Chef Cooks Lobster To Death, Feels No Mercy, Here's Why

Jacob Katel

Chef Jorge Cardenas.

​If you've ever heard a lobster's scream as it's cooked alive in boiling water or recognize the sound of claws hammering at the plate glass and steel of an oven door then you may have worked in a restaurant kitchen.

The last time Short Order saw it happen was at Ken Lyon's Cape Cod Room at the Bath Club on Miami Beach where lobster were being cooked to death with impunity. We asked Executive Jorge Cardenas if he ever felt bad about it. Here's what he had to say:

"I was working at Le Cirque in NYC at the time for Chef Sottha Kuhn. I told chef, hey I feel bad for killing all these lobster. He said, 'Take all their rubber bands off their claws (lobster claws are generally rubber banded shut so they can't fight back). There was a whole bunch of them there all together and I had to pick each one up. They were all there snapping at me, trying to get me, trying to hurt me. After that day I don't feel bad. If they had the chance they would do the same to me."