Dallas has argued about lobster rolls for a long time. We were there when TJ’s griddled its first Connecticut-style bun back in 2012, and the debate has never really cooled since. Now the conversation has a new address, and it happens to sit in one of the busiest corners of the city.
Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls opened in December inside The Union at 2301 N. Akard Street, a short walk from the American Airlines Center, Klyde Warren Park and the Perot Museum. It is the first Dallas-Fort Worth location for the Maryland-born chain, which has grown into the largest brick-and-mortar lobster roll operation in the country while somehow never opening a shop in New England itself.
The company’s story starts with Dan Beck, a former restaurant seafood buyer who spent time with Maine lobstermen learning where the good stuff comes from and why it matters. He opened the first Mason’s in Annapolis in 2014 and began franchising two years later. The Dallas shop belongs to Thu Bui, a local who tasted her first Mason’s roll at the Austin location in 2024 and decided her hometown deserved the same.
The menu keeps things honest. The Classic Maine roll arrives chilled, the lobster dressed lightly with mayo and lemon butter in a split-top New England bun, the kind with the opening on top rather than the side. The Connecticut roll comes warm with drawn butter, which is the version this writer will defend in any argument. A BLT lobster roll adds bacon, lettuce and tomato for those who want their indulgence layered, and there are crab and shrimp rolls for the table’s contrarians…