The Nauti Lobstah: The Two-Foot Lobster Roll That Put Apopka on the Map

Every dining city has one room that forces the rest of the region to learn its name. For Apopka, that room serves a two-foot lobster roll. The Nauti Lobstah, at 311 South Forest Avenue, is a family-owned New England seafood restaurant that opened in September 2021 — and within a few years had been named Critic’s Choice Best Seafood in Orlando by the Orlando Sentinel Foodie Awards, twice in a row, with chef Mike Rumplik also recognized as a Best Local Chef. Apopka had fed itself well for decades. This is the place that made Orlando drive up US-441 for dinner. More Apopka tables are in our where-to-eat roundup.

A Rhode Island chef in a Florida institution

The building carries the story. Before the Lobstah, this address was the Catfish Place, an Apopka institution for 38 years with the kind of community loyalty most restaurants never earn. When Rumplik — a Rhode Island native and Johnson & Wales culinary graduate — bought it with his wife Cara and their friend Christine Gonzalez in 2020, the respectful move would have been impossible to fake: keep the welcome, change the coast. The restaurant’s own history page frames the takeover as preserving that legacy while adding New England specialties, and the dining room still reads as a neighborhood place rather than a concept. That balance — destination food, local room — is the whole trick, and it is why the Apopka hub leads its dining story here.

The biggest lobster roll in Florida, and the rest of the menu

The headline dish is exactly what the sign says: the Biggest Lobster Roll in Florida, a two-foot Connecticut-style roll that functions as both dinner and table theater. Around it, the menu works the Northeastern canon the kitchen grew up with — lobster bisque with real chunks of lobster, clam cakes, Maine lobster in multiple preparations, New England fish and seafood set beside Florida fish, and prime steaks for the tablemate who came for turf. The restaurant notes all prices are market price and subject to change, which for a Maine-lobster kitchen in inland Florida is not fine print; it is the honest economics of flying the product in. Order the bisque regardless of what follows it. That is the one instruction this profile will give you.

When to go, and the pattern that catches people out

The Nauti Lobstah serves lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday — last seatings in the evening, later on Friday and Saturday — and closes Sunday and Monday. That single fact sinks more first visits than any other: Sunday is precisely when Orlando day-trippers assume a seafood destination will be open. Plan it as a Tuesday-to-Saturday move, ideally paired with a morning at the springs. It is an easy run from Wekiwa Springs State Park at the city’s eastern edge, and the Forest Avenue address puts downtown’s other stops — the Museum of the Apopkans, Kit Land Nelson Park, Propagate Social House — within a few blocks for a before-dinner wander.

Why it matters beyond one menu

Apopka’s dining identity used to be described by its corridor: the everyday Main Street rooms that feed a city of nearly 55,000. The Lobstah gave the city a critic-certified flagship without sanding off its local character, and it did so by inheriting a beloved room instead of replacing the memory of it. That is a template other Orlando suburbs talk about and rarely execute. For visitors, the practical summary is simple: this is the seafood dinner worth the 441 drive, it holds two consecutive Critic’s Choice titles to prove it, and it anchors everything else in our Apopka dining coverage. Find it on the Orlando Top Spots Map, go Tuesday through Saturday, and start with the bisque.

Filed under apopka · Lobster Roll · Restaurants · Seafood

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