May’s lobster

It’s lobster season: time to walk around town with a bib on, ’cause you just never know when the craving for the red backed crustacean’s gonna bite.

It had been my plan to check out May’s weekday lunch deal — but the offerings seemed a bit ordinary — and I happened to spy the notice of specials on the white board.

The only item written in english read “fresh lobster with ginger and onion or spicy” — Market Price. I asked the price. Twenty dollars and ninety five cents. Sold.

We add eggplant to the order, cooked down with chewy chunks of really good cured pork, and some of May’s handmade dumplings filled with shrimp and minced pork. These arrive first. We tuck in.

By the time the lobster arrives, we are less hungry than we need to be. Still, we crack and poke and suck at the perfectly cooked lobster meat, scooping up strands of ginger and lengths of scallion to cut the richness and boost the flavour and we manage the whole damn thing, chosing instead to have the dumplings and eggplant packaged up for later.

I remember when May’s first opened at the corner of Preston and Somerset. It seemed to me that was about five years ago. “We will celebrate 10 years in September,” May Houng tells me. “Next time, order it spicy!” Right. I’m keeping my bib on.

Cost: $20.95 for whole lobster.

Open: Wednesday to Monday, from 11 am to 11 pm

May’s Garden Restaurant, 122 Preston St., 613-234-6437

First published in OttawaMagazine