When I think of lobster rolls, I think of a warm summer day on the East Coast, strolling down a nameless boardwalk with seagulls preparing to nose dive at my sandwich. Even though I've never been to an East Coast boardwalk, I connect buttery lobster rolls with that part of the country because that's where they became famous. While New England states like Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont are most well-known for serving lobster rolls, like a lot of food origin stories, the history of the lobster roll is murky and we may never know where the first one was truly created.
After all, in the past, there weren't folks ready with smartphones to take a photo or video of their meal. According to historians, it's possible that no one person or restaurant can take full credit for this popular seafood meal. Still, there has to be someone who made the first soft and succulent shellfish sandwich, and according to Perry's restaurant in Milford, Connecticut, the lobster roll was invented there.