Each roll starts with a one-and-a-half-pound lobster, broken down into tail, knuckle, and claw meat. The shell is used to infuse lobster butter, to dress only certain parts of the meat. The tail is left unbuttered and gets tossed with mayonnaise. Each layer is then precisely ordered into a toasted bun that's lined with thin slices of celery that have themselves been dressed with salt, sugar, citric acid, and 'a little turmeric for that electric-neon Ecto Cooler color.'
For Stupak, a lobster roll with multiple levels of deconstruction and reconstruction and a housemade shell-butter is sort of straightforward. He's best known as a pastry chef who pioneered twistable columns of chocolate ganache and for his empire of Empellón restaurants. There, he once used a Jean-Georges Vongerichten scallop dish, set within a tortilla, to make a point about how New Yorkers baselessly viewed Mexican food as being worth less money.
Yet in person, Stupak is not the brooding, overproud modern chef bro; his vibe is more rapidly pontificating Adam Scott than Carmy-intense Jeremy Allen White. He is aware of his own wit, burying Easter eggs within all of his menus, but doesn't want to force anything heady onto diners. 'Ninety-nine point nine nine percent of people are going to watch the movie,' he says, 'but .01 percent of people want to hear the director's commentary.'
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