The Storied History Of The Famous Lobster Roll - Daily Meal

For the first 50 years or so, lobster rolls were more or less a localized specialty, available up and down the New England shore at clam shacks and other seaside restaurants. While those "in the know" were aware of how great lobster rolls were, it took decades for the general population to catch on. 

In the 1970s, a restaurant called Red's Eats in Wiscasset, Maine, which had already been selling its famous lobster roll for many years, started to promote it heavily. Later, further south in New England in the 1980s, Jasper White debuted a version of the lobster roll at Summer Shack in Massachusetts, also helping the item rise in popularity. Once word caught on, the sandwich spread nationwide.

Another boost in popularity came about in 1996. That year, a version of the Maine lobster roll appeared at Pearl Oyster Bar in New York City. And as they say, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. With its rise in notoriety in the northeast, the entire country soon caught on to what New Englanders had known since the 1920s: Lobster rolls are seriously delicious.