Brown's Lobster Pound marks 75 years in Seabrook: 'Best seafood in the U.S.'
SEABROOK — "Numbers 87, 88, and 89, your orders are ready," echoed over the PA system at Brown's Lobster Pound on May 1, signaling another round of fresh seafood awaiting eager diners at the counter.
It's a familiar call — one that has been repeated tens of thousands of times over the past 75 years — carrying on a tradition that began on the first Friday of April 1950. It's the result of a journey begun by Hollis Brown and his good friend Louis Violette and set the foundation for what is now a beloved New Hampshire seafood institution.
Hollis is gone now, as is Violette, but Hollis' son Bruce remembers every day since. Nearly 88, he's moving a little slower than he did that April weekend in 1950 when, at 13, he hustled beside his dad at the opening of Brown's Lobster Pound.
Bruce Brown's father founded Brown's Lobster Pound in 1950, when Bruce, center, was just 13 years old. He took over as owner in 1972, and now, generations of his family continue his legacy as the restaurant celebrates its 75th anniversary.
These days, Bruce's sons Robert and Bruce II, along with his grandson Kaleb, do the heavy lifting, keeping the expanded footprint of Brown's up and running. But whenever the elder statesman's in the house, there's no shortage of people who stop to chat.
'I just want to say thank you,' Merrimack resident Craig LoPiana told Bruce Brown. 'We've been coming here for 45 years over three generations.'
As Brown thanked him for his business in return, LoPiana, a 20-year Army veteran, said that even when he was deployed to the Middle East, one of the things he missed most was a meal at Brown's.
'I wanted to come back so I could eat here,' LoPiana said.
The sentiment isn't unique. Brown's isn't just a tradition for the Brown family, it's one for thousands of families who've celebrated special occasions enjoying fresh lobsters and seafood there for generations.
'Mother's Day and Father's Day are two of our busiest,' Bruce Brown II said. 'And, of course, summers starting around Memorial Day.'
Open weekends during the off-season from Nov. 15 through April 14, and seven days a week for the rest of the year, the restaurant for 75 years has drawn patrons from throughout New Hampshire, as well as from New Hampshire and Massachusetts — especially the Merrimack Valley — and beyond.
'We've been coming here for more than 20 years,' Lowell residents Edviges and Jorge Fraga told Bruce Brown. 'My cousins are here from the Azores. We brought them today.'
High praise since the Azores, islands off the coast of Portugal, are famous for seafood.
There was even a couple who flew in from Chicago once, Bruce Brown said, because eating at Brown's was what the wife said she wanted for her wedding anniversary.
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How Brown's Lobster Pound came to be
It was 1947, Bruce Brown said, during an economic downturn that followed the end of World War II. His dad had been laid off from his factory job in Newburyport, and Louis Violette from his job at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Needing a way to earn a living, they started hauling lobsters landed by Maine fishermen, selling them to fish markets and restaurants in the Merrimack Valley.
Doing well, a year later the two men opened their own lobster pound on Route 1 in Hampton, using the water from the nearby Taylor River for the lobster pool.
Bruce Brown's father opened Brown's Lobster Pound in 1950, when Bruce was just 13. Starting out by cleaning tables, Bruce later took over as owner in 1972 upon his father's retirement. Now, the family-run restaurant is celebrating its 75th anniversary.
'But the water from the Taylor River was brackish,' Brown said. 'The water here, from the Black Water River, is better. It's cold, saltier, and good for lobsters.'
So, in 1950, Hollis Brown and Violette opened their lobster pound in the flat-roofed, mustard-yellow, one-story building on Route 286 on the banks of the river that still provides the water for the holding tanks where lobsters crawl.
Back then, they just sold lobsters and clams,' Bruce Brown said. 'Alive or cooked. Guess how much lobsters were back then? 35 cents a pound!'
Things went so well that two years later, the men added a lunch bar to the lobster pound, serving lobster rolls, steamed clams, fried seafood and sandwiches. Replicating a place he had seen in Maine, Hollis Brown added a small dining room on the west side of the pound stretching over the river where patrons could sit, enjoy the view, and eat the lobsters they'd chosen themselves from the tank.
In 1957, when Violette wanted to open his own lunch bar in nearby Salisbury, Hollis Brown bought him out. In the decades that followed, Hollis — with his son Bruce's help — extended the huge expanse of the dining room and furnished it.
'My father and I built a lot of the picnic tables in this dining room,' Bruce Brown said. 'I'd say about half. We've never served alcohol here. My mother and father were death on alcohol.'
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Brown's Lobster Pound keeps it all in the family
Brown's Lobster Pound isn't simply a story about a successful restaurant; it's begun the lives of families over its lifetime.
For starters, in 1957, it's where Bruce Brown met Cynthia Marston and their romance began.
'My father bought insurance from her father and asked him if he had any teenagers who needed a job for the summer,' Bruce Brown said, smiling. 'He did, and when I saw Cynthia, I thought she was a pretty good-looking chick.'
Kaleb Brown hauls in fresh lobsters during the lunchtime rush at Brown's Lobster Pound, the family-run Seabrook institution celebrating 75 years of tradition.
Only one problem, Brown said, Cynthia had a boyfriend. Over the summer, however, as he regularly drove Cynthia back to her North Hampton home, her loyalties changed. By October 1958, they were married and would become the parents of 'three fine sons,' Robert, Norman and Bruce II.
All grew up working in the family business, two choosing it for their careers, and one, Norman, becoming a well-known local engineer.
'They're good boys,' Bruce Brown says softly of his sons. 'And I have four grandchildren, Kaleb, Ashley, Brittany, and Chloe, and four great-grandchildren, Liam, Isla, Cian and Laila.'
They all owe their very existence to Brown's.
'My father met my mother here,' according to Bruce Brown II. 'My brother Norman met his wife Sandy here; my brother Robert met his wife Kim here and I met my wife Cathy here. A lot of people who've worked here over the years have met the people they would marry at Brown's.'
The fourth Brown generation has already stepped up. Robert's son Kaleb, began in the kitchen as a kid, first as a dishwasher, but he moved up, taking on the important role of fry cook. Now he works beside his dad and uncle daily.
Bruce Brown II's daughter Chloe – who'll graduate from Seabrook Middle School this spring – may also find her place at Brown's in decades to come.
As for Brown generation number five, when school's out, Kaleb Brown's kids, Cian, Isla and Liam, can sometimes be found trailing after their dad, getting familiar with the goings-on in the complex world of the food industry.
Kaleb said he once thought of pursuing a career in engineering like his uncle, but the family business called to him.
'It just seemed the natural thing to do to work here,' Kaleb said. 'I like it here.'
It's not just blood relatives who make up Brown's family. Many in the area have worked inside those yellow walls year after year, like Gary Fowler, who's been with Brown for 65 years.
'Even when I did my military duty, when I'd get leave on weekends, I'd work here,' Fowler said.
'When it was quiet in the restaurant, we'd play cribbage,' Brown added.
'And I'd skunk him,' Fowler said.
'Wasn't very often,' Brown returned.
The banter of the two friends revolves around more than cribbage. Staunch Republicans, they have worked on local, state and federal campaigns for Grand Old Party candidates, including, since the 1970s, organizing bi-annual Republican rallies at Brown's every two years, when a presidential prospect has been known to show up.
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Keeping tradition alive at Brown's Lobster Pound
It's no secret the food service industry is one of the most difficult. With the high costs of equipment, perishable stock, long hours, and numerous employees, even nationwide chains find it challenging to drop enough to the bottom line to survive.
But Brown's carved out a niche that's worked for three-quarters of a century, even while the cost of its primary product rose exponentially, as fish supplies diminished and consumer demand soared.
Family-run Brown's Lobster Pound in Seabrook celebrates 75 years in business.
In 1960, for example, a seafood plate was $2.50 and an order of French fries 15 cents, Bruce Brown said, making dining there a normal financial experience. But those prices are ancient history in the seafood restaurant business.
'A man told me, 'Mr. Brown, your food is very expensive,'' Bruce Brown said. 'I agreed with him. We want to maintain our standards, and these days to do that, everything is expensive. Fresh fish, labor, everything.'
Bruce Brown II said to maintain quality, the restaurant buys and prepares fresh fish, and only from suppliers it trusts.
When he surveys other fresh seafood restaurants in the region, Bruce Brown II said he finds prices similar to theirs.
'Some things may be a dollar or two higher or lower,' Bruce Brown II said, 'but we're all around the same.'
Bruce Brown II believes it's important for New England to keep its historic seafood restaurants, a legacy of its oldest industry.
'It's important to keep these places going,' he said. 'It's New England heritage. These are special places.'
Family Destination Guide's March 2025 review agrees. Although the review claims Brown's yellow building isn't going to win any architectural awards, it adds it's captured 'the hearts and appetites of seafood enthusiasts throughout New England and beyond.'
Referring to Brown's as steadfastly consistent and unpretentious, a tough, resilient mirror of the New Hampshire Seacoast community, the article claims Brown's doesn't need fancy tablecloths, because hiding inside is 'The Best Seafood in the U.S.'
'In a culinary landscape dominated by ever-changing food trends and restaurants that reinvent themselves with each season, Brown's remains gloriously stubbornly unchanged … they let their impossibly fresh seafood speak volumes.'
After 75 years, the dining public appears to agree.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Brown's Lobster Pound marks 75 years in Seabrook
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