up into three pieces. The Antiques Garage and West 25^th Street Market were moved to 25^th street between Broadway and 7^th avenues, but the big outdoor market was moved up into Hell’s Kitchen, now residing on 39^th between 9^th and 10^th avenues.  Now onto the geography lesson.  For those of you who don’t know where Hell’s Kitchen actually begins and ends (I didn’t), here is a little map. The area goes from (roughly) 34^th-57^th starting at 8^th avenue and reaching all the way to the river.  It is north of Chelsea and south of, in the most general sense, the Upper West Side.  There are some other opinions on where the actual boundaries are and of course there is overlap when you bring in Midtown West and Clinton, but we’ll just focus on the HK we find on Wikipedia.  There is also no agreed upon etymology of the name Hell’s Kitchen, which is unfortunate, because I’m really into that stuff.  But anyway, onto the day!

You’ll know you’ve arrived when you see the giant blow up devil boy, complete with triton, who welcomes you at the entrance.  Does anyone know where this comes from??  He’s cute and scary at the same time.  

At first there only look to be a few vendors nicely arrange in a straight line, but once you really get in there you realize there are tons of tables arranged with no logical path to stick to (think first scene in Aladdin, but fewer swords and no food).  So just go at it! There is definitely a lot of junk to sift through and lots of copycat stuff, but some really fun tables. My favorites are the knick knacks—one of the first booths you see when you enter the main area had a pretty wooden square with a star protruding from the middle of it, which I thought would be great to hang up for decoration…and it got even better when the vendor explained to me that it was used as a mold to make star shaped Christmas ornaments.  I’m sorta mad I didn’t get it, but it was so early in my journey I wanted to see more before buying anything. (Maybe it’ll still be there next weekend…)

Haggling efforts thwarted:

One vendor had boxes of hundreds of old keys and I thought hmm…wouldn’t it be cool to fill a decorative bowl with antique keys instead of fake rocks from Pier 1? It was genius. So the keys were listed as $5 each—ridiculous right? I think this is just a starting point for haggling. So I am feeling pretty confident I’ll get this guy down, I spend a few minutes picking out the 10 keys that I want and I hold them out to him and say “how about 5 dollars for all these keys?” (that’s 50cents a key). He literally laughs in my face. “not in a million years.” (Ok, so that was a low offer, it’s just part of the game). So I up it to $1 per key thinking it would be a fair deal, or maybe I’d go to $1.50/key and pay $15 for the 10 keys. Well, I might as well have called his mother a whore. At this point he gets offended and angry, telling me that these are rare keys (that he has 100+ of) and you can’t find keys like that anymore and not on his deathbed would he sell them for a dollar a piece and that I was crazy…and then he walked away.  I couldn’t even try for $2/key. This man hates me. Utter failure. No keys for this girl. 

Haggling success:

I don’t think it’s super common for people who visit this market to go home with African masks, but I just really loved them. There was a big tarp laid out with all of these really cool wooden masks and figurines. I asked the vendor what the story was behind all of his goods and he told me that he brings them in from Africa and they are all from different parts of the continent (Ivory Cost, Congo, Gabon, Nigeria were some that he pointed out). Now you can choose whether or not to believe him but he seemed pretty authentic to me…since I could barely understand him through his 1 ½ teeth and heavy accent.  I found these two masks that seemed to be a pair and just kept coming back to them.  The initial rate per mask was apparently $35, but I brought him down to $40 for the pair – not bad right? They are about the size of my palm…one is a man and one is a woman. He told me they are from the Ivory Coast and the masks used to be a form of identification, like a passport.  So when traveling, you would show this wooden face as your ID. They don’t have enough wear and tear to actually have been used this way, but the idea is there. I did some research and more or less confirmed what he had to say. They actually are referred to as passport masks. Pretty rad. Solid purchase.

All in all I really enjoyed the flea market and will definitely be returning.  It’s a great place to spend the day with some good friends who are happy to each roam free and meet up randomly to compare purchases.  There is a lot of great jewelry that I didn’t have enough time to really comb through and I am definitely thinking of stopping in again before Christmas for some cool one-of-a-kind gifts…and to spend some more time on the vintage purses.  And maybe I’ll try the key man again, but this time I’ll start with a more respectful bid.   

What this is all about

Ok so here's what's going on that brought me to create this site.  My life is sort of in a weird place right now.  I’m supposed to be two years into some great job, with my career on track, planning to go to business school soon, etc etc…but instead I am currently a “woman of leisure” as my dad likes to say.  I quit a miserable job in April and decided to take the summer off to find out what I want to do with my life.  Definitely did not really figure that one out, but I am currently looking for a job in marketing.  It seems like a way more interesting and actually fun industry to work in and I’m hoping to get as far away from banker egos and tantrums as possible.  Although searching for a job takes up some solid hours of each day, I do have lots of free time on my hands and I thought it would be fun to spend that time going out into the city that I often take for granted and finally get to all of those bullets on my “Cool things to do in NYC” list.  I feel like we all have something like that…a list of restaurants or obscure museums, markets and street fairs we want to hit up, under the radar places we hear about and never end up going to…you know what I mean.  So this is my way of forcing myself to get through the list and hopefully urging anyone who is willing to read to go do the same. 

Just to clarify, I’m not pretending that I know where all the really interesting, undiscovered places are…I’m not that cool.  But some of my friends are and hopefully they’ll throw some ideas at me and maybe even come along on my little expeditions.  And who knows, maybe along the way I will make my own underground discoveries and then I can share them with all of you.  (As of right now I cite Urban Daddy and Grub Street as big contributors to my ‘to do’ list, but I do have some of my own leads…you’ll see.)

I don’t plan to be completely focused on NYC exploration though…every now and then I also want to write about interesting tidbits that I read in the news/magazines/books.  I’m definitely not a news buff or a serious intellectual, but sometimes I find my way to an article that I just find sooo fascinating or read a really funny passage in a book that makes me laugh so hard…and I just have to recount it to everyone.  This way I can just gush about it one time instead of saying the same thing a million times to different people (that is assuming at least the people who tolerate me on the day to day are going to read this).  In terms of what I like to read about in the news, I’d say mostly I gravitate towards new technology and renewable energy, all things Cuba, and any cool information on languages and culture.  So I'd expect some of that, but I’m really not sure what’ll make its way here. I'm going to leave it open-ended until I find my vibe.