Great Lobster Roll Quest, Part 2 - Guilford Mooring, (Guilford) Dockside Seafood and Grill (Branford, CT)

Guilford Harbor, toward Sluice Creek

Sunday was what I'd call a pouty day - big, fluffy banks of gray clouds blanketing the sky, hanging just a few inches above the water horizon.  Guilford Harbor is beautiful.  Greys and blues, dashed and blotched across water and sky, interleaved with swatches of grass, land, and tree.  It felt surprisingly good to look out over the ruffled water, feel a gentle, temperate breeze and watch a few, optimistic boats bob along the docks.  It has been a long, bone-wearying winter.

Unexpectedly, a potato roll!
The object of our desire, the Guilford Lobster Pound, was not open, but the Guilford Mooring next door was, and they had a hot lobster roll!  This spot wasn't on my original list, but what the hell, we're on a great lobster roll quest, so try it.  At $18 even, you get a nice amount of lobster in a yellow potato roll with fries.  The potato roll was an interesting twist I hadn't anticipated.  While the lobster pieces were large and chunky, tasty and buttery, the potato roll was dense, doughy, and vaguely sweet. It had been toasted unevenly and not enough to leave a good, solid crust.  Within a few seconds of the dish landing on our table, the roll was quite soggy.  It was also a bit too doughy and sweet against the delicate flavor of the lobster for my tastes.  These subtleties leave a hot lobster roll connoisseur pining, but the large buttered lobster chunks were quite tasty and would easily win over most lobster fans.

Guilford Mooring's hot lobster roll

Also tried the Mooring's crabcake, and wasn't terribly impressed.  It was also on the soggy side, and I prefer larger chunks of crabmeat, which this one did not have.

Interlude: grilled orange bourbon cocktail...

We decided to take in a second course over at the Stone House, across the street, and along the way, learned that the building had once been the town fish market, converted in the '50s to a restaurant.  In 2011, after Hurricane Irene, the owners renovated, resulting in a very comfortable, pleasant setting.  The menu is interesting, a little more than just your average seafood and steak type place, and the cocktail menu was quite interesting.  I had a grilled orange bourbon concoction, where the bite and smoke of Four Roses bourbon played nicely with the sweetness of the orange.  An orange slice was literally grilled, twisted onto a plastic skewer, and floated in the cocktail.  I'm not sure I tasted so much as thought the grilled flavor, but being a bourbon fan, I found it lovely nonetheless.  We also sampled the lobster mac n cheese, which didn't quite have the softness and creaminess I would expect from one of the ultimate comfort foods of the universe, but it wasn't bad, and we polished it off.

With our full bellies, we took a small walking tour around the immediate vicinity of this part of Guilford Harbor where Sluice Creek empties into a small marina at the end of Famers Wharf Rd.  

Copper, cedar, steel, and concrete

Wilfred Armster's "Spaceship" condominiums received a large part of our attention.  The large, high, rounded, copper-clad disc of a front perches atop a huge steel beam, on a bermed piece of land and is the most eye-catching thing for miles.  It's a cheeky building, taking a strong stance amidst the proper Colonial style buildings all around it.  In fact, not but a few feet adjacent to it is a nice, standard New England Colonial house that makes the Spaceship appear even cheekier than it might standing alone.  The modern looking structure was done in 1989 or thereabouts, and you can find the full story in a Google search for "Armster, Spaceship, Guilford."  Cool stuff.

The Spaceship.  Wilfred Armster, architect.

We continued on along beautifully scenic Route 146 into Branford, looking for our next stop, the Dockside Seafood and Grill Restaurant.  Literally surrounded by plastic-wrapped boats at the time of our visit, the restaurant is a stand-alone building tucked into the Johnson Marina on Block Island Road in the Indian Head area of Branford.  We were seated at a comfortable high top bar table facing the water, and immediately got down to the business of lobster rolls.  For $17.95, the lobster roll comes with large, meaty chunks on a grilled top-loader roll.  The normal inclusions are the requisite small cup of cole slaw, and fries or rice pilaf.  We asked for a substitution and received perfectly steamed broccoli, not at all mushy, but fully cooked.  The lobster meat was good and hefty, but it didn't really stand out.  The problem may have been the butter whose flavor was oddly weak.  I wasn't even sure there was much butter on the roll at all.  As we all know, one of the primary reasons we eat lobster is for the butter, so this weak butter issue was somewhat vexing. 

Dockside Seafood and Grill hot lobster roll

Grilled or toasted?
The grilled bun was a revelation, though not exactly a positive one.  As it turns out, the lesson the grilled bun teaches is that a well toasted bun holds up to the inherent sogginess of the hot buttered lobster better than a grilled bun does.  Grilling doesn't quite provide the crust and texture to the roll that can make the lobster roll experience sing.  Typically, as you finish a lobster roll, the last thing you taste is a lot of bread.  If you had the choice of a last bite of soft, soggy bread versus a piece of crusty, slightly chewy but still crunchy, toast-y goodness soaked with just the right amount with butter and lobster juice, which would you choose?