It was summer 2010 when the Department of Health raided Ben Sargent ’s basement flat in Greenpoint and close down his outlawed lobster - roll byplay for deal “ potentially hazardous foods without a permit . ” But , astonishingly , all was not lost . After a few sad daytime , the then - nascent Cooking Channel suddenly came call , advise that the seafood - obsess Boston native emcee a new series . In a way , this was everything he had worked towards – not so much a TV show , but getting pay to fish , wipe out , and advert out with fisherman . Of naturally , there was a catch . As the show developed , he remembers an ominous meeting with a connection instance in the back of a limousine :
“ She was like , ‘ You shape for us now . There is no more Dr. Klaw . ’ And I had this moment of being like , ‘ Whoa , this is not go to terminate well . ”
For the next three year , Sargent was the star ofHook , Line & Dinner , where he traveled up and down the East and West Coasts to check out the best Cancer shacks and seafood eating house and talk to fisher . Sargent says he bang it , but the whole time , could n’t stop over thinking about his days as Dr. Klaw , aka the Lobstah Pushah .
Courtesy of Ben Sargent
retrieve Ali G with a Boston emphasis and a gargantuan atomic number 79 lobster claw hang from an oversized neck chain .
“ Nobody likes being quieten , ” the 38 - year - old tells me from the very same garden - approachable studio apartment in which he used to steam all the lobsters . “ Especially when you ’re doing something people wish and love , and they bed you for it . ” at long last , his days of work for the man could n’t last because , as he state , “ those Klaw solar day were just way too much play . "
For the uninitiated , Dr. Klaw was Sargent’sInspector appliance - prompt alter ego from the spring of 2010 to the summertime of 2014 , sneakily trade lobster rolls to those who know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody .
Courtesy of Ben Sargent
“ I was like a grouchy - dresser , ” says Sargent , who ’s also been know to take people sport fishing along the East River after nighttime . “ Every single nighttime , I ’d put on this soundtrack , like ‘ Pusherman ’ [ by Curtis Mayfield ] – I did n’t have makeup , but I always kept a chinstrap [ face fungus ] , and even [ groomed ] my brow . It was like a entire translation . ” Think Ali G with a Boston accent , a jumbo amber lobster claw hanging from an oversized neck chain , and a lobster arse - inspired , custom - design baseball mitt on his mitt .
“ I ’m not bragging , but I do call up my lobster roll is by far the best lobster roll in New York , ” sound out Sargent , a culinary school dropout who first started hawking rolls at his erstwhile chowder / sandwich shop Hurricane Hopeful , which he opened in 2001 with a former girlfriend . The restaurant , which he had envisioned having a New England / moth-eaten weewee / fisher / surf paper , and whichNew York Timesrestaurant criticSam Sifton described as“strange and maddening , almost terrific , ” existed for a few age in desolate Williamsburg and offer $ 12 lobster bun , long before they incur democratic ( Sargent say customers deemed it too expensive at the time ) . By the prison term Dr. Klaw emerged , lobster rolls had attain high lunar time period in the New York restaurant panorama . “ My entire life was New England . All these chefs were making lobster rolls , and I did n’t mean these guys knew what a lobster scroll was . I just ignite up one morning and think , ‘ Fuck this , I ’m going to show these guys what a lobster roll is . ’ ”
His rolls , inspired by summers spend on Cape Cod , incorporate a New England - style split - top Pepperidge Farm bun , clean pissed off lobster mixed with mayo , and a niggling garlic butter and Old Bay seasoner .
Gabriela Herman
Sargent ’s swelled issue with how most NYC chefs were doing lobster axial rotation was ratio . “ Some [ chefs ] would do an over - fancy version of a lobster roll , but you ’re whole missing the point , which is in that bite , ” he say . “ You should get that toasty , larder , high-pitched - fructose clavus syrup bun in the same sharpness as lobster , and it ’s all ratio . But if you ’re just trying to impress everyone with this affair that ’s gushing with greens and lobster and it ’s on a baguet , that ’s not a lobster bun , because you are n’t getting layers in that same snack . ”
By the time his apartment operation start , his above - ground brick - and - trench mortar was long run low . In 2009 , Sargent was experimenting with a chowder book concept and had friend make out by his apartment to try his recipes . And though he was ready up chowder ( his applaud versions at Hurricane Hopeful lead to an appearance on the Food web ’s firstThrowdown ! with Bobby Flay ) , it was his lobster rolls that ignited the most fervor , so he narrow the mental process to lobster only . Word induce around , and the hole-and-corner supper club became a regular occurrence . Soon there was a Facebook page that leave a earpiece number to call , and he was in business .
It ’s hard to imagine how many multitude could have possibly squeezed into the cramp blank or how he managed to generate C of made - to - order lobster rolls a night , not just because of the minimal square footage , but also because , as he says , it “ wait like Captain Ahab has charter an superman tablet ” – old surfboard debar from a low ceiling , rows of cookery book chock up along one wall , overstuffed kitchen shelves hold pots , pans , spice , etc , and most spellbinding , a glowing aquarium filled with rock lobster that take care like a cross between an submerged junkyard and a sea shipwreck .
Courtesy of Ben Sargent
" The fire department allege I had enough propane to blow up an intact city pulley-block . "
In early 2010 , after a few pressure retail store report on his new venture ( honoring his underground stage business by not revealing the exact address ) , more customer shew up look for him and his lobster rolls . And ultimately , so did city functionary .
Courtesy of Ben Sargent
“ The fire department said I had enough propane to blow out up an full city closure – I was using it to steam off lobster out my backyard , ” he says . But Sargent was n’t quick to go , and soon Klaw appear , taking Sargent ’s game to the street . customer would call or text with an order , and Dr. Klaw , in full regalia and a hood obfuscating his cheek , would forgather them outdoors for the handoff , agitate $ 14 a roll .
Sargent says his intact customer Qaeda was built out of New Englanders who had transplant to New York . “ I still have all their contacts in my phone , like a drug dealer . It ’s all 508 and 617 . It ’s all these die - hard lobster scroll fans . ”
By the summertime of 2010 , Sargent was selling , on fair , 250 revolve each shift , and making so much money ( just about $ 5,000 a night , when you include tips ) , he no longer had to steam his own lobsters . He ’d just tell his purveyor to ship him the picking – pre - shelled meat , which can draw up to $ 40 / lb . “ You ’re paying top one dollar bill , but they ’d transmit you a block of meat . Shipped new – it was so expensive . ” One day he calculated $ 30,000 worth of lobster in his apartment ( the middling market place price this summer is $ 5 / lb ) , cooling at bottom three refrigerators ( one full - size , two lowboy ) . “ That was when I was like , ‘ I am a drug dealer . ’ ”
But it was n’t just the crustacean - tainted cash menstruation that drew compare to Sargent being a drug pusher . From the front stoop of his construction , he points out the red paries with barbed conducting wire where customers used to trace up to look for the goods , sometimes 20 recondite . Every night , from sundown until four in the morning , when the bars would let out , he ’d emerge and quickly make the transactions .
“ It did look like fiending drug addicts trying to get addict up , ” he say of his lobster coil client . “ Too often , I ’d have to tell citizenry , if I do n’t come out in five minutes , you have to keep walking around the block . The neighbors were really getting freaked out , and I fundamentally had to explain to all [ of them ] that I was not administer drug . ”
He recalls the time Sarah Jessica Parker , Matthew Broderick , and their son show up in a Zipcar to pick up an social club . And in a matter of time , so did the DOH . In the oddment , Sargent defendant he had been come out through Foursquare , the app that lets users discover topographic point like restaurants and bars through their societal meshing . Apparently , one client desire to be “ the city manager ” ( i.e. the person that has checked in most to a location in the past 30 days ) of Dr. Klaw ’s Underground .
" I was like , dude , you just gave away my precise fix . "
“ Ben is a nut … a full - on fruitcake , ” read his friend and former “ partner - in - crime ” Michael Barth , now the chair at the Hong Kong chapter of the Explorers Club . “ I had a lobster paradiddle and a clam chowder the first day I take on Ben – the food was so ripe and pure that I worked with him for the next two years around the clock , slinging rolls and chowder at Hurricane Hopeful – if we were n’t cook , we were surfing in Rockaway . Ben was doing lobster roll 10 years before they were nerveless in New York . It was really just him and Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar for a good longsighted time . ”
“ That was when I was like , ‘ I am a drug dealer . ’ ”
Even two twelvemonth after Sargent ’s last moneyed dealings as a seafood superhero saving the world from high-risk lobster rolls , he ’s still not over it . “ Dr. Klaw represented the graffiti of the [ art ] mankind or the skateboarding of sports , ” say Sargent , equate the hole-and-corner food operation to the least commercialized variant of other act of personal saying . “ It was very pure . It was all word of mouth . Everything was tiptop - personal . I just palpate like that ’s so missing in this day and age . ”
In late years , he ’s prove different cooking projects , and even a $ 1250 / Nox Airbnb houseboat rental in Far Rockaway ( that literally sunk ) , but nothing compares to the highly personal nature of the Dr. Klaw operation , and his mission to supply diehard lobster curl fanatic with something they ca n’t get anywhere else . “ Everybody ’s like , ‘ Do a pop - up at Smorgasbord , ’ and I ’m like , you ’re missing the point , ” he says . “ The whole tip is that it ’s like a nutrient rave . The whole Christian Bible of mouth was actual . You had to guarantee for somebody , and it ’s all very constitutive . ”
But now , Sargent ’s in the last days of a $ 45,000Kickstarter campaignto raise Dr. Klaw : a solo cross - country road trip / cooking show , livestreamed via Periscope , featuring his tradition - build up lobster motorcycle and pop - up solid food case . He liken it to a choose - your - own - dangerous undertaking Holy Writ , where spectator can see in real fourth dimension as he hunts for Dr. Klaw , dropping in on a downloadable app and helping decide the course of his trip as he tracks down “ genuinely gaga , underground ” fishermen and seafood chefs at the dock that you would n’t normally see on meshing telecasting .
And that ’s not the only thing that separates this new show from Sargent ’s sometime one . “ The intact matter is an experiment , ” say Sargent , who will be using a GoPro to film his adventures . “ Not having a crowd will rent me get into the action in a way I was never able to do with a squad of five people . We missed a spate of crazy stuff seek to localise up cameras and making press accommodation for persistence and stuff . The biggest deviation is this time , the audience receive to taste the food because they will be give private locations along the manner where they can cope with me and be part of the dangerous undertaking and the tasting . ” It ’s loose to see why it ’s appealing to him ; this new project seemingly has the potential to be just as personal and community of interests - serving as his belowground lobster bun business .
“ I do believe that being an artist , if I ’m going to call myself that , is not know . Because the whole exciting part is figuring it out as you go , ” says Sargent , who plan to bring Klaw back in some way , disregarding of the Kickstarter success . “ The Dr. Klaw thing is a double-dyed example . I did n’t know what it was going to become . I could have never in a million yr [ know ] . My entire life has been not experience . ”
What Sargent does cognise is that Dr. Klaw is get back to town . And shortly , maybe even to yours .
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