Did you know they used to serve lobsters to convicts? 

You’re lying. 

I’m serious! Back in the times when Britain owned large swathes of America…

They served lobsters to prisoners? 

Boiled up, in great big vats and served dumped into communal troughs with oatmeal to make a sort of shell-fishy gruel. Very often they’d be served shells and all, to really send a message you weren’t here for comfort. 

You mean no butter and chardonnay? 

Well that’s just the thing. Back then in the Seventeen and Eighteen hundreds lobsters were so abundant you’d find great piles of them heaped up on the beaches. They were called ‘cockroaches of the sea’, hated so that any self respecting seaman would rather rub fish paste into their eyeballs and let a thousand hungry seagulls peck at them, than be seen eating a lobster! 

Their only use was: pig food, burning (to make fertiliser) and feeding prisoners - and that’s if you really hated your prisoners. In fact they were so disliked that (allegedly) one Massachusetts colony passed a law that you couldn’t serve lobster to your inmates any more than three times a week. Just think one of the world’s first ever human right laws was about lobsters. 

But hang on, there’s hotels in New York serving lobsters at $2000 a pop… What in the blue blistering barnacles happened? 

You mean the Zillion Dollar Lobster Fritartar? Served at Norma's in Le Parker Meridien hotel made with six eggs, 10 ounces of Sevurga caviar, an entire lobster, cream, chives, and lobster sauce, all served over Yukon gold potatoes… what you’re looking at there is the greatest rebranding the world has ever seen. Sure, it took about two hundred years or so, but there’s not a PR Agency or sleazy conman who’s ever been able to pull off a reputational 360º quite like the lobster has. 

It’s insane to think our ancestors turned up their noses at lobster – their opulence seems so innate. So natural. Almost like eating lobster is somehow fundamental to the human experience... You can just imagine early humans gathering round the mud hut or cliff-cave to celebrate the changing of the seasons, or feasting to the moon gods, with piles of fresh lobster steamed over seaweed-lined fire pits. But this just wasn’t really the case...

It’s true, as a species we’ve eaten lobsters ever since we could walk on our own two feet - if not before. Archeologists have found hundreds of shell “middens” – refuse pits – from sites along the coast of the UK, Scandinavia and North America. Neolithic and Mesolithic humans (c. 10k - 4k BCE) were definitely eating lobsters, but they were far from symbolic, no one was getting their rocks off at the thought of a fresh lobster feast. 

There is some evidence that the Ancient Greeks, who were fond of seafood, had a somewhat soft spot for lobsters – which you would hope from the most advanced civilisation on the face of the planet! Writings from the 4th century BCE by Archestratus - often considered the world’s first food writer - cites spiny lobster (a slightly different European species) as a “delicacy”, stating that they should be simply grilled and eaten with salt and olive oil (yum!). 

So throughout human history lobsters have just been “paupers food”, until…

The Victorians.

Classic. Never was there a dining experience they couldn’t make more elaborate.

They turned lobster eating into a theatre. The crackers, the picks, the bibs, suddenly lobster eating was an experience with etiquettes and rules. They could be served in huge silver cloches and made into exquisite looking centre pieces. Combine Victorian theatre with actual French theatre, and you get Lobster Thermidor. 

Now you’ve lost me…

It’s January 24th 1891, Victorien Sardou's controversial new play Thermidor, a critical look at the French Revolution, is debuting in Paris. In celebration of the performance, chef Léopold Étienne Mourier arose from the bowels of his great restaurant Chez Marie with  a concoction of lobster, egg yolks, mustard and cognac served in the lobster’s shell – a gift to the cast and crew. 

The play is a flop. Being shut down within the week for being too politically contentious. But for chef Léopold that didn’t matter; as his dish had been a hit. By the turn of the century this luxurious concoction had made its way to America, where it reached eye watering levels of fame being served in all the hottest of New York hot spots from The Hotel Knickerbocker, to the  Waldorf Astoria, to America’s first fine dining restaurant: Delmonico’s on the the intersection of Beaver & William street. In fact the chefs at Delmonico’s adaptation of Leopold’s thermidor - Lobster Newberg - remains on their menu still to this day. 

So it took English style, French finesse, and American marketing to turn the lobster into a gastronomic superstar…

Don’t think for one minute that makes the lobster inaccessible to us everyday folk. Yes, today it’s definitely a food for celebration. But so it should be! Lobster eating is an event. 

We live in a world of grab-and-go everything. Sandwiches eaten at desks, meals wolfed down between meetings, food that's designed to be fast, unwrapped and eaten without a second thought. But lobster forces you to slow down.

You can't mindlessly munch through a lobster while scrolling through TikTok - or, you could but it might be very messy! A lobster demands attention. It requires tools, technique, and a certain commitment to the dish. There's something beautifully analog about it all - the crack of the shell, the satisfaction of extracting a perfect piece of claw meat, the ridiculous baby-bib protecting your Sunday best.

But isn't all that fuss a bit... much?

At Rockfish, we've watched thousands of people tackle their first whole lobster. There's always that moment of uncertainty, followed by determination, then pure joy when they crack open that first claw and taste the sweet, succulent meat inside. It's like watching someone solve a delicious puzzle.

The Victorians understood something we sometimes forget: anticipation makes everything taste better. The ritual, the tools, the slight challenge of it all - they're not obstacles to overcome, they're part of the experience.

So embrace the ceremony?

Absolutely. Because when you finally crack into that shell and taste that first piece of perfectly sweet lobster meat, warm and tender and tasting of the cleanest seawater, you'll understand why this humble prisoner's food became the king of the seafood world.

There really is no finer treat. The journey from sea to plate, from poverty food to luxury, from simple sustenance to grand occasion - it's all there in that first glorious bite.

The prisoners of Massachusetts had no idea what they were missing. But we do.

Enjoy lobster whilst it’s in season in any of our South Coast restaurants, or enjoy cooked to perfection, at home, ordered from our Online Seafood Market.