Cook's Lobster & Ale House — Restaurant in Harpswell

Is this a Maine thing? We always enjoy playing tourist before the crowds set in.

Cook's Lobster House has been a local tourist destination all my 50 years. Eating there (rarely) as a youngster was confusing: you feel joy at the pretty destination and you feel guilt for someone paying more than boat price for your food! There's no guilt now - I'm just looking for ways to make pleasant memories with my mother with the time available.

At this visit my mother, 81, was disappointed to not have bread served while we waited for our lunch. We ate here a month prior, just before Mother's Day, and when bread wasn't served mother asked about it, and bread and butter were promptly dropped in front of her. He did a kindness by not telling her it wasn't on the menu. In comparison, at this visit when bread was asked about but not received it left a disappointing feeling.

Our meals were great. I had the seafood medoly again and it was as tasty as the last time. The freshness of the scallops shown through in every bite. Mother's baked stuffed lobster was as close to her own recipe as she's found. The server was a kind, effervescent young lady who appeared genuinely happy (so rare these days!) but the [refusal to serve] bread set a tone. Unfortunately it doesn't take much when your entire day revolves around the lunch experience. Clearly, there was a difference in the levels of experience between the two servers. One didn't appreciate the importance of bread to the older woman, so it wasn't important. The other one saw that bread was important to the older women so therefore bread was important.

It seems like it would be helpful if restaurant kitchens kept a notebook of helpful hints like that from their servers. Even the newest ones will have important things to offer. You're not competing against each other, so why not help each other? Final words, "Mind the bread." (Mind the details.) Don't be like most tourist destinations that leave one feeling like they didn't try very hard and didn't care very much because they got your money and they're never going to see you - the...

We have been eating at Cook’s for 24+years and never had a complaint. We recently visited the area and made a point to eat there as this has been a regular place every time we are in the area. Unfortunately for some reason we didn’t have a good experience this time. Our waitress didn’t hardly have the time to spend with us going over menu options (we’re not looking for anyone to stand there and just tell us about their day or life’s story) but jeez, take the time to talk about the menu and any specials that might be offered.we did place our order which included appetizers which were supposed to come out BEFORE our dinners but DIDN’T!!!! Everything came out at once which our table wasn’t big enough to hold all of the dishes without being all bunched together and practically on top of each other. I ordered an “appetizer” (lobster sauté) SHAME ON ME for not asking our waitress how much it was $$ !!! When everything came out we were busy eating along with trying to make some room on our table to comfortably eat the rest of our meals that I didn’t STOP and discuss the appetizer with our waitress BECAUSE IT WAS VERY BAD!!!! Very tough lobster meat with a pretty discusting “burned” taste to it. I just ate it and moved on with my meal. Ready for this??!!! I wouldn’t have thought so much about this UNTIL we got our check,,,,,as I’ve mentioned earlier we have eaten here many times before and expect to pay inflated prices in this area,,,,however paying $64.00 for an appetizer that was not very tasty, TOUGH!!!and only about the size of approx. 2oz. Of lobster meat in our opinion is absolutely RIDICULOUS!!! Yes we should have asked the price of it as it was marked on the menu as MP (market price) however our waitress should have also noted the price to us as well. So be it!!!! Lesson learned!!!! We will remember this for the next time. We may OR MAY NOT go back to Cook’s lobster house , but we wanted to bring this to everyone’s attention. If you go to cook’s we hope you have a better experience...

The views are truly superlative but the service left something to be desired and the food was nothing special - not bad, just not unique, interesting, or memorable, and I can remember a grand marnier souffle from 1986. I wasn't expecting that level of culinary delight, but the fact that I had to look at the receipt to remember the unremarkable clam chowder and house salad from last week is indicative of the experience. Just meh.

But what I will always recall most acutely is being accused of breaking the law. My friend from California was with us and brought a bottle of wine to Cooks to go with the lobster she was so eagerly anticipating. She dutifully asked about the corkage fee (no reference to be found on the website prior to arrival and no one answered the phone). She was promptly informed by a horrified pearl-clutching server that not only had he never heard of such a thing in his 10 years of working in food service, he was quite certain it was breaking the law. Well, not in the rest of the country, love, but it was hard for our appetites to recover from the intended humiliation.

Over the next 90 minutes we continued to received sub par service, and one completely wrong dinner (which we could not correct because the person who ordered it had stepped outside with one of our kids because it was taking so long and the kid was bored, and the food was brought to the table not by the said server but from someone else), forgotten drinks orders, and a general sense of detente between our party and the staff.

Let's just say that I have had a more pleasant dining experience eating in my car at the Kennebunk Service Plaza.

Nor was this the idyllic end to my friend's first trip to Maine. I wish she had left with a better impression of this wonderful this state and it's fabulous food culture.

But the...