The Lost Appeal of Lobster

Around the holidays, it seems that everyone is looking to indulge - in their spending, their drinking, and their diets. Thus, it is time for champagne and filet mignon, and the ever-expensive seafood, particularly lobster. Like every writer-wannabe, I've acquainted myself with David Foster Wallace's essay, "Consider the Lobster," which he wrote for the magazine Gourmet in 2004. (Read here: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster).  In the essay, Wallace is covering the Maine Lobster Festival - supposedly of interest to the niche readers of Gourmet. But what he finds is nothing more than a glorified state fair - pounds and pounds of lobsters boiled alive and served with copious amounts of butter and potatoes and more butter. This supposed decadence is blind to the history of the lobster. It used to be a food reserved only for prisoners. Lobsters are the "insects of the sea." And the fantastic spectacle of the world's largest lobster cooker is only a slaughterhouse in a different shape. Lobster gets a reputation as the world's freshest food because you can kill it at home yourself. Wallace repeatedly returns to the image of a lobster, grabbing at the side of a pot of boiling water or clanging at the lid until eventually, the clanging stops. The lobster gives up. The boiling water has won. 

Wallace goes into much more detail about the lobster nervous system, the history of lobster, and other related information (at least related in a DFW sense...). He isn't attempting to go on some type of ethical tyrant, but is more questioning the validity of our ideas of gourmet or high class food. If we're concerned about the taste shouldn't we be concerned about the process? I'm ad-libbing here, but somehow this idea has stuck. No part of eating lobster has been appetizing to me over the past few months. I've developed a bizarre guilt, for some reason only about lobsters, as I've moved ever so slightly beyond the realm of ignorance. It's not so much the ethical reason for me either, but I think it's because of how I've been introduced to lobster, how it's been framed for me. I was always freaked out by the lobsters in the grocery stores - I would call them monsters and not get too close to the tank. I thought they were ugly, and even after they'd been boiled and turned a bright red, dressed finely on one of the fine china plates, I still found them ugly. I know that I really only ate lobster because I had been told to do so - because I was made to believe it was decadent and expensive and "Gourmet." 

It's interesting to question where our ideas of a supposed hierarchy came from, or where any of our beliefs came from at all. The recent trends toward lobster macaroni and cheese brings to mind an Italian maxim that the head of our language school in Venice taught us one day during a cooking class. She said that the Venetians know it is a sin to mix land and sea - you don't mix fish and meat, seafood and eggs or dairy products. It's supposed to show respect for where the food came from and for the people who went to get it. Since fishermen had to go to the Adriatic and meat and products from land animals had to come from the mainland, it was thought to be greedy for your meal to require two journeys. Lobster mac and cheese is removed from this maxim, and removed from the histories that made it possible. When you take a bite of lobster mac and cheese, what ideas are you ingesting?