Lobster Landing’s 100-year-old, weathered shack at the end of Clinton’s Commerce Street is storybook-adorable, right down to the delightfully askew letter on its red-and-white sign.
As co-owner Enea Bacci explains it, he and his wife, Cathie, arrived at work one morning about a decade ago to find the “O” out of place. Enea went to fix it, but Cathie stopped him, seeing its charm. “[She] said, ‘Don’t you touch it; it’s beautiful.'”
A native of Italy, Enea Bacci is Lobster Landing’s most recognizable figure. His bespectacled face is framed by a wild, silvery beard, and he’s often sporting a red cap or bandanna in photos on the restaurant’s Facebook page, as he confidently wields oversized live crustaceans.
The Baccis have run the Clinton business since 1995, operating first as a seafood retailer and then adding a small food menu in 2001. Lobster Landing still sells live lobsters, steamers, oysters and mussels, but the bulk of its revenue comes from its simple food options, prepared in a tented area next to the waterfront shack.
Before his seafood days, Bacci owned an eponymous restaurant in Southbury, serving northern Italian dishes. When he and Cathie came to Clinton, he admitted that they didn’t know much about lobster and relied on the advice and expertise of the fishermen who brought them supply. Today, Lobster Landing gets its crustaceans from seven local boats, and larger-sized creatures weighing in at more than 3 pounds come from Maine and Canada.
The lobster rolls ($17.50) are naturally the centerpiece of Lobster Landing’s business, using a simple recipe with attention to detail and quality. Each roll gets an exact quarter-pound of shellfish, a blend of freshly cooked and hand-picked knuckle, claw and tail meat that is weighed and wrapped into small mesh bags. The meat is nestled into a grinder roll, quickly toasted on a grill, and the sandwich is finished with a small ladle of butter melted over a double-boiler and a squeeze of fresh lemon.
Bacci said it took two years to find the ideal bread for the lobster, settling on the rolls from Vermont’s Koffee Kup bakery.
“When you put lemon and melted butter [on it], it doesn’t sog, it doesn’t open up,” he said.
In recent years, Lobster Landing has experienced demand for gluten-free bread, and they’ve added that option to the menu, taking careful steps to prepare those rolls in separate cooking spaces.
For non-seafood eaters, there’s a sweet Italian sausage sandwich with peppers and onions ($7.50) and an all-beef, skinless hot dog with cheese and sauerkraut options ($3.50.) Grab a bag of chips, a drink from the cooler and gelato for dessert to complete the meal.
“Those are the only things we are going to do,” Bacci said. “We are not going to change that. It’s simple to manage, and people really like what we’re doing. They’re coming back time and time again.”
On sunny days, guests take their foil-wrapped sandwiches to a small, 40-seat deck or a handful of picnic tables overlooking the neighboring marina. BYOB is encouraged, and the eatery welcomes dogs, offering bowls of water to keep pups hydrated.
Several years ago, Lobster Landing also added a seating area tented in plastic, accommodating visitors in less-than-perfect weather and extending its season, from the first week following Easter to the end of December.
“We had to do it because we didn’t feel like we provided enough of a service,” Bacci says, adding that he felt badly if customers traveled from a distance and then had to eat in their cars.
Over the years, Bacci says, Lobster Landing has seen an increasing amount of out-of-state visitors, thanks in part to Internet searches on Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google.
“They come from Florida, they come from Minnesota and say, “Oh my God, I’ve been craving your lobster, I wish you could open something out [there.]”
Lobster Landing, 152 Commerce St., Clinton, is open Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. 860-669-2005, facebook.com/LobsterLandingLLC.
This summer we’re telling the stories behind Connecticut’s beloved seasonal restaurants — the destinations that open for an all-too-brief time period in fair weather. These are the small lobster shacks, the ice cream stands that throw open their windows with the first warm breeze, the beach-town eateries where the salt of fried whole belly clams and onion rings is enhanced by ocean air. Find the series throughout the summer at ctnow.com/summerssweetspots.
