Cheap Eats 2015: Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls

Photograph by Scott Suchman

About Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls

cuisines
Seafood
Location(s)
188 Main St
Annapolis, MD 21401

It’s surprisingly nondescript for a spot on Annapolis’s quaint, touristy Main Street, and the kitchen is no bigger than that of some efficiency apartments. These are good things, evidence of owner Dan Beck’s priorities. He spends his money where it counts—on the best lobsters he can get, from an estimable outfit in Portland, Maine. The meat’s quality and freshness (and absence of wateriness, a sign of frozen product) come through in each sweet bite of these rolls, which, in the classic lobster-shack manner, are served on buns smeared with butter and griddled. Beck doesn’t obscure that flavor with too much mayo, and he offers a lesser-known Connecticut alternative as well, with the meat doused in warm drawn butter.

Cuisine: Sandwiches

Where you can get it: 188 Main St., Annapolis; 410-280-2254

Also good: Lobster bisque; New England clam chowder.


Ann Limpert
Executive Food Editor/Critic

Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.

Food Editor

Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.