August is Ella Maine Lobster Month in Downtown Sacramento

Ella Dining Room and Bar offers a variety of Maine lobster dishes in August.

If you didn’t already know it, August is Maine lobster month at Ella downtown. We had a choice for dinner last night and were leaning toward Ethiopian when it occurred to me that it was Ella Maine Lobster month and the weather was perfect for sitting outside on the patio at Ella. Which we didn’t get to do, sit outside, because the patio was too packed, yet dinner at the bar is fine. Well, except for those lobster-related injuries.

It’s not like dining on lobster in Maine, though. I spent the summer of 1988 on the coast in Maine at Quahog Bay in a tiny little rented cabin. Our landlord next door had a lobster trap at the end of his dock, and anytime we wanted to, we could go over there and pull out a lobster for $3.00. It was not unusual to go to a restaurant in Maine and order 2 or 3 lobsters to go with your corn-on-the-cob and other fixins’.

When I tried to order 3 lobsters at Cano’s Restaurant on PCH after I returned home that summer to Newport Beach, the waiters stared at me like I just landed here from Pluto. They could not wrap their minds around the fact that I did not want 3 complete lobster dinners, just 3 lobsters with normal portions of side dishes.

I love lobster so much that I had stopped at a restaurant in Boston to pick up a box of lobsters packed for shipping before boarding the plane bound home. The lobsters arrived in Newport Beach a bit drowsy, sorta like waking up after a colonoscopy, for us old geezers, all fuzzy and not sure where they were. Because at the time I lived only a few blocks from the ocean, I dashed down to the beach to fill up a bucket of seawater in which to steam the lobsters. Ordinary tap water would not do.

My neighbors in Maine taught me how to put a lobster on its head and stroke its back, just until its legs relaxed and the lobster slumped. This was to ensure more tender meat, on the theory that the lobster would not wake up in time to freak out, to disguise its destiny. Then, faster than you can think of words that rhyme with Trump, you slip those sleepy lobsters into the boiling pan of steaming seawater, lid slammed on so they don’t escape.

But today I sit in downtown Sacramento, to celebrate Ella Maine lobster month, and to try not to spray the other diners with lobster juice as I crack open its claws to suck the succulent meat. No matter how careful I am, I still manage to cut my hands. And squirt every garment that requires dry cleaning. Small price to pay, though, for cold poached lobster at Ella. Not to mention, we will need to make at least one more trip to Ella Dining before the month is over.