Not-So-Lobster Lobster Salad

A New Orleans resident noticed something was fishy when he tasted the iconic lobster salad from the New York upscale deli Zabar’s. Doug MacCash, who happens to be a food reporter with New Orleans’ newspaper The Times-Picayune, was on a family vacation in the Big Apple when he first came across the orangey-pink shellfish salad at Zabar’s. The deli had used that term for 20 years, but it turns out there was no lobster. MacCash read the ingredients. The label read: wild fresh water crayfish. Owner Saul Zabar reasoned that crayfish, while not Maine lobster, is a distant cousin. Then he got a call from the Maine Lobster Council, which begged to differ. The salad goes for $16.95 a pound. Zabar says using actual lobster would make it even more expensive. It’s now being renamed “Seafare Salad.”