Mention lobster and most people will conjure up the red crustaceans from the waters of the Atlantic. But this time of year, California is treated to its own variety, the spiny lobster. Chef Govid Armstrong has helmed the kitchen of The Lobster on the Santa Monica Pier for the last several years. As the restaurant celebrates its 25th anniversary, he joins us to share a bit more about the deep water shellfish that is both predator and prey.
Evan Kleiman: How long have you been working in restaurants in LA?
Govind Armstrong: Oh my gosh. I stopped doing the math a while back but I got my start when I was 13, working for Wolfgang Puck at Spago. That was my summer job.
That's extraordinary.
Yeah, it was pretty great, and it's been a fantastic journey, and I'm still here today, grinding it out.
There you go. Let's talk about this creature, this crustacean. What makes spiny lobster different from other species?
Spiny lobster, there's a number of things [about] the appearance. It looks completely different. It got its name because it's so spiny when you look at it, and they're sort of forward lunging spikes. It's a really intimidating-looking creature. It has no claws, that's another factor, as opposed to the lobsters that we get from Maine and Boston. The flavor is a little different. It's very mild. It's slightly firmer flesh, at times. And the cost is significantly different.
It's less.
I wish. No. Definitely more.
Really?
Oh, yes.
Is that because of the supply relative to demand?
It’s that, yeah, 100%. There's a lot of product that gets shipped overseas and that drives the price up. So whatever's left behind for us, it's "get what you can" given that it doesn't have claws.
Does it have a good amount of meat or is it parsimonious?
They do tend to have more meat per pound because there's no claws, and their shells are still equally as dense as the East Coast [lobsters] but they yield probably about 25% more because the tail is much larger.
Except for the way you have to get your head around the spininess of the creature, it sounds, in a way, like it would be almost easier to deal with.
Oh, it is. You don't have to fight with those knuckles that have the delicious, succulent meat. You don't even need crackers, necessarily. If it's butterflied and prepared properly, you can just pull it right out with the fork and go right to it.
When it cooks, does it turn the same kind of bright red that Eastern lobsters do?
It does. You don't have to necessarily cook it all the way. You can poach it, or we've done some carpaccio and stuff like that with it. But when it is cooked and grilled, it does turn that beautiful red-orange.
Chef Govind Armstrong started working for Wolfgang Puck in his teens and now leads the kitchen at The Lobster in Santa Monica. Photo courtesy of The Lobster.
Are they native to California shores?
Our product is coming from Santa Barbara this time of year. They normally tend to thrive in warmer waters, anything in the Caribbean, in that area, from there to New Zealand. Ours are coming from as far up as Morro Bay. The ones we get currently are all coming from Santa Barbara but you can get them all the way down to Baja Mexico.
Is it a pretty big fishery? Or are the people that are fishing the spiny lobsters tend to be smaller, independent boats?
It is smaller. We buy pretty much all of our product from Stephanie Mutz aka Sea Stephanie Fish. She brings us a mixed range in size, anywhere from one and a half and up to maybe nine pounds is the largest one we've gotten this year. Pretty enormous. But we're getting everything exclusively from her.
Let's talk about how you're preparing them at The Lobster.
For the spiny lobster, we pretty much always grill it. I think that brings out a fair amount of flavor. It also doesn't overpower the lobster itself. We'll butterfly it, lightly brush it with a little lemon aioli, salt, pepper, and some herbs. We'll lightly grill it then finish it off in the oven, and we serve it with a lemon garlic butter, really simply prepared, keeping the focus on the lobster itself. People love it. I love it. It's just a real treat to have around.
The restaurant where you work, The Lobster, famously sits right at the front of the Santa Monica Pier. It's celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Give us a little bit of history about the structure itself. When was it built? Was it always a restaurant?
It initially was more of a walk-up seafood shack. I believe it was in 1923 when it initially opened up. Eventually, one of them was a dishwasher who took over the location.
I love that.
He came back and took it all, and he actually turned it more into a formal dining restaurant. Not formal, that's a bit of a stretch. But, you know, it had about 30 seats or so. There was still a retail element as well. They had a huge menu of definitely a couple different versions. But every fish you can imagine, every shellfish, super simply prepared. And the prices, you can only imagine, way back when were slightly different from what we need to charge these days to keep the doors open, but it was amazing.
He ran it from the '50s all the way through the '70s. It eventually ended up closing in the '80s, I want to say. Then, there was a small group of, I think, six families that got together, bought their property, and it was definitely a long process, but reopened it as The Lobster in 1999. They built an incredible, beautiful restaurant that overlooks the pier and the ocean. There are just complete, unobstructed views. It's floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around.
The space the Lobster occupies on the pier was initially a walk-up seafood shack. Photo courtesy of The Lobster.
I imagine, in a place with that kind of history and longevity, you come in a new guy, seven years ago, and you want to put your mark on the menu. But then there are all these things I know as a restaurateur and chef from back in the day that nobody will let you take off.
That's so true. The clam chowder, for instance. It's something that's been on and has stayed on but we've changed it to where now we're smoking our own bacon, we're getting in fresh clams and doing that whole bit, and really elevated it to using Weiser Family potatoes and this, that, and the other and the other and just really making the best product.
The farmers market is right there. What's a Govind dish that you put on and it has become a favorite?
A Govind dish would be the charred octopus that we have on. Still one of my favorites. We serve that with a little bit of edamame hummus on the base of the plate. We do some roasted potatoes with that little bit of pickled fennel and piquillo pepper. We pressure cooked the octopus so it's really nice and tender but still has some integrity to it, still somewhat firm. Then we'll sear it off to order so it really has a nice char on the outside but is still tender and delicious inside.
Pressure cooking them, that's really interesting.
Yeah, well, it's better. It cooks them more evenly, obviously much quicker, and it really infuses them. We load up the pressure cooker with, obviously it takes just a tiny bit of water, but we put a lot of aromatics in there and have lemons and, you know, whole onions and this and that, and some herbs and stuff.
I have to try that.
It'll change your life.