Not the Maine event

WISCASSET, Maine - "Do we have to eat a lobster roll now?! We're eating dinner in an hour," said my wife, Elizabeth, ever the practical one. "And, by the way, aren't we on a vacation?"

Indeed, we'd come to the coast of Maine for a late-summer family getaway - not the all-lobster-all-the-time eating marathon this trip was quickly shaping up to be. And yet, by some minor miracle, there was only a 20-minute line at Red's Eats, the legendary lobster-roll shack that routinely clogs Route 1 traffic at the base of the bridge leading into this postcard-perfect coastal village.

Everyone talks about Red's, where the rolls are brimming with meat from more than an entire lobster. The line is usually 45 minutes at least.

"But honey . . .!" I protested, before she gave me that stop-being-a-food-lunatic look and I caved in. "OK, but we'll just hit it when we come back south."

I proceeded on with only a minor sulk. As we continued our journey north, there would be no shortage of lobster on my plate. Around every corner, it seemed, were a mist-shrouded lighthouse and a picturesque wharf decked with the picnic tables of a lobster pound, a classic Maine seafood shack where live lobsters are plucked from tanks and cooked to order. At Shaw's Wharf in New Harbor, I dove into two succulent twins and cleaned them down to the knuckles. I found the lobster roll of my dreams nearby at the Contented Sole, where a bun cradling jewels of orange meat was just barely kissed with a glaze of mayo. I spooned through a creamy, coral-colored bowl of lobster chowder at the Lighthouse Inn in Seal Harbor. I ate lobster quiche with my popovers at the Jordan Pond House in Acadia National Park.

And when it was my turn at Thurston's in Bernard, on the southern coast of Mount Desert Island, where customers file past a giant steaming outdoor lobster pot only to be harangued inside by an irascible and heavily pierced counter woman affectionately known as "the Black Widow," you can be sure I was ready.

"Don't start with me!" she barked at one poor fellow who quivered with indecision between the hard- and softshell options.