On A Roll: The Clam Shack

Kennebunkport

2 Western Avenue

Kennebunkport, ME 04043

(207) 967-2560

I really did not want to do this on a weekend during the high summer season. I stopped at the Landing Store first to have a roll for baseline comparative reasons. The Clam Shack has a lot of buzz and a lot of posters of awards from lobster roll competitions held where lobsters are flown in.... They have signed things from people like Rachel Ray, Bobby Fay, Guy Fieri... I'm making up some of the last part, but humility is not in the Shack's DNA. I really don't care if Barbara Bush gave them a blurb about liking their clams. We are talking about their lobster rolls.

They have a roll very similar to Red's, you get the meat from a chicken (1 pounder) on a roll with either mayo or Connecticut style with butter. The buttered lobster roll is not a Maine thing and I don't understand why we don't have the same reaction toward it that we do about Manhattan Clam Chowder? Again, like Red's they place a bifurcated tail on the roll just to say, "We use lobster tails!" Whatevs, it just tears out in one bite and gets stuck in your incisors. Besides, I truly believe knuckle meat is the best part of lobster salad.

The Shack uses the hamburger bun delivery method akin to purveyors in the Thomaston area. I am finding this more and more to the south, like here and Bedrock in York. As opposed to Bedrock, they do grill the roll with butter.

Please, Dear Lord, Who Art in Heaven, please make him get to the point: what did the roll taste like? Well, it was pretty good, but at $17 dollars and change (tax) for a standard 4 oz. roll on a hamburger bun, and a royal ass-ache drive with insane parking, just go to the Landing Store. You avoid the tourist nightmare and the motif short wearing tourists. The Kennebunkport tourist set is a special breed that I can only begin to describe. The word entitled comes to mind, and maybe d*&%$@ (starts with d, rhymes with swoosh), also madras, or loafer (with bits), or the thought,"Why is she with him?"

I remember when my uncle used to keep his Hans Christian at the Nonantum during the vice-presidential reign of Bush I. I used to come up as a teen and use the boat for parental getaways. When my uncle would be with us he would proclaim, "I wonder what the poor people do?" I love my uncle dearly, but those kinds of statements suit him perfectly for the Kennebunkport set. . He spends his time now dominating the septagenarian golf scene with his 80's era 500 SL- also a match for the KBPT attitude. I should have a blog just about my uncle and cousins. When on his boat I would drink gin made in Lewiston, Maine and fish for crabs over the side. Kennebunkport was pretty cool back then, but now it is a disaster, just a few outlet stores short of hell.