The Lobster and Blueberry Everything Tour of Coastal Maine
The Quest to Find Acadia’s Best Lobster Roll
Every great adventure requires a quest. Experiencing the local foods and drinks is an important part of the travel experience for our family, and … well … our family loves to eat!
When our New England and Canadian cruise was cancelled for the summer due to the pandemic, we decided to make what would have been our one day port of call at Bar Harbor into a two week roadtrip to get to know the East Coast’s first official National Park, Acadia, inside and out.
In 1916, 5000 acres of land on Mount Desert Island were presented to President Wilson for the creation of “Sieur de Monts National Monument”. In 1919, President Wilson signed the act that established this land as “Lafayette National Park” and it became the first national park east of the Mississippi. Now known as “Acadia National Park“, 47,000 protected acres are dispersed across Mount Desert Island, Schoodic Peninsula, and several off shore islands.
Because the federal park land is interwoven around colonial era towns and communities on the island, a visit to Mount Desert Island gives travelers a unique opportunity to simultaneously experience the natural beauty and small town culture of this coastal New England island.
In between hikes along Acadia’s famous carriage roads and swims in the island’s cool mountain lakes, we dedicated our meals to an epic food quest.
Our mission: to find the best lobster roll, the best blueberry pie, and the best popovers all of which this island is famous. In other words, it was a lobster and blueberry everything tour of Coastal Maine!
We ate a total of 14 lobster rolls from 12 different shacks and restaurants. Because it was late August (the tail end of tourist season) Maine had just reopened its borders to out of state tourists, several of the locations we would have tried were unable to open at all for the season or had extremely limited serving staff and hours. We took all this into consideration and gave each locations a “grade” based upon the lobster roll alone, but we also took notes and commented on additional “standouts” that we felt were noteworthy and delicious enough to mention.
To be clear, every single lobster roll we ate was absolutely delicious and would be considered an A+ winner in comparison to anywhere off the island. I would eat any of these again … and again … and again. But in order to offer a critical comparison of these best of the best lobster rolls, we did rank some rolls above or below others.
Seriously, you cannot go wrong with any of these fantastic iconic food stops!