How long have you been coming here?
Oh, years and years and years.
Can't even remember.
Decades, right?
Yeah.
I've been coming since I moved to Boston, which is about 40 years ago.
What is your go-to order here?
Fish sandwich and chowder.
And I've discovered an important fact.
You have to eat the fish sandwich first, because otherwise the chowder is so full of taste makes the fish sandwich seem kind of less tasty.
I went on my first date with my boyfriend at Woodman's.
Are there any specific memories or people who come to mind when you come here?
No, I'm concentrating on the fish.
You don't even know who you're with, right?
You had a school field trip to Woodman's?
Yeah, in second grade.
We learned how to do fried onion rings.
That's like such a quintessentially Essex field trip.
Yeah, definitely.
I should say too, that our family have a chowder rating system, so we can each try the chowder wherever we are, and we rate it 1 to 10.
And Whitman's has consistently rated 9 on that scale, which is like the only place better is if you're bicycling in the rain in Nova Scotia and you find a chowder place.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies.
It's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
Summer is here, my friends.
And for years, I've spent part of my summer in New England visiting family and friends.
So today we have two stories from New England summer institutions.
Later I'll go to Grace Church on Martha's Vineyard which has some of my favorite lobster rolls of all time.
But while I was there, I found out something shocking about these very special lobster rolls.
That's what we in the business call a tease.
But first, I head to Essex, Mass., about 45 minutes north of Boston.
A lot of people consider this region to be the clam capital of America.
Essex and its neighbor Ipswich are in the heart of the Great Marsh, New England's largest contiguous salt marsh.
These wetlands and their tidal rivers flow to the ocean, and the mudflats under these waterways are pretty much every clam's dream home.
So it makes sense that Essex would be the home to a Massachusetts landmark called Woodman's, which is also known as the place where fried clams were invented.
When I arrived, I met the CEO, Steve Woodman.
Yeah, this is family business that my grandfather started 111 years ago.
And it's part of actually kind of who I am.
How long have you had this job?
Started working when I was in the sixth grade, full-time during the summers.
My goodness, I was 62.
Do the math.
LAUGHTER
Woodman's is a clappered building old wooden tables inside, picnic tables outside, looking out on an expanse of tall grass dotted by tidal ponds.
It started with Steve's grandfather, Lawrence Woodman, who everyone knew as Chubby.
He was on his own from a young age and found one of his first jobs in an upscale estate called Beverly Farms, where he was the driver for the lady of the house.
And by driver, I mean he drove a horse-drawn carriage.
That's how long ago this was.
After that, Chubby got a job driving a trolley car, which came through Essex.
So he got familiar with the seashore.
He saw people clamming.
He actually met his future wife, my grandmother, on the trolley.
And from that meeting, they got married.
And he decided that in his time off, he wanted to dig some clams to earn some extra money.
But back then, you know, clams weren't worth much.
Clams today sell for 20 times more than they did then, even adjusted for inflation.
Tell me about Chubby and Bessie just like as people, as your grandparents like.
What are some of your memories of them?
He was the first person that brought me down river and taught me how to clam.
It was hard work.
I was just a young boy at the time, but he liked to take all his grandsons out clamming.
And that's the first love of the river that I got, where you could hop in the boat and he liked to drive a fast boat.
And he would twirl around the river and so forth.
And that was a fun time.
I've been clamming a couple of times.
It's still a pretty primitive process.
You just have this giant, like a metal rake that's got like a sort of a claw part and a basket part.
You take that thing, you use the claw part to dig a little bit.
You pick the basket up and hopefully there's clams in it.
When people use the expression digging clams, that's not like just an expression.
You're digging.
You are digging.
It's all by hand.
Is the process today roughly the same as what your grandfather taught you?
It's exactly the same.
I think they have made some of the forks a little bit wider, having more tongs so they can flip more mud.
You can cover more ground.
So you can dig more mud.
Right.
If you can handle it.
But so far, AI is not coming for the clam diggers.
No, it's not.
In 1914 Chubby and Bessie opened a small concession stand where they sold fresh clams and some groceries.
Chubby also started experimenting with some new kitchen gear.
He got up deep fat fryer and he started making his homemade potato chips and people loved his homemade potato chips.
It was actually early July in 1916.
A friend of his said hey Chubby, if you take some of those clams and you throw them in that fryer later He says, I think people will like them.
Well, the other people hanging around kind of laughed at him.
You know, who wants to pay for fried clams?
You know, who wants to eat fried clams?
But my grandmother, Bessie, said, you know, try that because they used to pan fry them home.
And in fact, a lot of people pan fried clams at home around this time.
But according to the restaurant's lore, Woodman's was the first to deep fry them.
And so they had corn flour, they evaporated milk.
So they did that and put it in and threw them in the fryer later to see how they fried up.
And they fried up really quick.
And they liked them.
They were delicious.
And so that was on July 3rd.
And so the next day was July 4th.
And there's a parade in town, whatever.
So he put a A-frame sign out on the road, Essex Fried Clams.
People came in.
They loved him.
He took in $35 that day in 1916, which was the most he'd ever taken in since he'd been open.
So he was a smart man.
He decided to keep them on the menu.
Chubby knew he was on to something big.
How do we know that?
Well, he put it in his journal, which the Woodmans still have.
And Chubby didn't write in his journal every day.
It wasn't one of these like dear diary kind of things.
He only put the really big stuff in the journal.
And just below memories from his wedding and his son's being born, he wrote we fried the first fried clam in Essex, July 3rd 1916.
He became known as the inventor of the fried clam.
And to be clear, we're talking here about whole belly fried clams, not clam strips.
Whole fried clams have a juicy, briny belly that's very tender, along with the chewy strip part.
Clam strips are made from a different kind of clam and use only the strip part.
Anyway, as the years went by, Woodman's reputation spread beyond Essex.
In the late 1920s, Howard Johnson became interested in these fried clams.
At the time, Howard Johnson's was a restaurant chain in Massachusetts, but it would go on to become one of the biggest hotel and restaurant chains in the country.
Still, even in the 1920s, having Howard Johnson himself show up at Woodman's to meet Chubby, that was a big deal.
He actually came in for a weekend and cooked.
And my grandfather cooked with him, showed him how to do it, and he brought it back to his restaurants.
And it was great for here, but he expanded all across the country.
It was not the transportation back then that we have now to ship everything.
It would have to be frozen.
Our soft-shell clam is very delicate.
It does not freeze well.
And so to take the whole belly clam, freeze it and send it off and then try to replicate, it's different.
So for a big chain like Howard Johnson's, with locations all over whole belly clams weren't an option.
Instead, Johnson went with clam strips, which are better for freezing.
This helped popularize fried clams across the country, which did have a downside as far as I'm concerned.
It does bother me, Steve, when places say they're serving fried clams and it's clam strips.
They're not the same food.
They're very different from each other.
I get a little upset sometimes.
In New England, everyone understands the difference.
They just have a more educated customer base in the restaurants.
No, but like...
As soon as you get out of New England.
Sometimes I'll see fried clams on a menu and I'll think I haven't had fried clams in a year.
Usually I only get them in New England.
But once in a while I have a hankering.
I made the mistake of ordering them multiple times and then I get clam strips and I'm like these are not fried clams.
Technically they are fried clams, but so you do have to distinguish, you know, are they whole belly?
Right.
Now I started asking.
Yeah, and that's what we have on our menu is Chubby's Whole Belly Fried Clams.
Chubby's wife, Bessie, added another feature to Woodman's menu, the clam bake.
Her family used to have clam bakes at the beach in the Native American style of digging a big hole, filling it with rocks, building a fire and essentially pit cooking the clams.
That gave Chubby an idea.
He still knew people at Beverly Farms, that wealthy estate where he had first worked.
And just figured that they would love to have you know a clam bake in their own yard or their own private beach.
So this is more like this is a more affluent area folks with some money who might like to have a nice clam bake.
They want something a little more upscale.
Exactly.
So it's like a portable kitchen. open pit.
And so he cooked his clams and his corn and his steamers and lobsters, and sometimes potatoes and whatever, all on top of the ground.
And you could actually get to a place an hour before you're going to serve and cook the food there.
Set up tables and serve within an hour.
Clambakes remain something Woodman's is very famous for.
They've done them as far away as Las Vegas, where they were once hired to do a clambake for a thousand people at a catering convention.
Oh, they loved it.
They just, you know, the idea of seeing the way we cooked and you know, bring them behind to let them see the fires going and the pits and then serving them.
And you know getting fresh seafood in Las Vegas.
It was nice.
How has the fried clam recipe changed over the years?
It hasn't.
Not at all?
No.
Wow.
So we use 100 percent corn flour.
And so there's no wheat or barley.
So it's actually gluten free.
And so we we stumbled into that being gluten free.
90 years after you started, it became a trend.
That's right, because most people do put a white flour in their corn flour because it does lighten up the batter and make it look nice.
But we never wanted to change our grandfather's recipe.
He also used lard back then, and we still use lard.
Am I right that you use Ipswich clams?
I'll say Essex clams.
Is that a rivalry?
Did I just get in trouble?
There are clams in Essex, there are clams in Ipswich, there are clams in Gloucester and clams in Rowley, and so forth.
And a lot of times the only difference is a line in the sand.
Right, it's the same water.
It's the same water most of the time.
You know, Gloucester, Essex and Ipswich all have clamming in what they call the Essex Bay.
Ipswich clams got popular because the companies that started selling clams throughout New England were in Ipswich.
So they would market it, Ipswich clams.
In fact, I went to a restaurant the other day.
They had on their menu Ipswich clams.
But I was looking at the gallon of clams they had and it was from Maine.
But it was an interest company that brought it down and sold them.
This may be a controversial opinion, Steve, but I wouldn't want this in all my fried clams.
But I like an occasional fried clam with a couple bits of sand in it.
What are your thoughts?
Thoughts?
I wouldn't say I want that.
But it does happen because they grow in the sand.
You can wash them, and wash them, and wash them and you still will get a little bit of grit in the belly, sometimes in the fry clam.
I just feel like, first off, it just makes it feel like okay, this is a real clam that came from a real place.
You know, like this isn't some sort of imitation situation.
It's not from a factory farm or whatever.
So I like that.
But also, like...
You know my grandmother, who grew up on the North Shore, just down the road from here, spent her whole life nearby.
She would always say that when she would get a clam that had a little bit of sand in it, she would always say it's critsing in my teeth.
And I always liked that expression.
Have you ever heard that before?
I haven't heard that.
No, that's not like a New England lexicon thing.
No, I haven't heard that one.
All right.
Woodman's recipe for fried clams is out there.
It's no secret.
The recipe for their renowned onion rings is a little more closely guarded.
Although I get the impression from Steve that's more just because they like the idea of having a secret recipe.
There's nothing in there that's going to shock you.
The key is really just making them from scratch and frying them in the same lard they use for the clams.
So the fried clams, the onion rings, the clam chowder, and more.
All this makes Woodman special.
But what really ties it together is the history.
There's a gray wooden house right next to the restaurant across the parking lot.
That was Chubby and Bessie's house.
Today, Steve and his wife live there.
He says something like 10 family members live within two miles of the restaurant.
And he has dozens of family members in the payroll.
I had, let me see, I had nine grandkids work this year.
What's it like to be your grandkids boss?
It's a family business.
I don't look at my grandkids and say, I'm your boss.
No, I'm Papa.
And that's the way I thought of it with my father and my grandfather.
What do you think Chubby and Bessie would say if they saw this operation today?
Well, my grandfather, he was here when we were serving crowds of people on weekends.
What did he make of that?
He would smile and he'd pat his belly and...
And so he lived long enough to see this really taking off as a successful business and the parking lot full of people in the summer, as you say.
But I feel like in the decades since then Woodman's has kind of attained a level setting aside the actual business and the numbers and the dollars and cents of just sort of being this iconic New England institution.
Right.
So what do you think Chubby would make of that, the notoriety of Woodman's today?
I think that he'd be really proud.
He's, you know, very happy that that would happen, because actually the state of Massachusetts designated us as one of 23 places in Massachusetts that you should go to.
We're the only restaurant on it.
Somewhere up there, Chubby's looking down, patting his belly.
That's right.
Coming up, dinner time.
I sit down for a meal with someone who's been coming to Woodman's for decades, my mom.
Then later we'll have our second New England summer story, when I go to a church on Martha's Vineyard for lobster rolls.
But when I ask about the recipe, there's a shocking surprise.
That's coming up.
Stick around.
Time to cook up some advertisements.
Welcome back to The Sporkful.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Last week was our salad spinner, our rapid-fire roundtable chat of the biggest and strangest food stories of the moment.
I chat with Elazar Sontag from The Washington Post and Dina Shanker of Bloomberg Businessweek about how much you should tip at coffee shops, America's growing obsession with the supermarket chain Aldi, and a lot more.
Plus, they came with their summertime hot takes.
Dina, what's your hot take?
So my hot take is that coffee should be hot, and people who drink iced coffee in anything less than say like 95 degrees indirect sun are wimps.
Oh, gay people are going to hate this one.
Is iced coffee in cold weather a gay thing?
Totally.
It is like the flag of the community.
Oh yeah, you just drove an anti-pride flag through the heart of America.
But that's okay.
Speak your truth.
It's too late now.
That one's up now.
Check it out.
Also make sure you stay tuned to the end of this show for a special segment featuring a great story about food, family and soccer, sponsored by Miralax.
All right, let's get back to the show.
It was great talking with Steve, but I also had dinner plans.
Just then, my guests arrived.
Steve.
Steve, nice to meet you.
Lewis.
This is my cast.
This is Steve Woodman.
Very nice to meet you.
Very nice to meet you.
I think I'd go back before you were even working here.
Maybe, maybe not.
What year was the first time you came here?
Well, I was telling Dan that I used to drive here in my 1959 Pontiac Bonneville with about eight people in the car because it was a bench seat.
And there'd be four or five girls in the back and me and two passengers in the front.
I was talking to my friend.
We used to go by Endicott when it was a junior college to spy on her ex-boyfriend to see...
Don't put that in.
Too late.
As soon as I said that, I know it's going in.
I'm pretty sure he's over it.
I don't know.
He still shows up at reunions looking for her.
Steve confirmed that he had not yet started at Woodman's when my mom was first coming here.
And it turns out, those reconnaissance missions that she and her friends went on, which included trips to Woodman's, those weren't their only hijinks.
My friend Joan reminded me that her father was in sales and she used to have to go to Devereux Beach in Marblehead and have somebody disconnect the odometer before we left in her car.
And then we'd go back there and they hooked it up again.
Hooked it up again, right.
Because he had to keep track of the miles.
Of his miles, sure.
Yes, yes.
But just a lot of good memories for this whole area.
I just loved driving here.
Just a lot of memories.
It still smells so good here.
It really does.
It's just such a great spot.
But even just like being outside in front here there's this specific combination of smells that is, the frying oil, the fish and the water, the river and the salt water.
And all these things like kind of walking through the air together.
It's like very sort of iconic New England smell.
Mm-hmm.
Low tide is going, and so they're down there digging clams now.
They're going to bring them here?
They'll bring them here.
How long from the time they come out of the water to the time they're in the fryer?
They came in the morning, early enough, and I could get them to the shucking house.
I could have them here late afternoon.
My parents and I said goodbye to Steve and went to the counter to order some dinner.
We got a lobster roll chowder, steamed clams or steamers, those famous onion rings and, of course, a heaping helping of fried clams.
All right, I'm going to have a clam.
I'm going in.
That's really good.
Delicious.
I feel like it's just the right amount of batter.
And clammy.
Yeah, there's like a real clam flavor.
Yeah, because it's not buried in batter.
Just watch Dad because he's got the clam chowder.
We don't want him to eat all the clams out.
Dad, you're on notice.
I'd share.
All right, Onion Rings, what are your thoughts?
Delicious.
I like tempura onion rings.
The crust is so light.
Dad, onion rings?
Delicious.
They're great.
Crisp.
Light.
Are you just being that enthusiastic because I'm sticking a microphone in front of your face?
Yes.
On my third or fourth bite of the fried clams, my perfect New England experience was unlocked.
I just got a little sandy bit in the clam chowder.
Oh, good.
It's a good sign.
That makes it really authentic.
The food and the atmosphere are both great.
There's probably an 80-year range from the youngest to the oldest person eating there.
You know those old wooden tables have some stories.
Speaking of stories, were you able to spy on that boyfriend at Endicott Junior College?
Yes.
What, did you hide in the bushes?
We looked for his car.
So you found his car?
Yes.
And then what?
I'm not saying.
Now we're going to travel a couple of hours from Essex down to Cape Cod Mass, where we'll board a ferry to the island of Martha's Vineyard.
This gives me the chance to make my ferry horn sound that I perfected over the years.
You ready?
Hmm.
Hmm. pretty good, huh?
I've been practicing.
Anyway, I grew up coming to Martha's Vineyard every summer with my family and for years we've been eating the lobster rolls from Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven.
Every Friday night in the summer, Grace Church sells these lobster rolls in their parish hall.
It began in 1988 when a group of six congregants started it as a fundraiser.
It was a small thing, but word of these lobster rolls started spreading and spreading.
They've been voted best on Martha's Vineyard every year for the last 15 years.
So when I was on Martha's Vineyard visiting my parents, I went over to Grace Church on a Friday a couple of hours before the lobster rolls would go on sale to talk with the folks who make them.
How many lobster rolls do you eat in an average summer?
In an average summer?
One.
You're kidding.
No, no.
My girlfriend and I, the night of the fireworks after working here, we sit on her porch in Oak Bluffs and we drink champagne and eat lobster rolls and then fall asleep on the porch.
Last week we were here for nine hours.
So, yeah, a lobster roll and a bottle of champagne is in order after that.
This is Sandy Pratt.
She joined the lobster roll committee 25 years ago.
My next door neighbor was one of the original lobster roll ladies.
And she got me roped into helping her on Friday nights.
So every Friday night in the summertime, this is what I do.
So you're not one of the original six who were here in the very first year.
The very first year.
But you're a very early adopter.
The very first year.
The very first year.
The first woman who came up with the idea because she had a friend that did it at hers was a woman named Mary Tucker.
She is now...
I want to say 100, but I don't think she's quite 100.
So she doesn't come in and make lobster rolls anymore.
If I see her around, I'll tell her you said she was 100.
Yeah, you can do that.
She'd probably be pleased.
So what were those early years like?
Well, I'll tell you, when I first started it, There were two couples that used to come in.
He was a coach at the high school and his wife, and the other was an ex-FBI guy and his wife.
And they would come with a cooler full of cocktails.
So at those nights, we were only doing maybe 100, 150 lobster rolls.
But you were having a lot of fun.
We were having a great time.
I didn't see any cocktails in the kitchen the night I was there.
But one thing that hasn't changed?
The recipe is lobster, mayonnaise, and white pepper.
Tender loving care.
This is Roger McGarry, another volunteer.
As we spoke, he was mixing several pounds of lobster meat with mayo in a huge bowl.
And what are the ratios of lobster meat to mayo to white pepper?
It's a shake of the pepper.
Mix up the lobster, shake a little more.
Mix up some more.
And then you put mayo in just to make it squish.
That's the formula.
Make it squish.
Once it squishes, you know you've got enough mayo.
Is there a sound that you listen for?
Absolutely.
I'm going to put my microphone close.
I want to hear the sound.
You won't be able.
I don't know what you'll hear.
Let's try it.
I'm cranking up the volume.
All right, let's hear it.
That's the squish.
That's the squish.
What does the wrong squish sound like?
The wrong squish is you don't get the squish.
It's very light or it's just too wet because you put too much mayo in.
So too much mayo it's going to sound, I would think.
Maybe it's going to sound kind of heavy and gloopy.
Yeah, yes.
So there's literally no official recipe on any piece of paper somewhere?
No.
You just have to listen for the squish.
Yes.
And one of the old timers that taught me how to mix said, when it squishes, you've got enough mayo.
And that's been my formula.
So that's Roger, or as I like to think of him, the keeper of the squish.
The Grace Church recipe is most notable for what's not in it.
No tarragon or dill, no scallions or paprika like these fancy places like to use.
Not even any celery, and I'm actually okay with celery in a lobster roll as long as it's chopped very small.
I like the zesty crunch.
Most importantly, though, at Grace Church, no lettuce.
A lot of places use lettuce and lobster rolls to deceive you.
The lobster roll arrives with the meat piled high over the top of the bun and you look at it and you think wow, that's a lot of lobster.
Then you bite into it and find out that hidden under all that meat is a bunch of lettuce filling up the bun like packing peanuts.
At Grace Church, it's all lobster.
While Roger mixed, other folks were portioning the lobster meat into 8-ounce containers.
And this is another thoughtful element to the operation.
They don't combine the meat and buns until the last second.
And if you order it to go, they give them to you separately.
This keeps the buns from getting soggy.
In my family, we take them home so we can griddle the buns in butter.
That's a pretty crucial part of an ideal lobster roll.
Grace Church doesn't have the staff to individually griddle 1,400 buns to order.
As Roger Sandy and several other crew members move around the kitchen, one man quietly keeps an eye on everything.
Everybody around here knows me as Bo Pickard.
Bo Pickard is originally from Worcester, Mass.
He moved to the island 20 years ago.
When we meet, he's wearing a hat made out of a giant plush lobster.
Bo runs his own business repairing propane gas lines and appliances.
He's almost always on call for his customers.
But for him, lobster roll nights are sacred.
I don't do my business on Fridays during the summer.
My Fridays are here.
If you've got a problem, unless it's an extreme emergency, you can wait till tomorrow.
Bo started volunteering at the Lobster Roll dinners in 2014.
He liked it so much that he and his wife decided to join Grace Church.
When the founding Lobster Roll ladies retired a few years ago, Bo took over as chair of the Lobster Roll committee.
The money raised each summer goes towards the church's ministries and mission projects, including local and overseas organizations.
Last year, we got a late start.
We cleared $48,000.
$48,000.
Still, I'm sure that makes a difference.
Yeah.
And this year, we've topped that this year already.
And we're not done yet, so...
What's the all-time record for most lobster rolls in one night?
Is it 15?
I got the old chart.
Oh, you got a chart?
Let's see the chart.
Show me the chart.
Oh, look at this.
Lobster roll sales.
Wow.
2015.
There was a stretch in July and August 2015.
What was happening then?
1200, 1300, 1400.
You had three weeks in a row of over 1400 lobster rolls.
People were still on the island and they'd like to come for lobster meat.
As Beau reels off these numbers, I'm looking at these huge mixing bowls filled with chunks of lobster and I'm starting to wonder where does all this lobster come from?
I mean, I just always assumed the church had some setup with one of the fish markets on the island to get fresh local lobster.
But it started to hit me.
Half a pound of lobster per roll.
1,400 rolls in a night.
That's 700 pounds of lobster meat sold in one evening.
There are not many small local fish markets anywhere that can get you 700 pounds of fresh lobster meat all on the same day.
I was nervous to ask Beau about it.
I was afraid maybe I was digging into some closely guarded secret.
But he just told me.
I get it through Cisco.
Okay.
I think it comes from Canada, I think.
Wherever, okay.
In case you didn't catch that, Bo said he gets the lobster from Cisco.
That's the same huge food service company that supplies restaurants all over the country, as well as school cafeterias and hospitals.
You've probably seen their trucks on the highway.
The lobster meat comes frozen in two-pound bags.
This blew my mind.
For as long as I can remember, it has been drilled into my head that if seafood is going to be any good, it's got to be fresh, not frozen.
I waited tables at a popular seafood restaurant in Boston and that's all they talked about.
So how is it possible that the best lobster rolls I've ever had in my life are made with frozen lobster meat?
I had come in search of lobster rolls, but it would appear I had stumbled into a mystery.
Coming up, the search for answers.
Then later, the church doors open and lobster roll night begins.
Stick around.
Ooh, advertisements.
Yummy.
Welcome back.
When we left off, our heartwarming story about Grace Church's lobster roll night had turned into a mystery.
Conventional wisdom says fresh seafood is always better than frozen, right?
So how is it possible that the best lobster rolls I've ever had are made with frozen lobster meat?
I decided to do some digging.
I consulted with Daniel Gritzer.
He's the senior culinary director at Serious Eats.
And Daniel told me that, while some delicate cuts of seafood can suffer from freezing, lobster is different.
That's because lobster meat is tough and when you freeze it, tiny ice crystals form that make microscopic tears in the meat, tenderizing it.
Which actually makes sense.
I mean, I know some people prefer fresh lobster, but to me, it's a little bit chewy.
Freezing it helps.
But that alone isn't enough to make great lobster rolls.
Grace Church has a specific preparation process that unlocks the full flavor of the lobster.
Beau walked me through it.
He said the lobster arrives on a Monday and he thaws it out slowly over the course of the week.
We drain the lobster meat and let it drain naturally.
It fills up containers.
We have special containers that I use that are like a square colander.
Right.
And we put the lobster meat in that in the packages and then that drains down onto the regular plastic pan below that.
We do it out on Wednesday.
We do it out again on Thursday.
And then on Friday morning, they're here.
Wait, so...
What's the liquid that's being drained from them?
The natural water that comes from the lobster.
That's interesting, because one of the things that I've noticed at some other lobster rolls that I've eaten that were less good is that they're kind of watery.
The meat tastes a little watery.
And I guess that must be because they're not draining the meat as much.
That's very possible.
Yeah, no, we just let it drain naturally.
So Bo basically made special giant strainers for thawing and draining the lobster meat.
Lobsters are especially wet creatures, so this process naturally removes a lot of water from the meat.
Bo comes in every day throughout the week to empty the water from the trays.
Everyone I meet at Grace Church has their own specific rituals around lobster rolls.
Here's Susan Eibner.
It does taste better when you're sitting near the ocean.
100%.
The only other lobster rolls that I've ever had that I enjoy nearly as much as the Grace Church ones come from Kelly's on Revere Beach.
Oh, okay.
Just north of Boston.
Yeah.
Susan is the interim priest at Grace Church.
I believe they put little bits of celery in.
How do you feel about that?
No, no celery.
That's too bad.
Yeah.
Yeah, but when I find the ones nowadays that have like tarragon is about the dill or they want to put it's just like- Or they fill it, they do the filler with the lettuce.
Ugh.
Unacceptable.
Yeah.
We literally did.
They show you how they weigh out every single container or lobster roll gets the same amount.
Absolutely.
Eight ounces, which is a lot.
It is.
You know, it's interesting to me Susan, because I think that a lot of people perceive lobster rolls as expensive because they're on a menu.
They're often like in the sandwich section.
And so if you're looking at roast beef sandwich 8, turkey sandwich 9, and then you see lobster roll 20, you're like whoa, that's an expensive sandwich.
But I don't think that's the right economic way to think about it.
Because eight ounces of lobster meat?
I actually researched this today before coming here because I was curious.
On average, a one pound lobster in the shell yields three to three and a half ounces.
So you're doing eight ounces.
That means that it is more meat than you would get from a two pound lobster, which is big.
If you were to go into a nice restaurant and order a two-pound lobster with the drawn butter and all that the whole big lobster on the plate, it would cost way more than 20.
Yes, yes, it would.
You're absolutely right.
Yeah.
Susan clearly knows her way around a lobster roll.
She was born and raised in Maine.
And she's seen her share of church fundraisers.
She's been a pastor all over the country.
In fact, that's her job.
She works with churches when they're in between priests.
Sometimes she stays a few months, sometimes a few years.
She's been at Grace Church since 2016.
I got the job here because I have dealt with community grief and their last priest died and they were heartbroken.
And so this has been a time of helping them to really come back to their own.
Susan says these lobster roll dinners at Grace Church are the most ambitious church fundraiser she has ever encountered.
But they're special in another way, too.
People come in and it's like old home week.
It's like everybody comes in and they're glad to see each other and they've seen each other other summers and people meet people here and remember people here and go and sit at tables together that they only do here on Friday nights.
And anything that becomes a community builder in this day and age is a ministry.
Another thing that brings new people into Grace Church the stained glass windows that depict two black priests who were early leaders in the Episcopal Church.
Those windows are part of Martha's Vineyard's African American Heritage Trail.
People are coming in and going, so where are the windows?
Can you mind?
Can we take a quick look?
Yep, yep, yep.
We left the parish hall and went into the church sanctuary.
So this is the window for the first African-American Episcopal priest is Absalom Jones.
Reverend Jones is depicted in a black robe, holding a communion cup and a wafer.
The other window features the Right Reverend John M Burgess, the first African-American diocesan bishop.
He's in a white robe, holding a candle lighter and a Bible.
Seeing people come in and seeing those windows.
One woman said to me there's only one other church in my entire life that I ever saw an African American depicted somebody who looked like me in a stained glass window.
And it was just one of those moments where as a...
White woman of privilege, I think, is the way I would describe myself.
I was stunned by that.
I had thought about the fact that Jesus wasn't white.
Thank you very much, but he was never depicted that way, the way he really was.
He's usually depicted as a white man.
And but I'd never really thought about the fact that African-Americans didn't see stained glass windows where the faces of people looked like them.
And so there was learning for me and there was a pride in the people who go in and look at the two windows.
After getting a good look at the stained glass windows, Susan and I returned to the parish hall, where the doors were just about to open for lobster roll night.
Everyone was moving around the room faster now.
There was less joking around.
People had their game faces on.
It was time to ask Pastor Susan one last question.
How do you like your lobster roll?
They pretty much have it.
I grew up in down East Maine.
Oh.
Oh, yes.
So you're like New England to the core.
I am.
Yeah.
And lobster roll to the core.
You don't mess with lobster.
I'm a purist.
Yeah.
I fit in here.
I love that you describe yourself as a purist in terms of lobster rolls, because you're like Jesus wasn't white, but don't you dare put tarragon on my lobster roll.
That's right.
That's right.
You know.
Right.
That's the Episcopal Church in a nutshell.
Pretty soon, it's showtime.
The doors are about to open.
Sandy, can I check in with you?
Yes.
It's just a few minutes before four.
Update me.
Where do things stand?
Where do things stand?
Well, we are ready.
We've got all our stations manned.
The pie table is full of pies, and we're ready.
Hopefully, we can move them in and move them out.
And what are the emotions like over the course of the day of Friday building up to this moment when the doors open?
Let there be a long line.
There you go.
That's it.
That's the one.
Let it be a good night.
Let it be a good night and let nobody yell at anybody in the kitchen.
Sometimes it gets a little tense in the kitchen.
These guys will get backed up and we won't have enough containers for them.
And we'll be trying to make them as fast as we can.
And they're standing there.
I need three more.
And we say, you'll get them when we're ready.
At 4 o'clock, the doors open.
Ten minutes later, they had sold 100 lobster rolls and there was a line out the door.
The hall is a pretty typical church function room.
Wood ceilings, simple decorations.
It has three or four big round tables with red and white checkered tablecloths.
The tables are communal, so different groups end up sitting together.
There was the college student here working for the summer, having her first Grace Church experience.
I think the amount of lobster that came on the roll was a little shocking when it first came out.
The husband and wife pilots were on the island for the season.
We know people that fly in from Connecticut on Fridays to come here because...
First of all, the lobster rolls are delicious, and secondly, the charity is wonderful.
And a woman who's been coming to Martha's Vineyard for 40 years, since she was a baby.
The lobster is big and juicy.
I mean, they have like the biggest lobster pieces that I've seen, the chunks.
So, and it's like nice and sweet and it just tastes really good and everybody's friendly.
So I guess that makes it special too.
Then there was this guy.
Can you tell me your name, please?
I'm Captain Ralph Joseph.
Hey, Captain.
Oh, here's your business card.
Okay.
I advertise Lobster World Charters.
You guys are my biggest draw out of New Bedford.
All right.
And people stand in line at the docks to come out here and have these lobster rolls.
Wait, seriously?
Yeah.
Lobster roll charters?
Yeah.
In New Bedford, Massachusetts?
Yeah, yeah.
People hire you to take them in a boat from New Bedford to Martha's Vineyard just to eat these lobster rolls.
I'm going to talk them into it.
They do some shopping.
They mingle with the locals.
I mean, they enjoy the island, but the highlight that I advertise is the lobster rolls.
These lobster rolls?
Absolutely.
I spotted Beau in the corner of the kitchen, surveying the scene.
His plush lobster hat had gotten turned a little crooked in all the craziness.
All right, Beau, you look like you're taking a minute to yourself.
How are things going?
How's the night proceeding so far?
Good.
Very good.
Can you tell at this point we're about 30 minutes in now can you tell how big of a night it's going to be?
Nope.
Nope.
No way.
So, like, in 10 minutes, 1,000 people may show up?
Or 10 minutes could stop dead.
Right.
No clue.
Right, right.
I'm hoping for at least 1,000.
All right.
All right, that's a good goal.
Good goal.
At this point, I was starving.
It was time to place my order.
All right, well, Louise, I would like four lobster rolls, please.
You would like four lobster rolls.
As they put my food together, I chatted with Simone Pratt.
She's been coming to Martha's Vineyard every summer for more than 20 years, since she was in college.
I'm kind of a traditionalist.
I like tradition.
I like passing on traditions in my family.
So I think also the mystique of coming here and doing this.
I only come once a year here.
So I think it adds to the fandom.
You don't seem to be eating a lobster roll.
Because I have it in a container because I'm going out to watch the sunset in Menemsha.
So I'm going to eat it while I'm watching the sunset.
So lobster rolls and sunsets for you tonight.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lobster rolls and sunsets.
Kind of perfect.
Yeah.
Remember Bo said he was hoping to sell 1,000 lobster rolls that night I was there?
They ended up selling 852.
Solid showing.
Now, a few updates since we first aired this story on Grace Church.
They found a permanent rector to replace interim priest Susan Eibner.
His name is Stephen Harding, and like Susan, he's a New England native.
So I think Grace Church's lobster rolls will be safe under his leadership.
He's not gonna try to sneak any lettuce in there.
And finally, Mary Tucker, the woman who had the initial idea for this lobster roll fundraiser, passed away in 2021, just shy of her 103rd birthday.
My thanks to Bo Sandy, Susan Roger and to Karen Huff of the Grace Church Lobster Roll Committee for being part of this episode.
Thanks also to Steve Woodman of Woodman's and, of course, my parents.
Next week on the show.
Do you ever wonder why the McDonald's ice cream machines always seem to be broken?
When two entrepreneurs try to fix the problem, they end up creating bigger problems of their own.
That one's next week.
While you wait for that, check out last week's show, our salad spinner.
We debate tipping in coffee shops, when it's appropriate to drink iced coffee, and a lot more.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
This episode was produced by me, along with Anne Sani, Gofana Putubwele, Emma Morgenstern and Andres O'Hara.
It was edited by Peter Clowney and Camille Stanley.
Our technical director is Jared O'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Lisa Kinvey, from Stoneham Massachusetts, reminding you to eat more, Eat better and eat more better.
This segment is brought to you by Miralax.
Growing up as a Mexican-American kid in Newark, New Jersey, Juan Contla wasn't that into soccer.
But all that changed in 2006 when he was 12.
That year, the biggest soccer tournament in the world roared into his life.
My uncles and family would just not stop talking about this Mexico team that was going into this tournament in Germany.
I think they were ranked number five in the world.
When Mexico played its first game?
It was just such a big deal.
There was so much food around the house.
That was the first moment I realized that, you know, this meant a lot.
It wasn't just a sport.
It was something that, you know...
That day, Juan got hooked on soccer.
A few days later, he went to spend the summer with his grandparents in Mexico, in a small town in Puebla called Tochimilco.
He got there just in time to see Mexico compete in its second game of the tournament.
The entire town shut down for it.
Buses stopped running.
You know, my grandparents didn't own a TV that had color or cable connection.
So I remember I had to go to my uncle's house who lived just down the street.
Juan's aunt and uncle invited not just family, but friends and coworkers.
And we were all just jagged in the courtyard.
They dragged the TV out of the living room.
It wasn't even that big of a screen.
It was a box TV.
Juan's uncle had made carnitas.
His grandparents made pan dulce.
There was barbacoa and a cured beef called cecina with fresh tortillas and queso fresco.
That game against Angola ended in a draw.
Mexico lost its next game to Portugal, but they had done well enough in their three games to advance to the knockout stage of the tournament, where they would face one of the best teams in the world Argentina.
That crowd was the biggest crowd I had seen to that point.
We actually watched it in Socalo, which is like the...
Like the town square.
Yeah, the town square.
Because the city hall was actually putting up a bigger screen to watch that game, because it was a knockout game.
Argentina scored pretty early into the game.
But not too long after that, Mexico didn't score.
And there was everything flying in the air.
Beer, food, everything was in the air.
Tostadas are flying across the town square.
Yeah, everything was flying.
It went to extra time that game.
And I'll never forget, when they scored on us, the feeling that you're stomach just dropping, because he knew that was it.
That was the last game for Mexico.
They lost an extra $20 to see the 2-1.
But the excitement stayed with me.
The best games I experienced were watching it down there.
And ever since then, I've always watched the biggest tournament come around every four years.
These days, being Mexican-American, Juan roots for both the U.S. and Mexican teams.
And he's gotten into the Mexican Pro Soccer League.
His uncle took him to a game there.
I remember walking into that stadium.
It was already jam-packed.
I think the game didn't start for like another hour, but people were singing, drums were out.
There were some players going off already.
It was a night cane too, so it made it look even cooler.
But I remember going into the stands and I was asking for popcorn.
But this vendor, he was asking me, what did I want on the popcorn?
I just thought, oh, I thought this was a regular popcorn.
He's like, no, I got caramel, chocolate, a bunch of other sauces.
And he like doubled all the sauces around, did like a little twirl with the popcorn bucket.
I was just so amazed at the showmanship that you know a popcorn vendor had in the stands during the game.
Obviously, here in the States you go to a game, you grab, you know, a slice of pizza or a hot dog or a burger.
But over there, you get elotes, you can get an esquite, you can get cup ramen.
Uh... which is insane.
That doesn't seem on the surface like a convenient thing to eat while watching sports, but I'm sure it works.
No.
And I remember I saw the vendor carrying them in his box and they were all ready, ready.
He just, if he brought them to you, he just had to dress them.
You know, you want the salsa Valentina, you want the lime, you want some extra protein.
We could put that in there too.
Stuff like that.
This year for the big tournament, Juan's mom knew exactly what she wanted to serve.
Birria tacos palomas beer, and She was like we're going to make cenitas because we're from Puebla.
That's a staple in Puebla.
Cenitas.
That's a sandwich, right?
Yeah, it's a sandwich.
The bread is panela.
It's like a molasses-style type bread.
It's a little dark.
A little darker, yeah.
And it's like a regular torta, but, you know, the bread is different.
You use queso Oaxaca or quesillo.
It's pretty much customized as you wish, but it has to be pan de panela.
That's what makes it semita.
All right.
So semita is on the menu this year.
It sounds delicious, Juan.
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