Chronicle of a Changing City

By COREY KILGANNON

Lobster Roll Delivery on a Vespa

THE UNDERGROUND LOBSTER POUND began a few months ago, when Ben Sargent, 32, a Bostonian who is writing a book on chowder, started inviting friends over to his basement apartment on Lorimer Street to taste and discuss his cooking.

“It got so I was laying out so much money that I started asking for donations,” Mr. Sargent recalled. The suggested donation for a lobster roll was $14. Word spread, and Mr. Sargent’s operation became the darling of local foodie bloggers.

Soon, he was handling several seatings a night on the foldout couch in his apartment, which resembles a New England fishing shack. Everything was great until the Fire Department showed up on Monday, the day after a profile appeared in The Daily News. Mr. Sargent was told he could not use a propane stove. Then his landlord told him to stop having all those dinner guests.

Lobster Roll Delivery on a Vespa

THE UNDERGROUND LOBSTER POUND, TO GO was his solution. Mr. Sargent began delivering lobster rolls in Greenpoint and Williamsburg on his vintage Vespa scooter, which has a huge lobster shell as a hood ornament. But by the time he arrived at the destination, the buns would be soggy. So Mr. Sargent decided to assemble the rolls at the customer’s doorstep: He packs the lobster meat and some kitchen utensils in the scooter’s saddlebags, and has fastened a hot plate on the back to toast the buns.

He buys live Maine lobsters from the Lobster Pound in Red Hook and eschews fancy fixins, steaming the specimens in a stock of sea salt, peppercorns and bay leaves.

He throws the tail and claw meat on store-bought hot dog rolls, and uses the body for bisque. “I feel guilty killing lobsters, so I try to use the whole lobster,” he said.