Brooklyn's Underground Lobster Roll Scene

First rule of the underground lobster pound is you don’t talk about the underground lobster pound. Not at full volume into your iPhone on the sidewalk of this illegal lobster-roll purveyor, and definitely not with a gaggle of tilting friends swilling beer from plastic party cups.

“It’s cool, people are really coming out of the woodwork,” Ben Sargent* said, with his ever-present, good-natured grin. “But they’ve gotta get smarter about this...”

Sargent, a Boston-area native whose seafood skills were gleaned from his paternal grandfather, was the man behind the old Williamsburg, Brooklyn, dive Hurricane Hopeful (where Bobby Flay once challenged him to a chowder throwdown), is the co-creator of the Brooklyn Fishing Derby and is known to radio and YouTube audiences as The Brooklyn Chowder Surfer. He started serving up lobster rolls in his Greenpoint smidgen of a kitchen — $14 a roll, and he’ll slip one through the mail slot if you call when he’s indisposed — toward the end of January, wanting a new outlet for at least one of the two things he says he does best in this world.

Made with meat pulled from Maine waters less than 24 hours earlier, Sargent’s are the “Old Man and the Sea” of lobster rolls: simplified and perfected until at a glance they appear child’s play, but a sampling reveals the hand of a master.

“You want to see if a chef is any good, ask him to make you a grilled cheese,” Sargent said. “Give him two slices of white bread, two slices of cheddar, some butter and see what he does.”

In the same vein, Sargent culls high kitchen art from a minimum of ingredients: fresh lobster, a salt water brew, melted butter, mayonnaise, a dash of Old Bay Seasoning and his favorite hotdog buns. (“It’s the corn syrup that makes them so good,” he offered sheepishly.)

The buns are brushed with butter on each side before being splayed on an electric skillet, which results in a textural heaven: a crunch, soft, crunch before the teeth hit that sweet, tender meat.

“You stuff it with lettuce and celery, and it tastes like lettuce and celery! Even the temperature is so important. I tell people to call an hour before they come so I can take the meat out the fridge,” he said, tipping a Tupperware container to show a guest the delicate slurry of mingled lobster juice and mayo settled at its bottom. “You don’t want the meat warm, but also not too cold.”

A few feet away, in the glow of Sargent’s fish tank, two guests chewed and moaned and licked their fingers.

“Lobster rolls and chowder. That’s all it’s ever been with me,” he said.

The Underground Lobster Pound of Greenpoint, in the fair borough of Brooklyn, is open from 5 to 10 p.m., seven nights a week. For an appointment and directions, email hurricanehopeful@yahoo.com.














* You may recall that Ben was also the super-duper Special Guest at the "Gastronomy of Marriage" launch party, which was at the fabulous WORD, also in Greenpoint.