A lobster boat heads out to fish at Cape Porpoise in Kennebunkport, Maine. Thought the lobster industry has had some tough years, Maine remains a reliable source of the toothsome crustacean. AP PHOTO

FILE - In this March 13, 2020, file photo, lobsters await shipping at a wholesale distributer in Arundel, Maine. The United States and the European Union have announced a modest agreement to cut tariffs on less than $300 million worth of annual trade between them. The EU will drop import taxes on U.S. lobsters for the next five years and will work to make the move permanent. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File) AP PHOTO—AP

Lobster fresh from the pot is a delicacy best enjoyed close to where it was caught. AP PHOTO

Everywhere in the world, it is generally accepted that New England has the best lobsters on Earth.

Here’s some evidence for this premise: a few years back, I lived half-time in China traveling as the groupie of my ex Jing, a concert violinist from Xiamen, a seafood mecca in south China. About the only time I ever heard the word “Boston” spoken in Xiamen was when they were referring to a dish, found only at the very fanciest restaurants, that was called “Boston Lobster.”

Suffice it to say that any Bostonian would have been shocked and appalled by this dish. A puny portion of rubbery, frozen tail meat — which had supposedly come from a lobster at some point — would typically be butterflied, cooked to oblivion, doused in some sort of mayonnaise or smothered in melted cheese, garnished with Russian caviar, and sold for around $100 a plate.

To be fair, Jing and other Chinese people who visited me in America were equally shocked and appalled by most fish preparations over here. Over in China, it’s expected that at any “seafood restaurant,” you can pick out your live fish fresh from the tank, where it’s swimming around; then it’s cooked and served whole.

We don’t do that much here — except with lobster. New England lobster from the tank is a world-class luxury. However expensive this delicacy might be in our neighborhood, you can rest assured that you’ll pay three or five times more for an inferior version of the same delicacy in Europe or Asia, or even Florida.

Even if it’s live, it won’t be nearly as fresh as ours, and (God forbid) it might not even have claws, the sweetest part of the lobster’s meat.

What people who haven’t spent time in New England don’t know is that the better the lobster, the simpler the way we eat it. When lobster’s coming fresh from the tank, as it should be, there is just no other way than to steam it whole and pick all of its meat by hand, dipping each precious morsel of meat into a comely pool of salty melted butter.

Strap on a plastic bib, you grab your engraved stainless-steel nutcracker and your long, thin lobster-meat pick, and get to work. It’s the most rewarding work in the world.

When I went to college in the Boston area, there was one “lobster night” per year in my dorm. Each student, upon entering the cafeteria, was issued two numbered raffle-style tickets, each good for one lobster of approximately one pound. The forces of free-market economics soon took over. All the Midwestern or Southern kids who were completely grossed out by these giant, bright-red, bottom-feeding sea cockroaches had no use for their tickets. So they would sell their tickets to the local kids who could eat three or four one-pound lobsters, no problem, in exchange for small wads of cash, dorm responsibility concessions, or future considerations.

I knew a guy named David Hammer, class of 1997, who is believed to have devoured eight lobsters in one night at the cafeteria. What he surrendered in return, to this day, nobody knows.

So where in our area can you get the best fresh whole lobster, live from the tank and steamed to order? The answers are three.

If you want to eat in, one option in the area stands high above the rest: Schermerhorn’s of Holyoke, a seafood restaurant and fish market so old-school that it makes its customers — who on average are older than Joe Biden — look like spring chickens. Schermerhorn’s has been purveying lobsters since 1912, and their lobster prices (although nothing’s cheap these days) are very reasonable. At last check, they had a twin-lobster special of $39 for two 1-1/4 pounders. By 2022 standards, this is an absolute steal.

If I had to pick a single word to describe the atmosphere at Schermerhorn’s, it would be “unpretentious.” You sidle up to the counter and order. You say what you want. Neither New Yorker vocabulary nor Queen’s English will be helpful in this situation. Don’t ask what they recommend, because every staff member and regular customer knows that everything on the entire menu here is damn good.

Next you plop down at a no-frills booth and wait for your order to come out. Don’t expect a curated wine list, pewter seafood knives, Reidel stemware, or romantic mood lighting. This place is by, of, and for the people. You can, and should, enjoy some inexpensive local beer with your double or triple lobster feast.

You can, and should, compliment the hard-working staff and say hi to the Holyoke family at the next table who have been coming here for the last 50 years. There are also a few outdoor tables, welcome in summer, although your view will be of some cars parked and others zooming along the highway.

Not to be overlooked are Schermerhorn’s daily specials (e.g. buy two, get one free) on fish and chips, fried shrimp, and other seafood specialties. Everything is good here. Beyond great fried seafood, rich, creamy New England chowder and New England-style steamers (steamed clams) are on point.

At the adjacent fish market, you can get a wide variety of fresh fish and shellfish, live lobsters still thrashing around, shrimp cocktail, and (maybe most exciting) delicious ready-to-eat snow-crab legs. So you can take the Schermerhorn’s experience home — that is, if your gurgling stomach can wait.

If you’ve been reading my column for the last few months, you’ve probably figured out that I particularly love when incredible deliciousness comes from the most improbable places.

Live lobster is both an incredibly delicious and highly improbable food. From the food-service side, it’s a costly logistical nightmare to deal with unless you’re doing a huge volume and have a massively skilled, well-trained staff backed by a robust supply chain, which is a near impossibility these days. This is a major reason that you’ll scarcely find a whole lobster anywhere at a restaurant in Hampshire County, even though we’re a few miles from the world’s live lobster heartland.

To save the day, enter our two beloved local supermarkets, Stop & Shop (which went “Super” at some point when I was a kid) and Springfield’s own Big Y (which was enormous to begin with). These two places (in concert with the able work of my parents) have been feeding me for longer than any restaurant.

The American supermarket is a wonder to behold, a unique achievement in world history. I can still remember my dad rolling me around the Stop & Shop in a cart, one of my legs dangling through each square hole in the cart’s grating as he explained to me every little detail of the vast array of wondrous offerings along every aisle.

What I didn’t realize until much later in life was how lucky we are that our local supermarkets have tanks of live lobsters that they’ll steam to perfection and serve up ready to take home and eat. At the Stop & Shop (Northampton and Hadley branches both), for less than $20 a pound (maybe half what you’ll pay at any restaurant in Massachusetts), they’ll yank one of their lobsters out of their tank and cook it up for you, whatever size you fancy.

I recommend a 1-1/4 pounder for a light appetite, or a 1-3/4 pounder if you’re serving me or my dad. The whole process takes 10-15 minutes. You can shop for sides like corn on the cob, cole slaw and potato salad while you wait, or you can call ahead and they’ll get your lobsters going before you even roll in.

To improve local life even more, there’s a similar and equally awesome live-lobster program at Northampton’s Big Y, further up Route 9 toward Hatfield. Anyone at the fish-market staff of either of these supermarkets, mostly in their late teens or early 20s, can steam a lobster better than any single human being in California. The Big Y also does a good, freshly made lobster roll for the bargain-basement price of $15.

Take a few steamed lobsters home from the Stop & Shop or Big Y, pop open a bottle of bubbly or a creamy Chardonnay, and melt a huge chunk of Kerrygold Irish butter into some ramekins — if you’ve just spent $100 on lobsters for the family, you can swing the $2 splurge over Land o’ Lakes. Sprinkle some salt in the melted butter.

Rip apart the paper bags holding the lobsters (not in your face: hot steam warning!), peel the bright yellow rubber bands off the claws, and throw the crustaceans onto some plates. Ceramic or paper will do. Then don your bibs and spend the rest of your New England summer evening eating better than any oligarch anywhere on Earth.

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