You could call Louie a regular customer at Pete’s Clam Bar, a seafood restaurant, in New York but it’s not exactly like he had a choice in the matter. Restaurant owner Butch Yamali said that the crustacean, perhaps understandably, had grown cranky over time and it was about time to let him go. Yes, Louie is a lobster, and clearly was pining for the deep blue after two decades in a fish tank.
Yamali ‘inherited’ Louie when he took over the ownership of the restaurant, and unlike most new business owners couldn’t bear to trim away the fat or, in this case, make some lobster bisque. It’s also a fact that given Louie’s venerable age, his meat would be tough and chewy, rather than soft and melting as is the preferred texture for the seafood favourite. In any case, Louie has become beloved among the staff as a sort of restaurant mascot or pet. But at long last, Yamali decided to release Louie after 23 years of being goggled at by guests and visitors.
Indeed, in direct opposition to the staff’s emotional connection with their pet, the restaurant was reportedly regularly inundated with requests to partake of his flesh, as it were. Clearly, some people wanted a literal bite out of history.
Louie was ‘pardoned’ by the town of Hemptsead by the authorities before being released by Yamali and town officials into the briny deeps. According to a news report, a town official tweeted that the lobster weighed 22 pounds and was a stunning 132 years-old. Given that male lobsters live up to an average of around 30-odd years in the wild, this may just have been an exaggeration. Still, the publicity certainly didn’t hurt a seaside town during ‘National Lobster Month’.
Check out a news report below:
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