What is Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls?
Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls is the lobster counter at 15257 N Scottsdale Road, Suite F1-155, in Scottsdale Quarter, and it has been there since Thursday, April 14, 2022. It was the first Arizona location of a franchise that Dan Beck, a restaurant veteran and former seafood buyer with connections to Maine lobstermen, founded in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2014, and the Scottsdale Progress called it the chain’s first west-coast store. The chain’s own directory now counts 43 shops across fourteen states, Washington, D.C., Italy and the United Kingdom; Scottsdale is still the only one in Arizona.
The people behind it are Andrea Clinton, the franchise owner, and her husband Chad Dodd, who grew up in Maine and, as Clinton put it, craved the lobster rolls that were impossible to find here. In October 2020 the couple took their daughter and son-in-law to Portland, Maine, and came home wanting a local source. Dodd visited the Annapolis flagship, liked the short menu and the sourcing, and the pair spent the first months of 2022 chasing supply-chain delays on lighting, shelving, countertops and paint to get the room open.
The idea is simplicity. Mason’s uses sustainably sourced Maine lobster that the owners say they can trace from the boat to the package, and dresses it with nothing but lemon, butter and mayo. The Classic Roll is chilled with mayo and lemon butter; the Connecticut is warm and tossed in butter; the Bar Harbor is either with 50 percent more lobster, including tail. Around them sit a Lobster BLT, a Lobster Salad Roll, shrimp and crab rolls, lobster bisque, New England clam chowder, lobster mac and cheese and a lobster grilled cheese, with Maine Root sodas and Cape Cod chips. The room is small, light wood and clean lines meant to read as a Maine seaside town, and it is counter service.
It is for Quarter shoppers at lunch, East Coast transplants in the Kierland & Quarter neighborhoods, and snowbirds who know what a split-top bun is supposed to be. Our verdict: the lobster is the real thing, the format is honest about what it is, and it is the best quick seafood in the district by a wide margin.
Ordering at Mason’s
Pick a temperature. The whole menu turns on one choice. The Classic is the Maine way, cold lobster with a light coat of mayo and lemon butter on a toasted split-top bun; the Connecticut is warm, drenched in butter, and the better test of the lobster itself because there is nothing to hide behind. The Bar Harbor upgrade adds 50 percent more meat, including tail, to either; it is the order if you have driven in for the occasion. The Lobster BLT and the Lobster Salad Roll (celery, mayo, lemon dressing) are for people who want a sandwich rather than a ritual.
Then the rest. The New England clam chowder is the side Chad Dodd talks up, and the lobster bisque comes topped with lobster meat. The lobster grilled cheese and lobster mac and cheese are the comfort plates, and there are shrimp and crab rolls, a shrimp salad and a lobster salad over greens with goat cheese and dried cranberries. Combos add a cup of soup, a side and a drink. Sides are potato salad, coleslaw, Cape Cod chips or fries; drinks are Maine Root organic sodas, iced tea and bottled water. The kids’ menu is a Nathan’s hot dog and a grilled cheese. The menu warns that shell fragments happen, which is the sign of real lobster.
What it costs. The chain does not post Scottsdale prices online. A recent family-travel write-up put standard rolls at about $27.99 and the Bar Harbor at about $35.49, with online menus showing the Classic and Connecticut nearer $23.99; other Mason’s stores list the Classic at $22 to $23. Lobster is priced by the market, so treat all of those as a range and budget $25 to $35 a head with a side and a drink. At the opening the store gave away a side with every roll for the first week and a drink with every roll during a 5 to 7 p.m. happy hour through the end of April 2022.
Timing. Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Seating is a handful of tables, and the weekend lunch rush from the Quarter’s shoppers fills them; weekday mid-afternoons are empty. There are no reservations. Order online for pickup if the room is full and eat on the lawn in the center of the Quarter.
Getting there. Scottsdale Quarter is on the east side of Scottsdale Road between Greenway-Hayden Loop and Kierland Boulevard, across from Kierland Commons. The garage rarely fills; the surface spaces along Scottsdale Road are closer to Suite F1-155. For a sit-down seafood dinner in the same district, Eddie V’s and Mastro’s Ocean Club are a few hundred yards away and a different evening; for the counter version elsewhere in town, Chula Seafood is the local comparison.
Maine lobster in the desert, by way of a pandemic road trip
Lobster rolls reached Scottsdale as a franchise, not a fish shack, and the story of why is in the dates. The Dodd-Clinton trip to Portland came in October 2020, when the Valley’s restaurants were half shut and a family vacation to Maine was the kind of thing you remembered. Dodd, a Maine native, had always wanted the real roll within driving distance; Clinton, who would become the franchise owner, did the work. They settled on Mason’s because its menu did not try to be clever, a choice Dodd confirmed with a visit to the Annapolis flagship, and because the chain could tell them which boat the lobster came off.
The build-out was a 2020s story too. Clinton told the Scottsdale Progress she spent the first third of 2022 tracking deliveries; lighting, shelving, countertops and paint all arrived late or had to be replaced from online suppliers. The store got an interim liquor license, announced an April 14 grand opening, and opened on that Thursday at 11 a.m. with a week of free sides and a happy hour that gave a drink with every roll. Dodd framed the staff plan as a first-job operation, mostly young people he hoped to help find a career, and the concept as a laid-back, fast-paced counter in a center otherwise built for sit-down rooms. He also said he was already looking at a second Valley space.
That second store has not appeared in the press we found, and Scottsdale remains the only Mason’s in Arizona as the chain has grown to 43 shops, including stores in Italy and Britain. The Quarter has been a good fit: it is the glossier, newer half of the Kierland & Quarter district, opened in 2009 across Scottsdale Road from the Commons, and its restaurant row is dominated by big rooms (Dominick’s, Eddie V’s, True Food Kitchen) that leave the quick-lunch slot open. The coverage after the opening is light, which is what a small franchise that simply works tends to get: Yelp counts a couple of hundred reviews, and a family-travel write-up praised the rolls while noting the price and the thin list of sides.
What the record does not say: the seat count, the square footage, the exact current prices, and whether the owners still run it day to day, though the chain’s directory and the store’s own online ordering were live when we checked. Honest assessment: this is a $25-to-$35 sandwich from a franchise, and the room is a counter with a few tables, so calibrate. Within those limits the lobster is good, the Connecticut roll is as honest a version as you will find a thousand miles from the Atlantic, and for a shopper’s lunch at the Quarter nothing else in the center is as specific or as good.