Since I've moved to the East Coast, lobster has become a little less intimidating. It's not like I keep it on hand to mix into scrambled eggs, but there are places here, namely roadside lobster pounds in  Maine, where this vaunted crustacean is affordable and presented in its best possible light, which is to  say casually, with gobs of butter and a tiny portion of coleslaw, served while you're sitting at a picnic table in your fleece and the jeans on which you'll soon wipe your hands.

I've even steamed lobsters in a pot placed over a charcoal grill next to my tent on the shores of a sparkling, pine-ringed lake. Those  lobsters arrived at the campsite in a rusty pickup driven by a dentally  challenged lobsterman and his son, who shot the breeze with us while the little guys rustled their brown paper grocery bag.

But don't think they don't still thrill. For my money, lobster is one of the best tastes in the world, a true special-occasion food. That's  why I was awed recently to return to my apartment at 3 a.m. on an ordinary Friday morning with 15 of the critters in tow, along with 40  pounds of stone crabs, 20 pounds of shrimp and 100 Bluepoint oysters.

My friend Troy, who goes to culinary school, had taken a class field trip to the Fulton Street Fishmarket at the South Street Seaport. Since the market would soon leave its 175-year-old location and travel to its new home in the Bronx, why not, he suggested, go fishing in the last weeks of seafood season in Manhattan — and throw a party? If I'd provide the venue, he'd do the  cooking, boiling everything up in a huge propane-fueled pot.

At about 1 a.m. on the agreed evening, we met up on  the clean  cobblestones under the bright streetlights of the nearby pedestrian mall.

We walked a few paces, turned, and traveled back in time into a world of slippery shadows and pungent smells. It was impossible to know where, or how, to begin. We slinked around the stalls, wondering if it was really kosher for scrubs like us to be there.

I've never been surrounded by so much testosterone. Luckily, we were wearing our baggiest pants, big jackets and ratty sneakers, else I think we would really have felt like chub to their great whites. We were all cowed by the we're-not-in-a-grocery-store-anymore feeling, by the labeled boxes set aside for top-notch restaurants like Le Bernadin and Esca and Chanterelle.

As the minutes ticked by, the place came to life. Box tops came off to reveal shimmering yellowtail snapper, masses of squid, neatly stacked abalone and conch in their shells. After several laps around the place, we gained confidence and began stepping back into the stalls to inquire about prices. Soon we got into a rhythm, making our large cash purchases with something that resembled confidence.

Eventually, we made it back to the apartment and turned to the task of keeping our catch alive until  we cooked it. Wearing an oven mitt, I gently plopped the twisting, snapping crabs into a cooler, one by one.

That evening, 30 people feasted on those crabs' succulent claws, along with the lobsters, spicy steamed shrimp and oysters on the half shell, served with lemon and homemade mignonette and cocktail sauces. I must have sucked down a dozen, standing on the back patio with an icy beer in one hand. The food was as fresh and tasty as anything any of us had ever eaten dockside, and at the end of the night we collected $10 from each person and called it good.

A week after the surf, I got my turf. I finally made it to Nebraska  Beef, a steakhouse down around Wall Street that I've been meaning to go to for ages. The meal was really delicious: a nice petite filet perfectly cooked, creamy garlic mashed potatoes, a decent version of the creamed spinach I love to order at steakhouses.

But something about the  ambiance was off, unworthy of the Nebraska name. Yes, it had wood paneling. Yes, my martini was  excellent. Yes, all the overpriced fancy-steakhouse menu standards were there: We could have bought an $850 bottle of Chateau Margaux 1989, or, for $99.95, The Stockbroker, a 2.5 pound T-bone with a 1.5 pound lobster tail. But I wouldn't call it elegant. Maybe it was the fact that "béarnaise sauce" was misspelled on the menu. Or that during dinner we heard "Since U Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson—twice.

Even before we opened our menus, the vibe compelled me to  say to Tallboy, "This feels like the kind of place you'd come to cheat on your  wife."

Finally, in the realization of a scene I had been playing out in my mind since I began writing this column, I whipped out the  blank outline map of the United States and asked our busboy, then our server,  if they could point to the state of Nebraska. They couldn't. The server actually got very close, grazing Eastern Colorado with his fingertip, but inadvertently, apologetically.  "Somewhere in here?" he shrugged. "I do know it's where we get the meat."

Indeed it is where they get the meat, and, as we all know, that's what  matters most. And it was exactly the right thing to be eating at that moment, because the dinner was also a closing ceremony of sorts. This will be my last column in the Journal Star. It's been really wonderful corresponding with you. Thanks. And, as always, wish you were here.

Kelly Bare is a writer and editor in New York. She can be reached at kellybare76@yahoo.com.