A note on the words: tomalley is the soft paste inside the body of a lobster or a crab, which Japanese calls miso and which is eaten along with the meat. Roe here means the eggs. Popcorn shrimp are small shrimp battered and fried into bite-size pieces, and ceviche is seafood cured in citrus juice with vegetables. A highball, in Japan, means whisky lengthened with soda over ice.
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Red Lobster, Odaiba on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. It hit me that I had not been in far too long and that I really had to go, so off to Red Lobster in Odaiba. It turned out to be a whole year since the last visit. I want to come more casually than that! I have to! This time I got to Aqua City at about the same time as the 11 o’clock opening. When I go to Odaiba it is for Red Lobster and nothing else, so I walked straight past every other shop and made a beeline for it. Naturally there were hardly any other customers yet, so I got in without waiting.
I said hello to the lobsters in the tanks outside, too.
Live Lobster, Large — 17,990 yen
You can read the state of prices off a live lobster.
Well now — 17,990 yen. That is basically 20,000 yen for a single lobster! Expensive! But there is nothing else quite like it, so there is nothing for it but to eat one.
And so, with the steamed live lobster ordered, a highball to start!
Shrimp with a snap to them that I cannot resist. Once you sit down, this is the thing to order.
I never used to touch the tomato sauce in the middle at all, but lately I have come round to thinking that squeezing lemon into it and dipping is delicious. For years I believed shrimp are best with nothing on them, and yet as the years go by the way you eat shrimp shifts a little too.
This is the lobster ceviche, which I ordered for the first time on this visit. Ceviche is essentially a marinated seafood dish. Chunks of marinated shrimp sit on a generous bed of vegetables. There is a little lobster in there as well, so it feels rather lavish. It looks like a good thing to have in place of a salad. That sharp, acidic sauce really does suit the shrimp. Delicious. There is a fair amount of cilantro in it, so beware if that is not for you.
Another classic thing to drink with. My tip for getting the most out of Red Lobster: the sauce that comes with each dish goes with any of the other dishes, so if some is left, move it aside. That way the sauce does not get carried off along with the empty plate. This popcorn shrimp dipped in the cocktail shrimp sauce is delicious, and the other way round works just as well.
This visit’s lobster. Once you go up to the large size, the claws are big.
A spectacle every time I see it!
The part you can actually eat is in fact less than it looks, but the best of it is this springy tail.
Tremendous bounce to it, and the savory juices come flooding out. This is what I came all the way to Odaiba for!
There was a good amount of tomalley and roe in it this time, so I dipped pieces in that, and dropped some into the melted butter, and tried it with the other sauces. I made the most of this happy stretch of time. Lobsters have a dominant side, so one claw is bigger and one is smaller. Was this one left-handed, I wonder. The left one seemed to be the bigger of the two. The claw meat is springy as well, nothing like what comes out as the lobster claw dish. Steamed from live, it is superb. One day I would like to eat one of these all by myself.
So, is it worth 20,000 yen…?
Yes, it is!
So there it is, lobster for the first time in a year. The price creeps up a little every time I come, but as a Red Lobster fan I would rather it be expensive and stay open for a long, long time. The thought of not being able to eat this lobster any more!! I decided I would visit again once the lobster craving builds back up.
Red Lobster Aqua City Odaiba (Seafood / Daiba Station, Tokyo Teleport Station, Odaiba-kaihinkoen Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.9
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
