Friday, September 10, 12:00 noon
Members $60, guests $70

“Few things in the world of food are as fascinatingly constructed, as curious to look at, and as delicious to eat as lobster,” James Beard wrote in Beard on Food, and even today, after what everyone’s calling the American food revolution, the same holds true. Beard lamented that lobster’s reputation as “the aristocrat of the ocean” kept people from enjoying it as much as they ought to. “True, lobster is expensive,” he admitted, “but what isn’t today? It’s worth every penny it costs.” As if to prove the point, Amy Goffio of the North American Lobster Company is coming to the Beard House to prepare a lobster- and seafood-laden lunch.

A native of Brooklyn, Goffio found her way to the Lobster Company restaurant in Carlstadt, New Jersey by way of France. It was the suggestion of her chef/instructor mentors, Michael Huber and Bill Baily at the Academy of Culinary Arts at the Atlantic Community College, that got her cooking at L’Essentiel in Chambéry, France. There she focused on the regional cooking of the Savoy. But ever since she returned to New Jersey, it’s been all about East Coast seafood. Owned by the Grippa family (who own BG Lobster & Shrimp Co., a premium New Jersey–based seafood distributor with an outpost at the Fulton Fish Market) the North American Lobster Company is a perfect showcase for the company’s products. And Goffio’s menu of simple American seafood classics lets them shine.

Even the original Larousse Gastronomique (1938) had to concede the American lobsters caught off the coast of New England in the chilly Atlantic waters were at least as good (maybe better) than anything caught in Europe. In Goffio’s hands it will be evident why Beard considered lobster “one of the great delicacies of the sea.” (Not that we need any convincing.)