Hardwood Floors April May 2018

B eing fromMaine never leaves you. No matter where you move to, or where your career takes you, that sense of identity and place remains at your very core. There’s a different pace and a different way of life in Maine, that comes out every opportunity it has – how you treat people, how you handle business, and the value you place on family and friends. In 2011, I visited my cousin, Sabin, in Los Angeles, where he had moved five years prior. Naturally, we reminisced on the topic of our childhood in Maine – the warm summer days in the backyard, with family and neighbors crowded around big boiling pots of lobster. We would sit at a picnic table stuffed to the gills with neighborhood kids, plastic bibs tied haphazardly around our necks and our fingers drenched in warm butter that ran down to our elbows as we picked and ate steaming hot lobster. There was a sense of community and a sense of celebration in the air that existed on these otherwise normal days, simply because of the inherent traditions surrounding lobster and Maine. “Can’t get Maine lobster out here” we thought, snapping back to our Los Angeles reality. Los Angeles didn’t have traditional Maine lobster. They didn’t have split top New England style rolls. If you could find a lobster roll, it’d be chopped up with so much mayo and celery and other condiments you could barely taste the lobster. Los Angeles is such an iconic city with an important culinary tradition, but it was in dire need of someone showing them what a real lobster roll was. Around this time, something was happening in Los Angeles – a phenomenon where everywhere you looked, food trucks were popping up serving esoteric high-quality dishes street-side. People would seek them

out, looking for a new culinary experience or tradition, or an inventive take on something they already knew. The thought came naturally – could we serve authentic Maine lobster, 3,000 miles away from the source, to the West Coast masses out of a food truck in Los Angeles?The logistics were mind boggling. The risks were real. But there was one thing we were sure of – the product would be fantastic. Within a year, we had pooled our assets and purchased a food truck, with one goal in mind – serving authentic lobster rolls featuring only the highest quality, wild- caught, sustainably harvested lobster from Maine, at an accessible and affordable price. And you know what? We were a hit. Word of mouth, along with a little bit of advertising and social media, drew lines of more than 60 people at our first service. Angelinos raved about their first experience with Maine lobster, and transplanted New Englanders celebrated our authenticity – we were familiar, we inspired nostalgia, we were a taste of home. “Can’t get Maine lobster out here” had suddenly become “I can’t believe I can get Maine lobster out here.”

Photos courtesy of Cousins Maine Lobster.

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