Is a £5 lobster worth shelling out for?

Once the height of luxury, a global lobster glut means it’s now cheap as chips. Celebrity chef ALDO ZILLI tests what’s in your supermarket

SUCCULENT lobster, whether served with cream and brandy as a lavish thermidor or simply with butter, is the ultimate luxury dish. Yet this gourmet treat is suddenly cheap as chips — with supermarkets competing to sell it for the lowest price.

Budget chain Lidl is offering entire frozen lobsters for £5.99 each, while Iceland — which has started stocking the delicacy for the first time this week — is selling them at just £5.

The retailers are able to do this because the wholesale price of lobster has plunged by an astonishing 70 per cent in recent years, according to the Wall Street Journal. So why the sudden drop? The reason appears to lie with climate change. As the sea temperatures rise, lobsters are hatching earlier and they are growing faster.

Also, the over-fishing of cod in the Atlantic means that fewer of these predatory fish are gobbling up baby lobsters.

The result is that this ocean is now teeming with the tasty crustaceans. And it is these lobsters from American and Canadian waters that are now being sold at rock-bottom prices in British stores.

By contrast, lobsters from Scottish waters still have a pricier tag: one from the Orkney Islands, for example, is likely to set you back upwards of £20.

But are the cut-price varieties reduced in taste, too?

Here, I test a range of supermarket lobsters and lobster tails and give my verdict, as a chef and seafood expert.

All of the lobsters come from the freezer aisles, and while some are pre-cooked and others raw, I’ve prepared them in the same way: by sautéing in a little butter.