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hmmm... just an observation .... competition is good but basice marketing is differentiation and as for chefs... CREATIVITY and signature dishes make them who they are... many chefs and employees leave restaurants to open their own places...but 99% do it to showcase their tatlents... duplicating restaurants is plan stealing and shows the Chef has no talent to stand on his/her own two feet ... I am for comptetion but make your own mark on the world...

Gee, this is really great. The Lobster Roll as Intellectual Property. Just a matter of time until the legal community jumps on this ridiculous bandwagon .... now when I take the subway, the ads will read

"If you or someone you know has been involved in any kind of recipe or food related copy-cat activity, we are here to help you connect to a local attorney for FREE. Talk to a Personal Recipe-Theft Attorney Today! GET THE MONEY, AND STUPID PRESS COVERAGE, YOU DESERVE! Visit www.lobsterollcopycats.com today and get free legal advice" and then an endorsement from Charles herself.

Geeesh ... shut up for cryin out loud, I just want to eat in peace.

Do either of you have a favorite sushi joint?

Maybe the posters are the reason chefs “hate” blogs not the poor bloggers. In the interest of fairness I have fact-checked my information. Bolo finally got back to me and said that Mary was line cook to Neil somebody who was under Flay. NYS court records show that there was a lawsuit over the ownership of Pearl (its origins and menu) with a trial in front of a judge, which Rebecca won. MFC maintains it was a firing. Whatever, my conscience is clean. This was my first post ever on a food blog, the topic was so fascinating. I call dibs on the Lifetime movie.

Black Ford comment hysterical but despite an MBA from Wharton, I work in non-profit AIDS fundraising. Addressing the more germane comments above, law and finance firms have rigid “exit” guidelines and policies against poaching clients.

An employee takes their acquired experience to a new job, not steals someone else’s product. And chefs may enjoy a challenge but no one wants a former employee opening a copycat restaurant serving the exact same recipes and presentations in a space designed to look exactly like theirs.

I was a regular at Pearl from the earliest days, and liked both Rebecca and Mary. But Mary herself told me Pearl and its menu came from Rebecca’s love of Maine and that they met when Mary worked as her line cook at another restaurant. The chatty waitresses (I still visit them at MFC) talked frequently about a lawsuit over Pearl’s creation and ownership that Rebecca won very definitively. Mary was subsequently fired and if you can be fired, you are an employee.

As someone considering entering the restaurant fray, I guess I feel a vested interest in this topic. It seems that those in the business of exploiting talent will resist all safeguards while creative chefs will welcome them. Copying thwarts growth in all industries but particularly in artistic mediums. If Mary and Ed had had the courage to open their own restaurant concepts instead of knocking off a “sure thing” they might have made an original contribution to the culinary landscape.

Can someone please open up a delicious lobster shack that gets this much attention in LA? Sounds fantastic!

tom415: clearly you are a little delusional. So since you've been nice enough to bring up learning in school, I'll use some FACTS with citations to follow up some of your bogus claims.

First, you stated earlier that Ms. Redding was just an employee, however she was a partner and co-owner. Here's an article from the NY Times that contradicts your claim. (Unless you do not trust the paper of records?)

Again, you make uneducated claims that In any other industry this would not be allowed to happen. Again, not true. If your a lawyer at a lawfirm, you have every right to leave, open up your own practice next door, and practice the same exact law you were being trained and compensated to do at your previous firm. Better yet, how about Wall Street, arguably the most lucrative industry in New York. Stock brokers can leave their firm anytime they want, and bring there existing clients to another firm, or go at it independently. Don't believe me?

Finally, you make a point that I think everyone on this board will disagree with: Selaura, you do not get it. It is not about what is better or more convenient for YOU. Its always about whats better for the customer, in this case Selaura; that's why its named the hospitality industry. If restaurants stop thinking about whats best for the customers, then there is a huge disconnect.

Competition is the basic foundation off every industry out there. Maybe I'm alone, but I welcome Ed's and Mary's into the mix, because having two additional NE Lobster Shacks benefits the people, and I'm all for the people.

oops...one other thing I wanted to add about the competition.....

it can make better workplaces.........sometimes I want to eat "from the same exact concept" - but I just happen to think the staff at one locale is friendlier and happier......and that makes my dining experience slightly different.......

it may look like it, taste like it and feel like it - but the mood may be completely different - and that is important to me, too......

NYKittyNY you, like many others on this post, are missing the very important point that Ed Levine was trying valiantly to make about protections not being in place for chefs. Had this been just about a lobster roll, there would be no issue. It is about a chef who 10 years ago created and entire business entity that was unique to this city and, in fact, the country. I grew up in New England and I can tell you, I never bought any lobster rolls or fried oysters anywhere that are like the ones at Pearl.

Pearl pioneered the upscale clam/lobster shack and THAT is the idea that has been ripped off over and again by chefs in NYC and in other cities. No one is copying the real clam shacks, whose only real draw is that you are on vacation and anything tastes good. (How else do you explain cotton candy and salt water taffy?) To compound matters, the chef has trained and paid 2 employees who were taught all of the trade secrets and recipes who then slunk off and stole the entire concept. This is the incredibly interesting point but it keeps getting lost.

In any other industry this would not be allowed to happen, why are there no protections for chefs? Also, there seems to be a pervasive attitude that there should not be as long as it is easier for you to get your lobster roll. Is it easier with 3 of the same lobster rolls in a 1-mile radius? Sure. Just as it would be cheaper for you to get a bootleg CD, DVD or book but that is not fair to the people who by dint of sacrifice, talent, innovation and hard work created whatever it is they have created.

These two cases Mr. Levine cites are particularly eggregious because they have copied everything from the look and feel of the restaurant, to the business model, to every recipe and probably have an unfair advantage of knowing where to get all of the goods and services. This is the issue and not who has the best lobster roll or the fact that Chef Charles did not invent the lobster roll, which I'm guessing she knows since she grew up in Maine, or something but she should not have to worry that every greedy, or dissatisfied cook who works for her can then go off, steal her concept and damage her business and reputation. Nor should any other chef.

I am a little confused. Did Rebecca Charles invent lobster rolls? I am pretty sure she didn't, since I have been enjoying them since long before 1997. Heck, the McLobster was around before that year. True, my family comes from New England, but anyone who has ever traveled to that region in the summertime has likely enjoyed a lobster roll and freshly fried belly clams.

I recently posted about lobster rolls on my blog as well. I didn't credit a chef of a trendy restaurant because not only have I never eaten there, but I didn't need to. This is the way my family taught me to make them, long before Pearl or Mary's or any other NYC fish place existed. It doesn't take a brain surgeon, or chef, to figure out that if you add lobster meat to mayo and celery you have lobster salad.

Maybe if I launch a movement to make jello molds trendy once again everyone will then have to credit me....

I'm look'n, I'm look'n... but I ain't finding it! Am I that drunk? Goodfriggngrief... I was able to register successfully on your blog, but I can't find a link to forward this spot on article to other lobster roll love'n friends. What kinda blog is this, that it doesn't want the gospel spread??? You have a great site! Let us pass the word!!

Wow! This is clearly an emotionally charged issue to a lot of people on both sides of Pearl-Mary's Fishcamp divide. I want to make a couple of things clear. I really like the food at Mary's Fishcamp as I stated in the original post. I would really like the conversation to be centered on the general question of whether a cook or chef de cuisine or even a partner leaving a restaurant to open his or her own place should open a similar restaurant without leaving his or her imprimateur on the new spot. Mary has left her imprimateur. Maybe Ed McFarland over time will as well. The conclusion I am drawing from all this is cooks and chefs are going to do what they are going to do regardless of anything we say or do, and that eaters will frequent their places if the food there meets eaters' expectations.

Fascinating topic--wondered why no one had picked up on it. I hit Pearl regularly and liked both Rebecca and Mary tho' Pearl is a far superior restaurant. I think it's always been pretty clear that Rebecca was the driving force there and the cookbook makes it pretty clear whose recipes they were. Anyway...a new New York Eats any time soon, Ed?