The Lobster Roll

As I mentioned last week, my parents and I decided to trek "out East" to Montauk for a few days this week. For those of you who aren't familiar, Montauk is a small beach town at the very tip of Long Island, past the famous Hampton beaches.

Since this was my first time out there, I had my father do some research on where we should have lunch our first day.

Location
After a VERY long time stuck in Wednesday mid-day traffic on the one-lane Highway 27, we finally got past the town of East Hampton and were cruising down until we reached The Lobster Roll (also affectionately known as "Lunch") right off the highway, just before you reached Montauk.


We arrived for a late lunch (around 2PM) and there were still a lot of people, but we were able to get seated right away.

The outdoor patio area looked appealing and fun. But given it was pretty crowded and a bit hot out, we opted to sit indoors. Some people love eating outside, but I definitely prefer sitting in the shade looking outside from my cool shaded area.

The decor is very simple and made everyone feel comfortable for strolling in wearing shorts and flip flops. My father has eaten at some very expensive posh restaurants in his life, but his favorite ones are just like this place - simple with great local food and welcoming service.

Baby Friendliness 
The entire region is very kid-friendly because most of the people here during the summer are families from Manhattan. Everywhere you look, there are kids decked out in fancy labels. So just about every restaurant we went to this week had kid-friendly amenities. (Apparently the Hamptons also have a great nightlife scene for young singles, but those people are probably still working in their Manhattan cubicles on a Wednesday afternoon.)

However, The Lobster Roll is by far the most baby friendly place we went to this trip. While all of the restaurants here had high chairs, and even some with crayons and kids place mats, this one also had toddler toys for me to play with at the table! To tell you the truth, the toys were actually a little young for me given I had just turned 21 months old, but I didn't want to make our server feel bad. It definitely made me reminisce about my 12 month old days way back when.

The Food
Of course, we didn't come here to watch me play with table-side toys. The oversized laminated menus fit well with the kitschy decor. There were so many things we wanted to try, so we ordered more than we probably should have. For starters, we chose the Crabby Seafood Dip ($14). My mother ordered the Seafood Chili ($13). My father opted for the Hot Lobster Roll Platter ($25 or $27 with fries) and I went with the Fish & Chips ($13).

My mother loved the Crab & Artichoke dip the best. Growing up in Israel, they didn't eat much shellfish at all, so the past few years in New York have introduced her to some great seafood dishes. Plus I've found that anything with cheese is just delicious.

While many lobster aficionados out here would scream in horror if you chose anything besides a cold lobster salad roll, my father was very happy with his hot lobster roll platter - mostly because it came with a lot of food. In fact, it was enough butter drenched lobster to fill two hot dog buns. I'm only a toddler, but even I know that 2 is better than 1!

For 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, 1 dessert (plus a beer and a soda), the total bill came out to $88. Not cheap, but not super expensive either for seafood. We rationalized it by eating so late and so much that we skipped having dinner that evening. So $88 for 2 meals for 2 adults doesn't seem that unreasonable ($22/person per meal).

Fortunately, they took Visa and Mastercard, but interestingly enough, they ran our Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card (2x points for dining) without leaving an option to add the tip on the card. So my father bit the bullet and paid the tip in cash.

The Lobster Roll
1980 Montauk Hwy, Amagansett, NY
(631) 267-3740