Summertime in Bar Harbor, Maine, can only mean one thing: Lobster ice cream at Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium.
Yes, you read that right—lobster ice cream. For those of you scoring at home, the frozen wonder comprises butter-flavored ice cream with bits and chunks of honest-to-goodness boiled lobster meat.
Once or twice a month (depending on demand, of course), workers buy cooked lobster meat from a local lobster pound, pick the meat, butter it and fold it into the ice cream. The stuff sits in the case alongside more traditional flavors like chocolate and vanilla. Not surprisingly, while many visitors taste the crustacean-infused sweet, it’s more of a curiosity than a best-seller.
Ben & Bill’s invented the treat in the 1990s to prove to customers that the shop actually makes its own ice cream. I know this because I sampled the stuff in its inaugural year.
Vacationing for a week outside the entrance to Acadia National Park, my family wandered into Ben & Bill’s one night after a clambake with friends. A buddy and I were deliberating between Irish Mudslide and Mocha Chip when we spotted it on the board: Lobster Ice Cream.
We couldn’t believe our eyes. We thought it was some sick Mainer joke. We harassed the teen-age girl behind the counter about it. And with the blasé of someone who likely had fielded such skepticism a thousand times, she scooped two taster-spoons and handed them over the counter to us.
Inspection came first. Thankfully, there was a pea-sized globule of lobster meat in my sample. It looked just like any other boiled lobster meat – red on the outside, white at the core.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
So I threw it down. The taste of butter ice cream came first—a little tart, a little sour with a modest hint of salt. Then, like an afterthought, I tasted that inimitable brininess of lobster. I rooted my tongue around the inside of my mouth to find the clump of crustacean. I found it up against a tooth, and bit down, just like I would at a seafood restaurant.
The lobster was tough—after all, it had been frozen for God knows how long. After a few attempts, however, it loosened up and went down smoothly, save for a tiny piece that wedged between my teeth.
I stood smacking my tongue against the roof of my mouth for a good minute or two, contemplating whether I really had the chutzpah to order a whole cup of the stuff.
Ultimately, I played it safe with Mocha Chip—a decision I’ll likely regret until I go back.
The experience certainly left its mark, though. To this day, it’s almost Pavlovian: the heat of summer always makes me think of Lobster Ice Cream. When I’m feeling really frisky, I like to imagine all of the other seafood-themed ice creams New Englanders could think up. My personal favorites: Chocolate Fried Clam, Strawberry Scallop and, of course, Frozen Chowdah.
Ben & Bill’s, you heard those here first.
Readers, what would be the signature ice cream from your town or region? What’s the craziest and/or wackiest ice cream concoction you’ve ever eaten?
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