Lobster Gorge 2010 also known as ...

...Our Fantastic Trip to Martha's Vineyard.

For our 5 year anniversary, David planned a *surprise!* trip for us! 4 days 3 nights on gloriously WASPfab Martha's Vineyard! We stayed here, and we played on the beach and ate our body weight in seafood, mainly- as you'll see - that king of crustacean kind, the LOBSTER. As a West Coaster, the Lobster represents complete, total, borderline ridiculous luxury. It is something I love to pieces and vividly remember the few times in my life I've eaten it. My first time was perfect and unforgettable- I was 17 years old and my mother and I were meeting her college roommate and her husband for dinner at the boathouse in Central Park. I was full of New York City excitement, high on all its shimmering glamour and I was told to "order anything I wanted, anything at all". My whole lobster came with a bibb and everything, and I felt like a Queen.

But I digress. What I'm saying is lobster is heaven to me, and every bite on this trip seemed to contain lobster, and I was in heaven. Oh, plus we were at the beach. And I was with David. And we were far away from New York. And I drank the fanciest bottle of Champagne I have ever tasted. It was heaven times infinity.

The very first thing we ate after checking in to our hotel was a light snack of this:



It was so tasty, and gone so terribly fast, we decided to be sure and eat at least one a day. We did not fail in this endeavor.

After a little walk, we were ready for more. We steered ourselves to a pub (as much of a pub as there can be on Martha's Vineyard) called Newes From America. I had read some good things on yelp (old reliable, sort of) and it did not let us down, see!

Chowdah:



Lobster Mac and Cheese, the stuff of dreams...


Literally, I couldn't stop thinking about this dish and am now plotting the recipe in my brain every waking minute. I will get it, and then I will share it with you - that is a promise.



After that, we had a nightcap with the youths of the island- blond, rich, possibly inbred, impossibly robust- the girls who inspired most Vampire Weekend songs, and the (wasted) men who love them.

Not quite ready for bed, we helped ourselves to the complimentary port and sat on the porch, talking a bit and basking in the peace of the island. This became a nightly ritual and one of my favorite parts of the trip, right up there with all that lobster.

The next day, after the kind of sleep you can only seem to get in a king bed on squeeky white hotel sheets, we decided to go exploring a bit, and bus over to the other side of the island, to a place called Aquinnah with a killer beach, and cliffs worthy (almost) of Ireland or someplace.

Did you know I love the beach? Did you know David likes to take pictures? The day looked like this:






The essential Lobster-Roll-Of-The-Day. My favorite of the trip.





Happy Lobster Roll Beach face!



And to top it all off, we greeted the sunset with this BEAUTIFUL bottle, a 1995 Krug that Elizabeth gave me for Christmas year before last. I haven't had the guts to pop and drink it until now and I wondered in my heart of hearts if I had built it up a bit too much. I hadn't. It was a sunburst yellow color and tasted to me like exploding lemons, and smelled like my dad's stroganoff- which is to say sour cream and marmite. David got stinky cheese and maybe baguettes. It grew and changed, and eventually I got a side sniff of stinky cheese, but he never got lemons, which was the most dominant taste to me. Not that you care, but if you have a chance to drink this sometime, what I am trying to say is you should do it.



My Personal Heaven.



The next day, we hopped a bus over to a fishing town called Menemsha, which was really- much as I hate to say it about someone's town - completely adorable. There is a little beach, and near sunset when all the day boats come in, people come to the little fish shops and have them steam the lobster of their choosing and walk over to the beach with their lobster and (usually) a bottle of wine and watch the sun drop into the water with their feet buried happily in the sand. We took it all in, wishing we had 4 extra stomachs to fill with all this incredible food.





In the end, we opted for another lobster roll, for consistancy's sake, along with a lovely cup of clam chowder.

Ta Da!



Mmm, this one was definitely the best as far as lobster-freshness is concerned. The mean was Soooo sweet and assertively LOBSTER-ish.





You are what you eat. David channels a lobster.




We may be back in Brooklyn, and we may (mostly) be happy to be home, but a big part of me is stuck back in Martha's Vineyard, and I'm really quite ok with it.