Seattle’s most expensive lobster roll costs $40 — our critic rates it (2024)

Seattle has become world-class expensive — we know this. But the sticker shock from the city’s priciest food (and drink) is real. In this series,Seattle Times food critic Bethany Jean Clementtaste-tests some of the spendiest items around town — including, so far,a $28 hamburger,a $55 pieand more — to evaluate whether they’re worth the price of ingestion.

THE ITEM: The Double-the-Lobster lobster roll at Bar Harbor in South Lake Union.

THE PRICE: $40.

CONSIDER THE LOBSTER ROLL: A lobster roll is by nature a New England thing, for that is where the lobsters are — in Maine, mainly, where back in the day the Atlantic was so rife with these crustaceans that they were the opposite of a luxury. So many lobsters! Lobstermen and -women, in particular, probably got sick of eating this largesse. Many a chowder was made. And why not serve it as a sandwich, unpretentiously, on a bun similar to a hot-dog one?

Different preparations have their highly partisan fans. There’s the lobster roll served warm with the meat drizzled in melted butter, generally called Connecticut-style; Maine-style has come to mean either meat mixed with just mayo, or that plus celery and/or chives. Beyond this, you’re venturing into some controversial territory of innovation; there’s talk of places back East serving them flavored with wasabi, chipotle and curry, which must drive lobster-roll sticklers mad.

For the purist, the style of bun is not open to debate: It shall be a top-split, flat-sided vehicle of soft white bread, with its exterior buttered and grilled to golden-brown. And, clearly, the lobster should be pieces readily identifiable as such — from the claw and other good hunks.

In New England, the lobster roll proliferated to the extent that a version was sporadically available at McDonald’s. In the Pacific Northwest, as recently as a decade ago, they were few and far between; lobster is a delicacy here, imported in a high-carbon-clawprint fashion and priced to match. But New Seattle’s privilege has apparently manifested a new appetite for this lobster sandwich (likely boosted by the bit of prestige earned by posting a photo of one on social media). Now there are numerous lobster rolls in the city, and, my friends, most of them are not very good. Which brings us to …

COMPARISON-SHOPPING: Bar Harbor’s $40 price tag may cause sticker shock, but the point of comparison here is that place’s regular, non-double-size lobster roll: That costs a relatively reasonable-for-hedonism $26 and comes in three traditional styles, with your choice of salad, coleslaw or potato chips.

Downtown at Luke’s Lobster, a nationwide chain from Maine, the $24 lobster roll is offered just warm or cold with butter (or with spicy honey or truffle butter, shudder, for a dollar extra). My cold roll featured chilled, congealed butter coating the meat, and all the kitchen’s output here gets sprinkled with a proprietary spice blend noticeably containing oregano, with the unsettling result of a lobster roll that smells like pizza sauce.

Nearby, Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls is another chain, based in synonymous-with-crabcakes Maryland (and, in what-a-world news, Mason’s just opened an outlet in Milan). My $22 sample here tasted good enough, but came with just a spear of pickle and felt distinctly lightweight in the hand, with excess cottony roll at each end. Add in a distinctly chain-y antithesis of atmosphere, and this does not feel like a good deal.

Across the street, at MARKET at the Seattle Art Museum (and also in Edmonds), the dining experience rates much more pleasant, and the $34 lobster rolls come with nice french fries. The meat on those rolls, however, gets dosed with Old Bay, lending an acrid smokiness to what should be purely of the sea. Most of the lobster chewed stringy and tough; the roll lacked butter, toasted until dry.

The $28 lobster roll at Bar Miriam on Queen Anne is served in an unorthodox open-faced format with lettuce, Old Bay-flavored mayo and oddly soft, watery pieces of celery described as confit. More troubling than that was the lack of any but small bits of recognizable lobster, with the bulk of the meat in mushy-textured threads.

Do not go to Pike Place Chowder for the $34.95 lobster roll — it’s not called Pike Place Lobster Roll for good reason.

A CAVEAT: All this being said, let’s remember that there is actually no such thing as a local lobster roll in Seattle, and that the resources involved in getting one to your mouth here are considerable, and that supporting our Pacific Northwest fisheries is the right thing to do. To that end, consider the Dungeness crab roll: Bar Harbor makes a marvelous one, in both regular and double-stuffed format, for a dollar cheaper than the lobster version, too.

THE TASTE-TEST: Owner Ben Hodgetts opened Bar Harbor in 2016; he hails from Maine and takes matters of the lobster roll commensurately seriously. The $40 Double-the-Lobster extravaganza gets stacked with whole pieces of beautifully orange-and-red-edged knuckle-and-claw meat — it’s filled to far overflowing the buttery-toasted Macrina roll. (Hodgetts doesn’t deploy cheaper tail meat, which he maintains is unsuited to the roll configuration.)

All of it tastes notably of freshness: the sweetly oceanic lobster, the cushy roll, the just-right-light amount of mayo, should you like it that way (Hellmann’s/Best Foods only, per Hodgetts’ dictate). The coleslaw strays to the sugary side, but the salad of mixed greens with toasted pepitas and balsamic vinaigrette makes a welcome palate cleanser; opt for chips, and you get the contrasting crunch of now-classic Tim’s Cascade.

An argument could be made that if you’re going to splurge on a lobster roll, why not go all-in on the amount of the star ingredient? I expected to come down on the affirmative side of this, but it’s possible that the double is … too much lobster?! It’s a lot, anyway, and Bar Harbor’s regular $26 lobster roll is gorgeous, too: Every specimen gets topped with a showboat whole claw. After you admire it, Hodgetts advises unabashedly smashing it down into the roll to achieve optimal bread-to-lobster bites, and the proportion does then seem pretty much perfect.

Bar Harbor also offers a pleasant neo-nautical interior with ideally friendly service, a full bar and a menu of too much more deliciousness to get into here — it’s an oft-overlooked top Seattle spot, with a huge, fun outdoor deck in the summertime, too.

WORTH IT? Having eaten my own weight in local lobster rolls recently, I’m going to call Seattle’s most expensive lobster roll at Bar Harbor its undisputed best — and its less over-the-top, less pricey smaller sibling is just right, too.