would tend to agree and I have been to steakhouses where the tail was obscene in size, mine at the Palm as reported above was tiny.

I'm not glad that you did not have leftovers, I too was envisioning leftovers for a Lobster BLT the following day, but sadly my lobster's tail left quite a bit to be desired from the size standpoint.

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Unfortunately it looks like this deal is more of a rip off. Tails are substandard in size and seems most of the weight is in the claws. So these lobsters would not be considered prime choice and thus sold at a discount which is passed along as a special deal here. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some rounding up of weight such as 4-1/2 pounders are sold as 5 pounders, etc.

Just an FYI but Maine lobsters do not have very big tails. As someone noted, their best meat is primarily in the claw. The lobster tail you get in most restaurants is from the South African Rock Lobster and these tails are much bigger and meatier than anything you'll find on a Maine lobster.

yep, I'm with you. I do buy Maine lobsters on a regular basis and while I agree with what you state, the tails are more in proportion than what I experienced at the Palm.

The lobsters at the Palm looked like the weightlifter guy who worked their huge upper body but forgot to workout their legs! :)

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The palm uses only lobsters from Novia Scotia I believe, so you would expect smaller tails. It's also possible they have already shed their shells and are in their new bigger shells and haven't grown into them. That makes the meat seem totally out of place, and the weight of the animal is high, because of the liquid filling those spaces, but the meat amount is lower. It's that time of the year, I would expect many of them to be soft shelled.

The hard shells (the ones that have not molted) have more meat for the size of the lobster, the soft shelled ones are supposed to be more tender and sweeter. I don't care, I love them all.

I wouldn't call them substandard, or anything else, it's how lobsters run this time of year.

As long as we're doing a lobster primer here, Maine lobsters are known as warm water lobsters. And South African lobsters are cold water lobsters.
Yeah, I know...Maine sounds cold but the Gulf Stream runs along the coast and the water is relatively warm.
And South Africa sounds warm but the waters are frigid.
Cold-water lobsters are considered more desirable than warm water as the meat is firmer and sweeter.
Or at least that's how the marketing pukes would explain it. ;)

pound for pound, Soft shells tend to have more meat than hard shells, as the shell weighs much less. Most large lobsters are mined off the coast of NJ in very deep water. they are then landed in the cape cod area of MA.

The water is very cold at those depths. Not many harvested Maine lobsters get to giant size. for some reason, the production of maine lobsters has skyrocketed, and the prices have fallen. I am not at all famaliar with nova scotia lobsters, but it is difficult to determine harvest location for most fish.

read recently where a guy illegally filled a boat with chilean sea bass and was chased half way around the world by authorities. he could have landed them in australia, or south africa.

The south african "rock lobster" is a giant crayfish, not a lobster.