Claw

It's summer which means it's the perfect season for lobster rolls. Most of the good lobster roll places are not in our area, so when a voucher popped up for the one lobster roll place we have - Claw - we jumped at the chance to buy it. Lobster rolls are expensive so any way to save on them without sacrificing quality is welcome! (I miss free lobster roll promotions.)

Proclaiming that you have the best lobster rolls in the city really raises expectations

We tried three times to use our voucher at Claw before we finally succeeded. It wasn't that they didn't accept it, but they sold a lot of vouchers so the wait was always in excess of an hour. It seemed like a lot of people waiting had also come back multiple times, frustrated with the long waits (for the tiny number of tables) until they finally had no choice but to wait because of an expiring voucher.

The voucher was $28 (a $56 value) for 2 lobster rolls, fries, and glasses of wine. They had a few choices for wine, but I don't remember exactly which ones other than that they were the cheapest ones on the menu. It's been over a month so I don't remember what we got, but A remembers we each got a different white one. They were fine but nothing special.

Voucher wine

We started out with a free appetizer of crab beignets thanks to our Foursquare check-in. One nice thing about Claw was that they honored that promotion alongside the voucher, which many restaurants won't do.

Free crab beignets

The crab beignets were basically like crab rangoon. Crispy crab-filled wontons with spicy mayo and sweet chili sauce on the side. At least that's what they said it would be, but neither of those sauces were really very much like any sweet chili sauce we've been accustomed to eating. The beignets weren't bad. Lots of shell, creamy sauces, not a ton of flavor, but at least there was real crab inside the wonton.

Inside the crab beignets

On to the main attraction - the lobster roll, which is usually $17 each. According to the menu, the lobster roll is served on a toasted potato bun with cornichons and fresh cut fries.

When we got the voucher, we thought that the 2 fries mentioned in the voucher meant sides of fries, and not the fries already included in the price of the lobster roll (which is what we got). After we got home from dinner, I added up the price of the wines we'd been offered and 2 lobster rolls, and it came up $6 short from the "value" of the voucher. The only way that could be the case would be if they had counted the $3 sides of fries as part of the "value" to make it sound like a better deal than it really was. Not a huge deal food-wise since I don't really need more fries, but it's a little deceptive and it annoys me on principle.

As for the food itself, it ranged from nothing special to disappointing. The fries were fine but unremarkable. The cornichons and ketchup were standard. Although that lobster roll bun looks like it's been toasted and/or grilled and/or griddled, it was cold, mushy and dry. It didn't even taste that buttery. The texture drove me crazy, because the bun is one of the things I love most about lobster rolls. We appreciated that the lobster roll was not full of mayo and had actual pieces of lobster, but the lobster had no flavor. Why would lobster not actually taste like lobster (really, why doesn't any of their seafood taste like it should)? It was also a pretty small lobster roll, the size of two ketchup cups in the photo. The entire roll was disappointing and didn't really hold up because of the lousy bun. We're not lobster roll connoisseurs but we've definitely had better.

The whole point of these vouchers for a lot of businesses is to bring in new customers who will hopefully return (and we have returned to some of the good ones). But the problem is that, if you don't put your best stuff forward, there is no reason for anyone to want to return. On our visits:

- the waits were extremely long and you could not make a reservation
- the food was either unremarkable or not good, just a really mediocre experience
- the servers seemed completely overwhelmed and no one could estimate correctly how long it would take to either get a table or receive your food
- it was ridiculously hot inside and it seemed like they had no A/C on, even on sweltering nights
- we waited forever to get our lobster rolls - the server told us multiple times they were just about ready but they didn't come for at least half an hour after the appetizer (and after other tables that ordered after us); it really seemed like they forgot even though the kitchen could not be overwhelmed as we were one of only two tables there still waiting for food for most of that time.

None of that makes us want to go back. I won't officially hold against them the fact that I got 8 mosquito bites that night while sitting in the heat during the endless wait for our lobster rolls, since I should have worn repellent.

I don't really like doing negative reviews for restaurants based solely on one visit. But reading many, many other people's experiences from the past couple of months that sound like we could have written them ourselves convinces us that the food and service issues we experienced aren't an isolated incident. Unfortunate, but true. We're definitely not going back to Claw. And there are definitely better lobster rolls in this city.