Dr. Claw
Craving a lobster roll? Call Dr. Claw.
Boston native and NYC resident Dr. Claw runs an “underground catering” business. Hit him up on Facebook, he’ll text a location and a roll-up in a tinted truck with a lobster roll in a sketchy looking brown paper bag.
Dr. Claw is part of a growing underground restaurant industry…
Underground restaurants often are started by cooking school graduates who are dissatisfied with the modern restaurant scene or who can't afford to start up a licensed restaurant. Some chefs who spent their culinary careers in restaurants cite dissatisfaction with the impersonality of cooking in corporate kitchens. They say they'd rather know and interact with the people who eat their food. Other organizers love the artistic quality of staging a meal in unconventional settings. The restaurants usually begin with the chef inviting friends and cooking school classmates or restaurant colleagues to his or her house for a gourmet dinner. The food is excellent, as the chef usually has a traditional culinary education and sometimes years of restaurant experience. Typically the guests are so impressed that they tell their friends, and invite them to come along to the next dinner. Chefs begin e-mail lists, which in some cases grow to thousands of members in a matter of months.