"The American lobster (Homarus americanus) is today one of the more expensive food items on the market, owing to the difficulty of obtaining sufficient quantities to meet today's demand.  But when the first Europeans came to America, the lobster was one of the most commonly found crustaceans.  After strong storms, lobsters sometimes washed up on the beaches of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in piles two feet high.  The settlers approached the creatures with less than gastronomic enthusiasm, but the lobsters' abundance made them fit for the tables of the poor.  In 1622 Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Plantation apologized to a new arrival of settlers that the only dish he "could present their friends with was a lobster...without bread or anything else but a cup of fair water."

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The taste for lobster developed rapidly in the nineteenth century, and commercial fisheries specializing in the crustacean were begun in Maine in the 1840s, thereby giving rise to the fame of the "Maine lobster," which was being shipped around the world a decade later. In 1842 the first lobster shipments reached Chicago, and Americans enjoyed them both at home and in the cities.  The first "Lobster Palace", was built in New York and was frequented by Diamond Jim Brady, who thought nothing of downing a half-dozen lobsters in addition to several other full courses.  By 1885 the American lobster industry was providing 130 million pounds of lobster per year.  This huge demand caused the population of the lobster beds to decrease rapidly, and by 1918 only 33 million pounds were taken.