Midtown Lunch

Last week, Alexa forewarned of Certe’s June sandwich, the Count of Stonington. This baby’s got lobster salad and spicy grano padana frico on vanilla-honey and sea-salted French toast. Yep, I was just as overwhelmed by that description as you- but it didn’t sufficiently prepare for what was to come.

First thing’s first, this sandwich is DIFFICULT to pick up. Just as it looks in the picture, the French toast was actually really sweet and sticky. There’s no way to get your hands around this thing without getting honey and goo all over yourself. On top of that, any kind of mayo-based salad is going to make for a sloppy sandwich, especially on French toast. Things will fall out and you will want to eat them. Whether you choose to dive right in with your hands or use a fork from the beginning is up to you, but I’d say using a fork is pretty much a necessity at some point or other when eating this.

If you’re anything like me, you have no idea what “grano padana frico” is. I ate this sandwich before bothering to read anything about frico, so it was a pretty mysterious ingredient to me at the time. It was crunchy and flat, kind of like bacon in texture, but smoky, spicy, and not at all meaty in taste. It turns out that frico is only cheese that’s been fried to a crisp, with grano padana merely being the type of cheese. Truth be told, I wasn’t crazy about it, but I’m sure that’s more a reflection on me and my unsophisticated palate than anything else.

As mentioned before, the French toast was super sweet, maybe too much for my taste, but the lobster salad itself was nothing short of amazing. Certe included pretty generous amounts in this sandwich, and there were SO MANY large chunks of lobster meat throughout. Also, there were carrots, celery bits, and other greens mixed in to round out the taste. The salad was creamy, rich, and totally satisfying.

As a whole, the components of the sandwich blended to create something unique and unlike anything I’d really ever eaten before. Certe has a habit of coming up with strange combinations for their monthly sandwich, and this one is no different. This month’s is absolutely recommended for those of you looking to eat something unusual and inspired. At $9.74 after tax, this may be the cheapest lobster salad I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating. For the sake of comparison, Luke’s Lobster charges $15 for a roll. So, if you like lobster, eat this sandwich! It’s tasty, it’s sophisticated, and it’s a great value. The Count of Stonington is available at Certe (on 55th St. between 5th and 6th) for the rest of June!