SCITUATE — “I was always a search-out-weird-ingredients type of guy,’’ says Adam Fuller of Snappy Lobster Delivery. When he was 4, that meant going to the Ritz-Carlton in Boston with his father for frogs’ legs and snails. Later, as executive chef of Great Bay, the former restaurant at the Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square, it meant incorporating whelks (sea snails), sea urchins, and periwinkles into his inventive menu. Now it means selling what he and partner Lawrence Trowbridge pull up in their traps along with lobster, the primary focus of their business.
On a muggy midweek afternoon, the waters in Scituate Harbor are perfectly calm, but the sky looks threatening. Trowbridge and a crew member returning from a day at sea report bringing in “more whelks than lobsters.’’ As Fuller navigates his skiff through the harbor to one of the floating docks where he and Trowbridge store their catch, he points out the other boats with which they do business. Each of the team’s two docks can hold up to 5,000 pounds, or three boats’ worth, of lobster and the by-catch they pull up with it.
Selling their by-catch, which includes whelks, Jonah crabs, and sea urchins, distinguishes Snappy Lobster from most other lobstermen, who simply toss those things back into the water. The partners also harvest periwinkles from rocks near the shore. Their client base — Boston chefs eager to diversify their menus and shoppers who buy from the Snappy Lobster truck at a farmers’ market — is eating them up. All Snappy Lobster seafood, including fin fish, comes from within 50 miles of Scituate Harbor. It goes directly from the ocean to the customer.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The Boston Globe.
