Saturday, August 13th, 2011

There’s been a media frenzy over the past couple of days about the lobster salad at Zabar’s.

The issue? It’s made out of crayfish, not lobster.

The story, first reported by West Side Rag, has been picked up by The New York Times, DNAinfo, Gothamist, and CBS News among others. The CBS link has video if you prefer that to reading.

Apparently Zabar’s has been selling its lobsterless lobster salad for years, according to the store’s president and co-owner, Saul Zabar (he was featured in the Upper West Side Video Of The Day last week).

“I had a few customers who said, ‘This is delicious, but it’s not lobster salad.’ One or two, in all the years that we’re doing this, at least 15 or 20. Then I got a call from the Maine council,” Zabar told NYT.

That call was prompted by an article written by New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Doug MacCash, who noticed the faux lobster salad while on a family trip to New York in July. Word made its way north to Maine and Dane Somers, the executive director of the Maine Lobster Council. An editorial in the Bangor Daily News offers up additional details.

Somers told NYT that during the course of his discussion with Mr. Zabar, the store-owner told him that New Yorkers would not understand what crawfish was, but that it was in the “lobster family.”

To be clear, that was Somers paraphrasing the conversation, and not a direct quote from Mr. Zabar… but if that’s even remotely accurate — OY VEY! Are you serious Saul?

“If you go to Wikipedia,” he told NYT, “you will find that crawfish in many parts of the country is referred to as lobster.” He then read aloud to a reporter the beginning of said entry:

Crayfish, crawfish, or crawdads — members of the superfamilies Astacoidea and Parastacoidea — are freshwater crustaceans resembling small lobsters, to which they are related.”

In spite of that creative defense, the rapidly spreading story pushed Zabar to raise the white flag. He told the Times:

“We really didn’t think that we were doing anything that was not completely up and up, but there was an element that might be confusing, and with all this stuff going on, I decided now’s the time to clarify.”

How does that clarification manifest itself? The lobsterless salad is now sold as “seafare salad.”

Would “crayfish salad” really be too complicated? And since crayfish aren’t from the sea, wouldn’t “fresh water salad” be more accurate?

In Zabar’s defense, the ingredients of the now infamous salad were printed right on the label, and “crayfish” was front and center. It just took roughly two decades for anyone to write about it in a newspaper.

Whether you think this was creative marketing or false advertising is up to you to decide. In addition to listing crayfish as the primary ingredient, the price per pound is also less than what “real” lobster salad would be (though I have no idea if it’s reasonable for crayfish).

“If we used Maine lobster meat, it would be much more expensive” said Mr. Zabar.

If you have any thoughts on this, feel free to sound-off in the comments at facebook.com/MyUpperWest.

Filed under: Food & Drink, Manhattan, New York City, News, NYC, Shopping, Upper West Side, Upper West Side Blog, Upper West Side Oddities, UWS 2 Comments »
Tags: Bangor Daily News, crayfish, crayfish salad, Dane Somers, Doug MacCash, Doug McCash, Lobster, lobster salad, lobsterless, Maine Lobster Council, New Orleans Times-Picayune, New York City, NYC, Saul Zabar, seafare salad, Upper West Side, UWS, Zabar's