"How does the Maine Lobster Festival keep up with the demand of cooking more than 20,000 pounds of lobster in five days, you ask? For the last 10 years, Rockland, “The Lobster Capital of the World,” has naturally been the home to one of the Festival’s most impressive pieces of equipment —The World’s Largest Lobster Cooker," the Maine Lobster Festival says.

"A mighty contraption for a massive job, this cooker is actually comprised of multiple components, featuring eight individual cooking units made of steel mesh, each capable of cooking 200 pounds of lobsters. The World’s Greatest Lobster Cooker can cook 1,600 pounds of lobster in 15 minutes!

"This cooker, which was invented a decade ago for the 2008 festival, was the result of some critical engineering and ingenuity by the lobster community. With electronic controls, tremendous capacity, temperature sensors, and safety shut-off devices, the cooker uses clean-burning propane, courtesy of Maritime Energy. Its design is approximately 50 percent more efficient than the old cooker, which relied on fuel oil. Not only that, festival volunteers would be surrounded by plumes of black smoke!

"Cooked in batches of 100 pounds, the steaming red lobsters are transferred to an insulated tote and carted to the Main Eating Tent, where hungry people are waiting with their bibs and all the fixings. This faster and more efficient method ensures that people don’t have to wait in long lines to get their lobster fix. In fact, at its peak efficiency, using the cooker helped volunteers serve more than 26,000 pounds of lobster at one of the past five-day festivals."

"It is the largest celebration of all things lobster on the Eastern seaboard. An average of 26,000 pounds of fresh from the water Maine Lobsters are served during the five days of the festival at the “Eating Tent”, the Berry Manor Inn says.

"The Maine Lobster Festival of course features lobsters and celebrates all things lobster. The Maine Lobster Festival also includes a great community parade on Saturday morning, lobster cooking contests, lobster eating contests, dress your baby like a lobster diaper derby race, lobster crate races, touch tanks with real lobsters, Made in Maine art and crafts tent, a carnival, amusement park rides, musical entertainment, a Maine Lobster Festival Sea Goddess scholarship contest and of course at the center of it all is the Main Eating Tent serving up over 20,000 succulent Maine lobsters from the world’s largest lobster cooker.

"The Maine Lobster Festival is run entirely by volunteers (over 1,000 people) and the festival gives back to the local communities through the purchase of ambulances, repairing public docks, improvements to the Recreational Center and the high school auditorium and other such projects or charities where the community is served."

"The Maine Lobster Festival is every year in Rockland, Maine. It is consistently one of the largest festivals in Rockland’s Harbor Park. Celebrating all things lobster and seafood, it’s now a week long festival with lots of do, see, and participate in. As a previous resident of Mid-Coast Maine, I attended the Maine Lobster Festival a few times. But, I so fell in love with it, that I volunteered for a few years, before becoming a formal member of the festival committee. We’re really going to dive in and give you a behind-the-scenes view of the Maine Lobster Festival," the ourfrenchtravels.com says.

" The lobster festival, obviously, has some of the best lobsters around. The lobster is freshly caught off the Maine coast then they cook it fresh on the festival grounds. Rockland Harbor Park, the home of the Maine Lobster Festival, is home to the largest lobster cooker in the world. It is capable of cooking more than 3,000 pounds of lobster per day. That equates to more than 36 tons of fresh lobster per day. Stop by and say hi to the team of Lobster Chefs manning those cookers all day.

"The main food tent is the largest, and likely most full tent on the festival grounds. It’s also overlooking the harbor, so you’ll get beautiful views as you enjoy your lunch. In the Main food tent, you can get your lobster cooked in a variety of different ways. Lobster rolls, Lobster Mac & Cheese, Lobster Bisque, Lobster Stuff Risotto Balls and Lobster Wantons. Of course, you can also just buy full lobsters to enjoy. A bib and napkin are included in every lobster order because you will get messy. Outside of lobster, you can get clams, mussels, and three varieties of seafood chowders. Corn, coleslaw, salads, and blueberry cobbler or strawberry shortcake will finish out your meal."

"In 2003, Gourmet Magazine sent David Foster Wallace to do a story on the Maine Lobster Festival (MLF). The resulting article, “Consider the Lobster,” appeared in August 2004. In my view it’s one of the best pieces of non-fiction writing to question the ideology of eating animals, in this case lobster, ever written," the Vegan Practically says.

"It starts as a report on a major annual event with all the crass pageantry, smells, crowds, and marketing described in detail, as if passing on the information to a reader who might be interested in going. He recounts it as “enormous, pungent, and extremely well-marketed.” But Wallace soon turns to more probing questions, such as what exactly are lobsters? (after a scientific overview of this particular crustacean, he summarizes that lobsters are “basically giant sea insects.”)

"They may themselves be the scavengers of the ocean floor, but “they themselves are good eating.” Of course they used to be only for poor people, but now “lobster is posh, a delicacy, only a step or two down from caviar.” That said, at the MLF it’s served in a very crowded tent on styrofoam trays with plastic utensils after being boiled alive in the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker."

"The Maine Lobster Festival is five days of fun and feasting on the fabulous coast of Maine! This annual seafood festival takes place during the first weekend of August, from Wednesday through Sunday," the official website says.

"What started as an idea for a local marine festival to revive Midcoast Maine communities has turned into an internationally-recognized celebration of local seafood. The Maine Lobster Festival attracts visitors from as near as our local communities to those from countries around the globe.

"Since 1947, the Maine Lobster Festival has given more than $500,000 to Midcoast Maine’s communities. As a non-profit organization, the Maine Lobster Festival donates all proceeds back to the Midcoast Maine communities each year. We support local food pantries, high school sports teams, community service groups, local emergency services, and offer college scholarships for graduating high school seniors."

"The enormous, pungent, and extremely well marketed Maine Lobster Festival is held every late July in the state’s midcoast region, meaning the western side of Penobscot Bay, the nerve stem of Maine’s lobster industry. What’s called the midcoast runs from Owl’s Head and Thomaston in the south to Belfast in the north. The region’s two main communities are Camden, with its very old money and yachty harbor and five-star restaurants and phenomenal B&Bs, and Rockland, a serious old fishing town that hosts the Festival every summer in historic Harbor Park, right along the water," the Gourmet Magazine says.

"Saturday’s big parade, Sunday’s William G. Atwood Memorial Crate Race, annual Amateur Cooking Competition, carnival rides and midway attractions and food booths, and the MLF’s Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught Maine lobster is consumed after preparation in the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker near the grounds’ north entrance. Also available are lobster rolls, lobster turnovers, lobster sauté, Down East lobster salad, lobster bisque, lobster ravioli, and deep-fried lobster dumplings.

"A large all-pine booth sponsored by the Maine Lobster Promotion Council has free pamphlets with recipes, eating tips, and Lobster Fun Facts. The winner of Friday’s Amateur Cooking Competition prepares Saffron Lobster Ramekins, the recipe for which is available for public downloading at www.mainelobsterfestival.com. There are lobster T-shirts and lobster bobblehead dolls and inflatable lobster pool toys and clamp-on lobster hats with big scarlet claws that wobble on springs. Your assigned correspondent saw it all, accompanied by one girlfriend and both his own parents—one of which parents was actually born and raised in Maine, albeit in the extreme northern inland part, which is potato country and a world away from the touristic midcoast."

"The five-day event attracts more than 10,000 people to hear music, watch the annual Miss Sea Goddess contest, take part in the lobster crate races and of course, eat seafood in all forms," the Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance says.



"The 20,000 to 25,000 pounds of lobster consumed are steamed in what festival promoters call “The World’s Largest Lobster Cooker.”

World’s Largest Lobster Roll Commercially Available, world record in Woolwich, Maine

World’s Largest Inflatable Lobster, world record in Woolwich, Maine

World's Largest Lobster Trap Christmas Tree, world record in Beals, Maine

 Largest lobster roll-world record set by Portland