A couple from New Jersey got lucky when they went out for dinner last weekend.
Michael Spressler ordered one of his favorite appetizers, a dozen clams on the half shell, when he and his wife Maria Spressler Had dinner at Lobster House in Cape May last Sunday.
But as Michael Spressler was busy finishing his last clam, he came across an 8.8 millimeter wide pearl.
“I was in 12th and when I picked it up on the fork it looked a little heavy, but I didn’t think about that,” he Recount CBS3. “Then when I started eating it, I noticed there was something in my mouth. In fact, I thought one of my teeth had broken.
Although the big pearl could potentially cost thousands of dollars, the couple have no plans to sell it.
“I would like it to be set in a nice piece of jewelry, maybe a mermaid or something nautical,” Maria Spressler told CBS3. “It’s a beautiful memory of that day and what we have is so special,” said Maria Spressler.
Finding pearls in edible bivalves like clams, mussels and oysters is extremely rare. Only about one in 10,000 raw oysters contains a pearl inside.
The Cape May pearl is something of a birthday present for the Spresslers and the Lobster House.
The Spresslers first dined at the restaurant known for the spectacular views diners get when eating inside or dockside exactly 34 years ago last weekend. They first visited the Lobster House on President’s Day weekend in 1987.
The pearl has also arrived at Lobster House as the restaurant celebrates its centenary.
Although the restaurant was only founded in 1954, its heritage dates back to a wholesale fishing business called Cold Spring Fish & Supply Company which was started in 1922 by the grandfather of current owner Keith Laudeman, a Philadelphia native named Jess Laudeman.
The fishing business is still in operation and there is a seafood market on the property centered on the Lobster House wharf.
There was once a smaller restaurant on the pier called Bateman’s which disappeared in the 1950s. Jess Laudeman gave it to his son Wally, Keith’s father, when he came out of the US Coast Guard.
In 1965, the family purchased a fishing schooner from Nova Scotia in Canada which they converted into a lounge bar and added another boat to the restaurant in 2001.
Keith Laudeman took over the business from his father in 2004 and began running it with his sister Marijane Laudeman.
The restaurant survived a Fire in 2005 and had to close in 2012 after flooded in the middle of Hurricane Sandy. It reopened later that year.