Jordan’s Lobster Dock
Like an out-of-touch politician clueless about the price of milk (I have no idea, myself), I don’t know what lobsters normally sell for. $6.99 seems like a deal, though. The prospect of cheap lobster was enough to motivate me onto the Belt Parkway to Sheepshead Bay on a freezing Sunday afternoon, a neighborhood I normally associate with summer and Clemente’s.
Clowns to the left, jokers to the right… Jordan’s is stuck in the middle of a Cold Stone Creamery and TGI Friday’s.
When you first walk in, Jordan’s has a casual eat-in restaurant where you can order platters of fried seafood, chowder and sandwiches. (And sadly, no bread bowls. I’ll never be able to erase the sound of a grown man’s voice, heavily Brooklyn-accented, on the JFK air train, describing a chicken salad in a bread bowl at a place called Jordan’s as “bangin’.”) Up a few stairs, you’ll see the retail market and where the $6.99 lobsters, clams and assorted shellfish can be bought to take home. Cooking soft-shell crabs at home is as far as I’ve gone with kill-your-own food—and I was more squeamish about it than I’d like to admit as a carnivore—so I chickened-out and had them steam our two lobsters for us.
While waiting, we went back downstairs and got some snacks. Jordan’s $15.99 lobster roll is served with a plastic container of coleslaw and a foil packet of Hellman’s. Barely a sandwich, this creation is really a pile of chunky lobster meat atop a flap of iceberg lettuce and a nondescript bun. I’m absolutely not a connoisseur of the city’s recent-ish lobster roll deluge, so I can only compare with the buttery Connecticut-style specimen I had at Red Hook Lobster Pound right before Christmas (which unfortunately, I didn’t photograph for comparison).
This lobster was a little overly chilled and stiff, though still sweet, and there was double the quantity of what I was served in Red Hook. Less delicate, for sure. This was a manly lobster roll. I only wish that I had a beer (they do serve alcohol but I don’t go in for hair of the dog cures) and could’ve sat outside instead of being forced indoors by the snow and slush.
Somehow, I forgot to take a photo of the most important thing: the cooked lobsters, two enormous two-and-a-half pounders too large for any plates in my house.
Jordan’s Lobster Dock * 3165 Harkness Ave., Brooklyn, NY
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