Acme Oyster House — Restaurant in Gulf Shores

I waited almost a week before posting so it wouldn't seem "emotionality charged."

We went here for a couples date for our church. There were 8 of us total. We were seated immediately, had a server/waitress immediately. Awesome. My husband specifically said, "Tea, no lemon please. I can't have lemon." The waitress acknowledged him. She brought back drinks. We noticed a couple of the appetizers had lemon so we gently reminded her about the no lemon clause, and I said, "He is allergic. Please be mindful." She said, "Oh well don't drink that tea because I dropped a lemon in it, but I took it out!" Not cool. She asked us to hold on ordering to check and see what all had lemon. She returned and basically told us really had no options for food because everything had lemon juice, lemon zest, and literally the batter has lemon powder in it. We were disappointed that she relayed this instead of a chef coming out to try and help us find a meal option. We were pretty much rebuffed on everything except grilled mahi, grilled sausage, and grilled oysters. It looked like they threw my husbands food on the plate from across the kitchen. It was sad, and he felt so embarrassed. We stayed for the fellowship with our church family. Otherwise, I would've taken my husband home.

I truly did not enjoy the EXPERIENCE at Acme, even though my fried shrimp and crab claws were cool. The hostesses took awesome photos for us, but we were very disappointed and did not feel as if we were valuable patrons that evening. My husband and I are BOTH disabled veterans (me with agoraphobia and him with PTSD) and we rarely venture out to new places. The embarrassment on my husband's face is one reason we don't try a lot of new (to us) places. Hopefully, the staff and chef see this as an opportunity to grow so that people with food allergies don't feel ostracized, embarrassed, or as if they are imposing upon a restaurant.

Update (22OCT) : I emailed the person that responded and there was ZERO follow up. No...

The restaurant wasn’t overly busy. Several open tables, and only 2 occupied tables outside. We requested outdoor seating for our party of 9. We were told we couldn’t have the long table at the end of the porch (seated 10 I believe) due to having to have 2 servers, but we could have 2 of the 4 tops with a chair on the end of one. What kind of sense does that make? So we go out back to wait our 30 minutes. We were sitting outside at one of the MANY unoccupied tables while our children played in the sand. We were then told (rather rudely by a member of management) to move from the table we were watching our children from because it was someone’s section and we were occupying an open table. We were absolutely prepared to move if the table was needed. We understand how that works. However, like I said, there were at least 6-8 open tables on the porch when we were waiting. Within 2-3 minutes of asking us to move, we were seated just two tables down from where we were originally waiting and a table on the other side of the door. We sat down decided to let all that slide. Our server, yes just one, promptly introduced herself and took our drink order and food order a short time later. Service was satisfactory, but nothing to “wow” us. Food came out and to say we were underwhelmed would be an understatement. I personally had the red beans and rice, which had such little flavor that I was upset to waste the calorie intake on that. I can say with confidence that we won’t return. The chargrilled oysters were good and the Long Island tea was well made. Being owners of a steakhouse, we expect the restaurants we visit to have the level of customer service and good food quality we expect from our business and employees. Maybe we should lower our standards…..or maybe this restaurant should...

We’re locals who live nearby and have been frequenting Acme Oyster House in Gulf Shores for years, but lately things have gone downhill and fast.

Tonight was the final straw. We placed a to-go order and were extremely disappointed. I ordered the Peacemaker Po-Boy (shrimp and oyster) for $25, and we also got the Roast Beef Po-Boy for $17. What we received was just sad. The Peacemaker had only 6 shrimp and 5 oyster, and was about 8 inches long with two small tomato slices. The roast beef po-boy looked just as depressing.

Portion sizes have noticeably shrunk over our last few visits, while prices just keep climbing and on top of that, they tack on a $0.50 to-go fee per item. Just because it's to-go doesn't mean the food should be sub-par or smaller.

To their credit, I spoke to the manager and they did bring out more shrimp and oysters after I voiced my concern. But the fact that I even had to say something shows the lack of consistency and quality control, especially for a place with roots in New Orleans that should know how a proper po-boy is done.

This used to be one of our favorite neighborhood spots. Now, it just feels like we're getting less and less for more money. Please get it together, we want to keep supporting Acme, but experiences like this...