Day: October 7, 2024

Lobster Festival

Date Published: Oct 7th, 2024 | Last Updated: April 22nd, 2025
Author: Abby | Category: Travel, USA
Date of travel: Aug 3rd – 5th, 2024

Lobster Festival info: https://mainelobsterfestival.com/

Cost: Free admission

I’m a BIG seafood lover and of course 99% of the time you hear about American lobsters, they’re from Maine. So of course when I found out that there is a lobster festival held in Maine once a year, we just had to go! This will also be our first time in the state of Maine.

Side note: Since moving to NYC, we’ve noticed that the most popular way to eat lobster meat (and most easily available) is in a lobster roll. Served either warm doused in butter or cold mixed with mayonnaise, you can’t go wrong with either option. During our travels around the Australian coast, we’ve had our fair share of lobsters (they have the ‘rock lobster’ species there) but lobster rolls are not a common food item you’d find anywhere in seafood restaurants. They’re usually served either steamed with a side of butter or ‘lobster mornay’, covered in a cream sauce and baked with a layer of cheese on top. My best guess of why lobster rolls aren’t common in Australia is because rock lobsters in Australia don’t have the big claws that American lobsters do and the claw meat is most often used in a lobster roll. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Whatever the reason, we’re so happy to have lobster rolls so accessible in this part of the country and one of our hopes for this trip to eat delicious, fresh, (and hopefully cheaper lobster meals) – what better place than Maine, the lobster capital!

The lobster festival is held annually in Rockland, Maine, a small town 1.5 hours North of Portland (the largest city in Maine). I was actually surprised it wasn’t held in Portland, considering Maine is the lobster capital of the country.

We left Brooklyn on a Saturday morning and drove 7.5 hours to reach Rockland. As we drove up the coast towards Maine, we passed by plenty of restaurants advertising their lobster rolls, some with huge lines out the door – there is definitely no shortage of lobster in this part of the country!

We arrived in Rockland around 4pm and after checking in to our hotel, we headed straight to the festival for some long-awaited seafood.

Rockland is a very small but cute town with lovely boutique shops and cafes on their Main Street that were unfortunately all closed when we arrived on a Saturday night, but no matter, our eyes were targeted for the Lobster Festival that was held at the waterfront!

I expected a HUGE festival with tons of lobster area in a bustling town, but it wasn’t quite that. The size of the Maine Lobster Festival was a lot smaller than expected, with maybe about 30-40 vendors.

There are various events throughout the day including lobster trap racing, live music, and tours of a real Navy destroyer – see the schedule of events on their website for more info.

Our main goal for this trip was to eat some good lobster, but sadly there wasn’t nearly as much lobster as I was hoping for. I was expecting food vendors everywhere with all kinds of different ways to showcase lobster, but I was disappointed to find that the only place to get fresh lobster at the festival was at the main food tent run by the festival. It was a cafeteria/Ikea-style set up where you go to different stations and pick up what you want onto your tray then check out at the cashier. It wasn’t anything fancy, but I’ll admit it was a pretty efficient system and the people serving were so lovely.

The main seafood items on offer in the food tent were a full steamed lobster, mussels, native clams/steamers, chowders, lobster bisque, lobster mac & cheese, and some desserts.

Seeing as how this was the only place to get food in the festival, we ordered a bit of everything: 2 steamed whole lobsters, native clams, mussels, lobster bisque, and clam chowder ($111, tax included). I’m going to be super honest here: apart from the steamed lobster and the sweet corn on the cob that came with it, everything else was a let down. The flavour of the mussels weren’t bad (white wine broth with some veg), but the mussels itself were sandy as hell and the actual mussels were quite small. Neither of us have had native clams before and unfortunately we couldn’t even get past 2 of them, and I hate wasting food. The lobster bisque tasted like it came from a can but the clam chowder was actually good – however, as we walked past the stand, we saw them open up multiple plastic bags of the soup into the warming pot so it also wasn’t made fresh. 😦

Toby also got a $30 lobster roll and it was the tiniest thing. It lacked seasoning and he finished in 3 bites. It was sad to say that we came all this way for our first lobster roll at the Maine Lobster Festival but the ones in NYC are cheaper, larger, and tastier 💔.

However, the highlight for me was the steamed lobster. It was so fresh and sweet but also on the salty side – perhaps they over salted the water when cooking or didn’t replace the water in between batches so the salty sea water made it salty? Not sure. Either way, despite the salt, I thought it was still good and there was tons of butter available for dipping. The placemat had instructions how to break down a lobster and by the end of the weekend, Toby was a pro 😎. The corn on the cob that came with it was also great – but then again, I really like corn. 😬

The food tent was right next to the water for some beautiful views while you eat.

After eating, we walked through the rest of the festival grounds which was mainly tents of local-made goods and a handful of food trucks that sadly didn’t really serve lobster-related things.

Although it was a small festival, there was no shortage of fantastic live music – there were performers in the food tent, beer tent and also on the main stage. Julia Gagnon (an American idol contestant) performed on the main stage the next morning and blew everyone away – what a voice!

The entire festival took us about half an hour to walk through everything + an extra half hour of eating time, then we then sat and listened to the live music while enjoying our giant lemonade and delicious fried dough from a food truck for dessert.

Overall it was a cute little festival with good lobster, however I’m not sure it was worth the 7.5 hour drive just for this festival. If we lived closer to the area, I’d come by again just to check out the live music scene and a walk-around.

Rockland

When we arrived in the evening the day before, everything in the little town was closed so there wasn’t much to see. The next morning we took another stroll through town and sadly about 1/3 of the stores were still closed, including some really cute cafes and bakeries that I was eyeing the day before – perhaps because it was a Sunday, but I had hoped that they’d have adjusted hours due to the increased tourism from the festival 🤷🏻‍♀️. It took us about 15 minutes to walk from one end of the main street to the other, with some extra added time for stopping in cute little boutique shops.

Due to the disappointment of the seafood at the festival the day before, we decided to find a nice restaurant for lunch in hopes of a better seafood meal in Maine. After a little Googling and reading through online reviews, we decided on Hillside Seafood Company. This restaurant was right in front of the Lobster Festival with views of the waters and the reviews were good. It was decently busy when we arrived so I was excited for a good meal. Sadly when we sat down outside to enjoy the views, a big ass tour bus parked right in front of the restaurant and blocked the entire waterfront view for everyone. This was a prelude to what was to come. We ordered a mix of items people raved about in the reviews as well as what the waitress had recommended: lobster stew, lobster pie, crab cakes, and broiled haddock with crab topping. I wish I could tell you that this was a redemption meal for Rockland seafood, but it was really bad, y’all. The $30 lobster “stew” was essentially warmed milk with lobster meat (although they were quite generous with the lobster meat portion), the $42 lobster “pie” was lobster meat and breadcrumbs with old bay seasoning on top (again, very generous with the lobster portion), the flavour of the crab cake wasn’t bad but it wasn’t crispy like a traditional crab cake – the texture was more like a dense pancake with old bay seasoning, and finally the most disappointing and the most recommended by reviews and the waitress was the $24 broiled haddock with crab topping. The crab topping was an extra $3 and it tasted just like the breadcrumbs in the lobster pie (but somehow worse) and the haddock was super dry. Overall it was about $130 for the meal and it was pure disappointment. I wish we had just went back to the festival for the steamed lobster instead. 💔💔💔 /rant

Claws – so good that it deserves its own heading!

Claws is a Rockland restaurant that we drove past multiple times between the Lobster Festival and our hotel. Each time we drove past there was a huge line. We decided to give it a go for our final meal in this town, and I’m so glad we did! This was the redemption meal.

Claws was exactly what we were looking for and wish we had all of our meals here from day one. They get all their seafood fresh from the boats daily and they’re served with unique flavours, tons of options, and also very reasonably priced!

For reference, a 1 1/4 lb lobster at the festival was $32 and $41 in Portland, but only $28 here. For 2+ lbs, it’s only $38 and some of these big boys that came out of the kitchen were HUGE!

We got there around 4pm and luckily there was only 1 person in line (by the time we left, the line was super long again). We ordered at the counter then took a seat on their beautiful patio that opens up to the waters. If it weren’t for how busy they get, it’d actually be quite a peaceful place to be with views of the open still waters.

We ordered the lobster donut (essentially lobster with a cheese sauce inside a sweet bun and topped with syrup – a savoury sweet combination – it was SO GOOD), the famous award-winning clam chowder (can confirm, probably the best we’ve ever had!), and a lobster roll with old bay honey butter sauce (I thought the sauce was amazing, but Toby thought it was overpowering and preferred a plain lobster roll instead). I wish we were hungrier so we could’ve ordered more, but we were sadly still so full from the disappointing lunch at Hillside because I hate wasting food 🙁.

We had a great time here and moved from our table to the water-side seats when they were free and just drank our blueberry lemonade and chatted the evening away. As it got closer to dinner time, it got REALLY busy with tons of people standing around waiting for a seat to open up. I’d recommend going early or grabbing a table first before ordering because it gets packed – and for good reason!

Edit: We came back here again Oct 2024 and it was still as amazing as ever. This time we saved room to get the lobster. *chef kiss*. It was a lot more chilly this time. There were some heaters going, but it was still pretty cold, so rug up if you’re coming here later in the season!

Final Thoughts on the Maine Lobster Festival & Rockland:

1) The Lobster Festival was smaller than expected but had great live music. The food was subpar and for the size of the festival, we didn’t feel like it was worth the 7.5 hour drive to come here, but if you live nearby, it’s definitely a neat and lively festival to check out.

2) I have no idea why Hillside Seafood Company restaurant is so popular.

3) You MUST go to Claws. I’d come back to Rockland just for Claws. I’d make a detour just for Claws. I’d come here everyday if I lived in the area.

4) You can do everything in 1 day. Even half a day. We originally planned to stay 3 nights here, but checked out early because there wasn’t much else to do, so we headed to Portland.

* One thing we didn’t get to try was ‘Wasses Hotdog’ because we didn’t have the stomach space and this weekend was focused on seafood, however this palce had great reviews and there were often many people lining out the door for it. Maybe next time!

Need more travel recommendations for Maine? Check out these other places!