Old Port Lobster Shack

Maine lobster flown in fresh several times a week to a landlocked peninsula-city strip mall is either a logistical commitment or a provocation, and at Old Port Lobster Shack it reads as both. Open since January 2006, the Woodside Plaza spot was built around a straightforward premise by founder Russell Deutsch, a Boston native with time spent in Portland, Maine: replicate the East Coast lobster shack experience in the Bay Area without softening the format for California sensibilities. The menu holds to that brief. Lobster rolls served with mayo or drawn butter anchor the offering, alongside lobster bisque, clam chowder, oysters on the half shell, fish and chips, and shellfish in several forms. The price tier sits at a casual $$, which for fresh Maine lobster prepared simply is a reasonable proposition. Nothing here is designed to impress through technique; the point is sourcing and format, and the sourcing is documented in the kitchen's multiple weekly deliveries. The setting reinforces the concept rather than contradicting it. The restaurant sits adjacent to the Caltrain station in central Redwood City, a location that is decidedly functional rather than atmospheric. That absence of waterfront theater is, in a way, the honest version of the idea: the food has to carry the premise on its own. For anyone who has eaten at a working lobster shack on the Maine coast, the comparison will be imperfect but the intent is legible. For Bay Area diners who haven't, it offers a reasonable approximation of a regional tradition that rarely travels this far west in recognizable form.

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