Donated Delicacies Elevate Food Bank to Gourmet Class

Yvette Mack spends most of her time collecting surplus butter, cheese and cereal for the Los Angeles Food Bank. Most of this bland diet does not exactly make for gourmet cuisine.

So when Mack heard Wednesday that she would soon get her hands on 3,147 California spiny lobsters, you can imagine her reaction.

“This is wonderful!” Mack said as she made plans to distribute the shellfish delicacy to Los Angeles-area social service centers for needy seniors, children and the homeless.

“It’s really a first,” she said. “We get a lot of fish, but lobster, no way.”

The lobsters, confiscated from two downtown Los Angeles warehouses, will be donated to the food bank today by officials from the California Department of Fish and Game.

Donna Davis, a warden with the department, said the lobsters were seized in August, 1988, because their heads or tails were shorter than the legal limit of 3 1/4 inches. The precooked crustaceans have been stored frozen in a refrigerated warehouse for the past year as evidence in a legal case against 12 fish companies that bought and sold them.

When the department finally won its case against the companies this week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge donated the food to the department, Davis said.

“All you need to do is defrost them,” Davis said. “You can cut them up, eat the whole tail, whatever. A lot of people barbecue them.”

Davis said the Department of Fish and Game often confiscates seafood from dishonest fishermen and donates the catch to charity. But rarely has the department made such a big haul. At about $15 per pound retail, the lobsters are worth more than $47,000.

At the food bank, Mack said, the lobster catch couldn’t have come at a better time.

“This is something new and unique,” she said. “It’s perfect for the holidays.”

But when asked the best way to prepare the tasty shellfish, Mack confessed she was stumped.

After all, she said, “I’ve only eaten lobster once.”