On the outdoor dining tables at Jordan’s Lobster Farm in Island Park, N.Y., lobster rolls, served warm or cold, seem to be on every table at the casual seafood restaurant. The cold version, with just enough mayonnaise to bind the meat and some chopped celery together, is a best seller. But about four years ago, a warm version that comes with a side of drawn butter was added to the menu.
“People kept requesting a warm one so we added it,” said Brian Glennon, 45, the chef at Jordan’s since 2019. “We started with 15 to 20 a day and now we’re selling more than 70 each day.”
And although the warm version of the lobster roll is gaining in popularity, “the cold is by far the most popular,” Mr. Glennon said.
A beloved summer staple, the lobster roll is now a common menu item across the country. But in New England, allegiances historically belong to either the cold, Maine-style roll with mayonnaise or the warm, buttered Connecticut-style, in a rivalry as fiercely contested as the one between Chicago- and New York-style pizza. Until relatively recently, it would be unheard-of to find both versions offered under the same roof — or on the same dock — but more restaurants are splitting the difference and selling both options.
The invention of the warm version is often credited to Perry’s in Milford, Conn., after a customer requested a boiled lobster dinner with drawn butter to go in the 1920s. As for Maine-style, lobster salad with mayo as the binding agent, it has appeared in New England cookbooks since the 1800s, said Amy Traverso, the senior food editor of Yankee Magazine and a co-host of “Weekends With Yankee,” a travel show highlighting the dishes and restaurants of New England.
“Lobster salad is a dish that would have been popular at the turn of the century,” she said. “And World’s Fairs popularized hand-held foods,” she added, speaking to the hot dog bun, introduced in 1904, which provided a portable platform for the salad.
The mayo-smothered lobster roll as we know it, served in a buttered and griddled split top bun, became popular in the early to mid 20th century after the state of Maine invested millions of dollars into paving state highways, and the proliferation of car ownership allowed families to explore the state’s coast.
In the years since, the lobster roll’s fame has only grown, with cold, warm and even hybrid versions taking root.
“Red’s Eats sits right on Route 1, and its popularity goes hand in hand with Maine becoming ‘Vacationland,’” Ms. Traverso said.
Red’s doesn’t serve the Maine style in the classic sense, but instead offers customers a choice of either a side of melted butter or mayonnaise to go along with its roll, piled high with warm lobster meat.
Ben Conniff, a co-founder of the restaurant group Luke’s Lobster, said that the sandwiches have only become more popular since the first location opened in 2009, with the group selling 1 million lobster rolls annually across its 24 American outposts.
The group’s standard lobster roll falls into the hybrid camp: chilled, unembellished lobster meat, mayo spread onto a buttered split top roll with warm lemon butter drizzled on top, which he says sells more than all of its other lobster roll variations combined.
Mr. Conniff prefers the Maine-style roll because the quality of the meat isn’t compromised. “One of the biggest downsides is the texture of the lobster meat that has been reheated. I feel like you make some sacrifices when you heat that lobster,” he said.
Beyond the Maine-Connecticut divide, though, the sandwich can also offer restaurants a chance to experiment. At Hinoki and the Bird, a California-style restaurant in Los Angeles, the lobster roll is mixed with a green curry aioli and served in a jet black charcoal bun — a best-selling item that has been on the menu since the restaurant opened in 2012, according to Beverly Wu, the general manager.
“We usually describe it as a Southeast Asian take on a classic New England version,” she said. “The lobster roll itself is like Americana, it’s so nostalgic on the East Coast and on the West Coast, too.”
Chelsea Leonard, the third generation owner of Abbott’s in the Rough, a waterfront restaurant in Noank, Conn., welcomes the broadening appeal of the dish.
“I think that it’s certainly still a luxury item and special, but I don’t view it that way,” she said. At Abbott’s, diners can order the OMG roll with a half pound of warm lobster meat, or the LOL roll with a full pound.
For Ms. Traverso, the allure of the lobster roll goes beyond the culinary. Even though lobster meat is actually better tasting in the winter, thanks to colder water temperatures, she said, its associations with summer can’t be broken.
“When lobster is being steamed or boiled in salted water, that smell of salt and water and meat smells like the ocean,” she said. “It’s just a reminder of a coastal vacation.”
