Is the best lobster roll hot or cold? Two Globe writers face off. - The Boston Globe (2024)

Let’s be clear: All lobster rolls are good lobster rolls. But in the game of “if you could only eat just one variety for the rest of time,” there is a winning answer.

Lobster rolls should be served cold with mayo.

A cold lobster roll is summertime perfection, bites of sweet knuckle meat, tender claws, and meaty tails swathed in mayonnaise — just enough to be luscious, not so much as to draw attention. This is about harmony, about essence and interplay. The bread — a split-top hot dog roll or something very much resembling one, no fancy-buns brioche — should be griddled golden, offering a moment of buttery crunch on the way to the lobster. Celery, chives, lettuce: It’s all a distraction. If you’re ordering from a roadside stand with an old-fashioned woman’s name like Lil’s or Nan’s, a shack by the sea that’s been open since the 1900s, or a lobster pound where the footwear of choice is hip boots, you’re on the right track.

The cold lobster roll, fairly intuitively, is cooling. It is a moment of Zen. There’s nothing bombastic or showboaty about it. It is absolutely perfect with onion rings especially, but also fries, because of the contrast between chilly and creamy vs. hot, salty, and crisp. Add in a root beer on the rocks for gulps of weird herbal sweetness that entered the soda lexicon in an era of very different taste preferences. Long may it stay.

Listen, if your heart wants the hot buttered lobster roll — and, just asking, but are you ordering this in-the-rough classic at a bistro right now, are you wearing or do you own a blazer with elbow patches, are you a Connecticut cat lady, do you have an inordinate fear of bugs and thus the outdoors in general, are you the sort who enjoys a cup of steaming clam chowder at a crowded festival while broiling like haddock under the midday sun, did you pay an upcharge for that caviar bump, not that there’s anything wrong with these things, just asking — by all means get the hot buttered lobster roll.

Because hot lobster rolls are good. Cold lobster rolls are better. But the best roll of all (Write it!) contains no lobster at all.

Meet my friend the crab roll. I think you’re going to get along.

— DEVRA FIRST

Lobster rolls are better h-o-t-t-o-g-o

If you’re looking for a life-changing lobster roll experience, channel your inner Chappell Roan and make sure to order it h-o-t-t-o-g-o.

Connecticut style — served hot, drenched in butter atop a toasted, New England-style hot dog bun — is the superior version of lobster roll compared to its sad, cold salad sister from Maine. It’s also (likely) the OG, said to have originated in the 1920s at a restaurant called Perry’s in Milford, Conn., so if you value tradition and authenticity, eat ‘em hot. Having grown up stuffing my face with lobster rolls from joints up and down the southern Connecticut shoreline, I honestly didn’t even know the Maine style existed until I moved to Boston, where I quickly learned that, just like the temperature, your lobster rolls get colder the further north you go.

Admittedly, I will never turn down a lobster roll of any variety — cold, hot, transformed into some “Chopped”-like creation that only slightly resembles a sandwich — they are all great. But, in a battle of the Nutmeg State vs. the Pine Tree State, the Connecticut style wins every time for me. The simple pleasure of warm lobster meat soaked in butter is just comfort food at its best, evoking the feeling of feasting on a steamed lobster dinner, without all the mess. Like a great steak, lobster meat doesn’t need much to shine as long as it is fresh and cooked to perfection.

And while Connecticut style is simple, it is also decadent, with the warm lobster meat and butter combining to create a perfect, luxurious bite. Considering the price of lobster these days, a modern lobster roll should be a luscious luxury. Today’s eaters expect each and every ounce of meat to be packed with flavor as well, and too often, purveyors of the cold variety dilute its lobstery goodness with an over reliance on mayo, greens, and other accoutrements. Even the best of the Maine style — which tend to limit the amount of mayo and forgo the greens, while still using a toasted bun — just seem like poor imitations of their Connecticut brethren. If you’re going to go through the trouble of toasting the bun, you might as well heat up the meat, too.

When I eat a lobster roll, I don’t want to taste any special spice blends. I don’t want mayo or its fancy cousin crème fraîche. Keep all lettuce, celery, and other vegetables away with a 10-foot pole. Give me lobster meat, pure and good, with as much butter as it can soak up (and maybe a splash of lemon). And while a hot dish might not cool you off during a sizzling summer day, personally, I’m not looking to be refreshed when I eat a lobster roll. I want to be filled. I want to walk away feeling like I’ve been dining like a king. A lobster roll, like a fried clam roll, should be a feast, a decadent experience that leaves you full, but still asking for seconds (Or thirds. Or fourths. Shout-out to Luke’s Lobster at Governor’s Ball for serving me nearly a dozen one summer day in 2017).

At the end of the day, if you’re trying to find a better version of lobster roll than the warm, Connecticut style, all I have to say is: good luck, babe.

— MATT JUUL

Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. Follow her @devrafirst. Matt Juul can be reached at matthew.juul@globe.com.