What are these crustaceans known as Pacific lobsters, spiny lobsters or rock lobsters? Apparently they are not closely related to the clawed lobster nor do they taste as good.

Before I had my first spiny lobster tail at a Japanese wedding reception (always terrible by the way!), my first spiny lobster tail was in Koh Samui, Thailand, in 1986. I arrived at Na Thon and a crowd of farang ( foreigners) was waiting to board. vans to take them to the different beaches. Well, I wasn’t in the mood to hurry up and relax, so I thought I’d hit the harbor until the crowds thinned out.

I remember lots of fruits, magazine stands, the police station, a barber shop and a fish market that made me want to throw up (later I did a reversi on the local Thais, but that’s another story!).

Eventually I ended up at a restaurant (just a bank really) with a sign that said “lobster”. I asked the owner how much, and she told me fifty baht (US$2 then). Great, I told her she’d have one right away.

I don’t know what I expected. Up to that point, everything she had eaten in Thailand had been memorable, one way or another. But this spiny lobster dish I don’t remember, except to say I ate lobster tail off a nondescript wooden bench. Either she was a terrible cook, or the fish was considered too prized to be masked with sauce or condiments, but it tasted as if it had been cooked the night before and simply reheated (which is not unlikely).

In any case, I have only struck gold once with the spiny lobster, while the clawed lobster has always been amazing. That is also another story.