This article was also published in the Financial Times.
Banking provided the unusual connection between an extraordinary restaurant in Boston, Massachusetts, that was built in the late 19th century and the current price of lobster, now at its lowest for a decade.
Shortly after we had sat down for dinner at Locke-Ober, close to the city’s financial district, an old friend and a former banker with State Street explained his first visit there as a trainee 30 years ago. “It was part of an initiation process conducted by a senior banker at the time. Those of us who caught his eye were all brought here to see whether we could handle the two Martinis he always had before lunch and not be talking too loudly by the end of the meal.”
That was definitely part of banking, and several other professions, then. And if that ritual has now changed, happily, Locke-Ober, at least physically, certainly has not.
Opened in 1875 and named after its founders, the interior of this restaurant is one of the most beautiful I have ever been in. Obvious comparisons would be a London club or a New York steak house since the predominant material is dark, intricately carved, wood which features everywhere from the façade to the two dispensing areas, one a bar on the far wall, the other that was once used for dispensing food, although now it is mainly used for storing glasses. Along it are eight immaculately polished silver serving dishes complete with lids on pulleys, connected to hot plates underneath so that they could be used as chafing dishes to serve buffets and parties. Sadly, the ladles, commensurate in size, were stolen shortly after the restaurant was restored in 2001.
That process was bravely undertaken by Lydia Shire, one of Boston’s most characterful chefs (somewhat incongruously as Locke-Ober had not welcomed female diners for many years), who perspicaciously saw the physical beauty that lay beneath what must have been multiple layers of cigar and cigarette smoke that had accumulated over the decades.
Shire has introduced her more eclectic style of cooking while sensibly holding on to the more classic dishes that have beguiled Boston’s male diners over the years. We began with half a dozen sparklingly fresh East Coast oysters; a Caesar salad (which came with a health warning because of the raw egg); and a dish described as JFK’s lobster stew. Served in a large copper pot, this was a slightly thinner version of a lobster bisque with more lobster in the bottom than would normally be served as a main course in a European restaurant.
Equally fascinating were the prices of these three dishes: US$14 for the salad, US$16 for the oysters and US$18 for the lobster stew, an indication not just of how relatively inexpensive oysters and lobsters are in this city but also the price insensitivity of the ubiquitous, and consequently highly profitable, Caesar salad.
Main courses included a vast rack of Colorado lamb with sweet potatoes; a fillet of Scottish salmon with potatoes intriguingly cooked in a smoked haddock sauce; and a fillet of lemon sole that looked somewhat forlorn on the plate but was cleverly matched with a chimichurri sauce, the Argentine sauce normally served with beef. The almond macaroons, served as a US$6 dessert, are simply the best I have encountered, but the wine list could be improved.
I left Locke-Ober in a daze, a combination of jet lag, the building and location (down a less-than-salubrious alley) and the fact that the restaurant was so quiet, due, I learnt as we passed the bar, to the fact that a vital football match was being played as we ate. The following day, to confirm that I had in fact been there, I returned, not to eat or drink, but simply to soak up the atmosphere of an exceptional restaurant. It had not been a dream.
Equally fascinating although considerably more modern was the position I found myself in the following evening standing next to Jasper White in the heart of his lobster kitchen at the branch of his enormous Summer Shack across the Charles River in Cambridge.
White was the leader of the chefs in Boston in the early 1980s who radically improved the style of the city’s cooking but today he concentrates on his obviously hugely popular Summer Shacks and the wholesale fish business he has built up to supply them.
He has also focused, he told me, on cooking the perfect lobster. In front of the main kitchen, White stands in a semi-enclosed area that houses two vast steaming kettles, each capable of cooking 50 lobsters simultaneously. To one side are stored two more kettles full of uncooked lobsters, which are lifted by a series of pulleys over to the cooking area when necessary. This is a cooking system that White has not only created but also patented with the US Government, as the document on the far wall confirms.
In this setting, White seemed like a kid in a candy store and not just because he is doing something he is so obviously passionate about. The setting of this ‘lobster laboratory’ means that he can stand there cooking with a full view of his vast restaurant in front of him, fully aware of how much pleasure he, his staff and his lobsters are giving to, as he put it, “the many families who come here, roll up their sleeves and have a good time".
It came as something of a shock, therefore, for White to tell me that every lobster eater in his restaurants and beyond is currently benefiting from the recent failure of the Icelandic banks.
“Lobsters today”, White explained, “are the cheapest they have been for the past 10 years and this is entirely due to the current banking crisis. Although everyone thinks of lobsters as coming from Maine, about 60% are caught in the even colder waters off Canada. Most are caught in the autumn and frozen but this year the lobster fishing companies have not been able to secure the cash from either the Icelandic or American banks that have invariably financed this holding process in the past. So the fishermen have had no option other than to sell the lobsters that they have landed for the best possible price, which has obviously been steadily going down, cut back on their fishing, or leave the lobsters in the sea until next year. I’m buying hard-shell lobsters at around US$5 a lb at the moment, half the price they were a year ago. The same phenomenon has been happening with the stone crabs which have made the reputation of restaurants such as Joe’s Stone Crabs down in Florida.”
An order for lobsters arrived and it was time for me to leave. As I did so I couldn’t help but notice the blue sign painted on the steel beam above the kitchen which declared, FOOD IS LOVE, whatever bankers may do.
Locke-Ober 3 Winter Place, Boston, 617-542 1340 www.lockeober.com
Jasper White’s Summer Shack www.summershackrestaurant.com