Delivering Lobster Rolls on a Vespa

Chronicle of a Changing City

By COREY KILGANNON

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.

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.