nothin Lobster Hut Boils With Buttery Business | New Haven Independent

Lobster Hut Boils With Buttery Business

Allan Appel Photo

Owner Sampson, left, with satisfied customer Yale economics major Nathalya Leite.

Chunks of the bottom-crawling creature, not stringy fragments. And not a modest helping, but a hefty four ounces. Slathered in tons of butter.

That’s the secret to a $16.75 offering at Lobster Hut Hamden, the newest food truck to make its bright red way to a designated spot at Grove Street near Hillhouse Avenue.

There owners Jasmine Sampson and Tatiana Dukes serve up the rolls along with lobster quesadilla and lobster tacos and lobster sliders, Wednesday through Friday from 10:30 a.m to 3 p.m.

The entrepreneurial duo operated the truck in Hamden for seven years (in addition to a separate business called Piggyback Rides, a transportation service for children). Sampson and Dukes moved their lobster truck to New Haven in June, and so far business has been brisk, Sampson said in an interview between serving customers.

At four ounces per roll, the truck dispenses 120 pounds of lobster a week. By my calculations that would make 480 lobster rolls sold weekly at the location, not counting the other seafood items and hot dogs dispensed.

Loskocinski with the lobster chunks.

During the course of a non-eating interview Thursday morning [full disclosure: while my wife loves eating the ocean critters, this reporter decidedly does not], half a dozen people bought lobster rolls. All gave their lunches a very buttery thumbs up.

About 60 percent of the truck’s customers, like Deputy Provost Emily Bakemeier, are Yale faculty, staff, and students.

Bakemeier commented on the buttery-ness of the roll, as did Marcus Parsons. He’s a New Havener but not from the university neighborhood. He said he pursues his favorite seafood wherever it emerges in town. He found the hut on the truck’s Facebook page.

Yale student Nathalya Leite pronounced the roll not only buttery — the four ounces of lobster are drizzled with about an ounce of butter — but full of more lobster meat than she expected.

Another customer, this reporter’s wife, pronounced her roll very generous.”

As assistant Peter Loskocinski opened a new four-pound bag of lobster, Sampson said she got into the business through having been, along with her partner, a devotee of the Lobster Hut in Milford.

Deputy Provost Bakemeier gets her roll from lobster purveyor/helper Jade Holt: “I’ll be a repeat customer.”

The Hut’s owner, David Adams, happened to mention that he was thinking of franchising, Sampson reported: We love food and we were frequent flyers in Milford. We said we know how to run a business and we know how to eat. We put two and two together, so it’s working out.”

Sampson has since heard from her Hamden customers who say they want her back. I say, Come to New Haven.’”

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