This past weekend our family took a trip to Maine as we usually do each summer. As any of you with food allergies or that have kids with food allergies know……traveling is made that much harder. We were staying with my in-laws so most meals were home cooked and fine. But being in Maine we wanted some seafood too. Plus Jennifer has developed a love of shrimp of late!!!
Most places are fairly accomindating to people with food allergies but at the same time it’s work to get what you need. I found one place where this was NOT the case. My FIL wanted to go to this place called Five Island Lobster Co in Georgetown, Maine. What else would I order for Jen there but shrimp!! Unfortunately all they had there were fried shrimp. So, I asked if they could help us in any way. They said they could probably grill them and the woman at the register asked Mike (the one who became Jen’s guardian angel that night) if they could be grilled. He said they could but then asked what she had issues with. I told him and he said that wasn’t an option as the grill was covered with a no stick solution that was pure soybean oil.
Their seafood restaurant (it’s an outside sit on the dock kind of eating place) consists of two restuarants actually. The Lobster Pound and the Love Nest. And they sell different types of food at each one. One is mostly fried and hot dogs/burgers etc and the other is more lobsters and steamers etc. My next question was whether they could take her shrimp and steam it next door instead of frying it. They jumped on that idea and whipped it right up!!! I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it was handled. Mike was on the ball with that one.
The thing that made it that much more difficult is that gulf of Maine shrimp are pretty tiny compared to regular shrimp so they had to find something suitable to steam them in that they wouldn’t fall out of. Then the next nice thing he did for us was to come running out to make sure she hadn’t used the cocktail sauce he had given us as he had double checked and it had soy in the ingredients!!
So, if you have food allergies and find yourself in the midcoast of Maine be sure to check out the Five Island Lobster Co. and be sure to ask for Mike. He does an excellent. And don’t just take my word for it……here is what others are saying too.
