In August, my sister and I took a trip to the east coast, visiting Boston and Harpswell, Maine. We relaxed, walked a lot, saw many friends, and ate really good food at Radius, Trade, and Area Four in Boston, and at our friends’ home in Maine.

The restaurants we chose in Boston all focus on in-season, local ingredients, a difference we could taste in our meals. The food was beautiful and delicious; both of us would recommend all of the restaurants to anyone.

In Maine, I ate my first whole lobster. I was actually born in Maine, but had never been interested in lobster (fish has not been my favorite, but I’m liking it more). Never eating a lobster meant that I was not a true Mainer…this needed to be fixed.

It turns out that a whole lobster, fresh from the water makes for a delicious dinner—and the lobsters we ate in Maine were as local as they get. Kathy and I went with our friend to pick up dinner. We grabbed a grocery bag from the cupboard, walked just about 50 yards (maybe less), and into Dick’s Lobsters—a small lobster market next to a dock in Harpswell. Dick asked about our friend’s husband (he had stayed home) and walked along the dock to pull our four lobsters out of the water. At $4 a pound, they were less than most ground beef in the grocery store. No shipping, no storage, just fresh lobster that tasted of the ocean. There is no better way to eat.

The next day we watched lobstermen pulling traps out of the water, throwing back any lobsters that weren’t big or old enough to take in, and collecting the day’s harvest.

I’ve always thought of lobster as a specialty, a rare and expensive treat—which they are on the west coast. In Maine, lobster is still a treat, but it is also a sustainable industry that Mainers take pride in. There is something about eating local, seasonal food that tastes right.

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