Robert's Maine Grill — Restaurant in Kittery

Skimping on quality and quantity is never a good practice in an upscale dining establishment such as Robert's Maine Grill. Is it a sourcing problem? Or a problem in the kitchen, or management?

We have been regulars at Robert's for many years, enjoying the place and food, especially lobster. But lately we have noticed an unfortunate change in the kitchen or business that may add additional profit for the restaurant but at the customer's expense:

The new menu is now limited. No more cups of soup. If you want a clam chowder, it will have to be a bowl of it. Other items have been eliminated and you get less for your money now. Crab cakes are small portion size. Lobster rolls now are served with only french fries. Nothing more. The lobster rolls appear as smaller portion now. And the number of fries that were served was skimpy--only about a dozen individual fries. This was disappointing. Do NOT order the Lobster Cobb Salad, sub-standard and inedible. Even some far-flung diner would never serve this slop masquerading as an upscale dish. The lobster meat served was old: it was dry and shriveled. The worst part?: the bacon. The bacon was a chilled abomination mess of congealed and soft chopped fat. And yes, unbelievably, that's how Robert's serves it. My understanding is that Robert's has a huge batch of bacon fried and chopped early in the day elsewhere, and that is what they use later in their dishes. Never fresh. How this slop could be served to diners in an upscale restaurant where prices are at a premium? I do not know. I sent this dish back to the kitchen, as especially the bacon was inedible in its cold congealed state. The second dish that was returned to me had re-heated chopped bacon, as if warming the congealed fat mess would make it better. The warm soft bacon mass was still inedible. Bacon should be crispy! And lobster meat (we are in Maine, after all, where lobster is the specialty) should be FRESH!

The change in Robert's menu and kitchen preparation was a sore disappointment. The failure to recognize that food needs to be fresh and that quality needs to be delivered is a failure in Robert's of Maine Grill management. I don't know if these failures are in sourcing of the product (i.e. lobster) or mismanagement on the kitchen or business level. What I do know is that what Robert's of Maine Grill delivered to our table was...

I REALLY wanted to love this place. We had been here a few times years before and I remember liking it well enough until we had a bad wait staff experience (without getting into too much detail let's just say we couldn't get past the long overprocessed blond hair that made it's way into a bite of coleslaw that perfectly matched the waitstaff's hair and she couldn't imagine how it got there) So, needless to say we hadn't been there since but have recently had several people rave about it so we decided to give it another try. The best I can say is that it was "fine" but we were really underwhelmed. The calamari was nicely cooked. The accompanying relish was unremarkable. I love a good clam chowder but this was just ok, not really that full and ok flavor. Far from the best chowders around, that's for sure. My lobster salad was large with nice fresh lettuce. There was a reasonable serving of lobster which was fine. It was LOADED with red onion which while not a huge fan, even if I was I probably would have preferred 1/2 the amount. Weirdly there was no cucumber.....and the egg was clearly not farm to table locally sourced eggs unless there's some new heirloom breed of chickens that lay eggs with the palest possible yolks. I liked the dressings that our waitstaff recommended me trying two different home made dressings; very nice. I was brave enough to get over my PTSD and get a side of slaw. It was ok, a bit too mayonnaisey for my taste. My poor wife unfortunately did not fare so well. She did not care for the chowder at all and thought the calamari was bland and underseasoned. They should throw a few fried peppers on there to brighten it up. She ordered a bacon cheeseburger with American cheese cooked medium. I think she must've gotten someone else's burger because it was a plain hamburger cooked medium well. It was your average hamburger, no real seasoning to speak of and thankfully, while overdone was still juicy. The roll was nice, had almost a sweet flavor; and the fries were good. So, as I said, I was hoping to be wowed but was less than. It wasn't bad it's just nothing special and not worth the drive down to Kittery any...

Traveling from Tennessee all up to Acadia and decided to give Robert meat grill a try for lunch. We had the halibut with carrots and potatoes, lobster, mac & cheese, and a crab and avocado, grilled sandwich with green beans and other onion rings. For appetizers we had two crabcakes and cheese curds.

Being our first time in Main, we also tried the blueberry soda. Brandie, our waitress was very kind and said we should also try it with a splash of pink lemonade in it which we liked even better, and we thought it was fun to check out anything blueberry during our short time here in Maine! The blueberry soda is a little bit bitter, and the lemonade helped it quite a bit.

My daughter loved the mac & cheese-it is a top which makes it a little dryer and that's a personal preference type thing. My husband loved the crab and avocado sandwich, which was grilled to perfection and had two slices of Havarti cheese in addition to the crab and avocado. Super tasty and we would recommend this. It had a generous amount of an avocado and could be too much if you don't love avocado. The brown butter halibut was very good and the potatoes were excellent. I personally find the carrots were very undercoat and crunchy. It's also multicolored carrots and I thought the dark purple carrots were very bitter.

Hands-down, all three of us agree our absolute favorites for the onion rings and cheese curds. The cheese curds seem to be hand breaded and made in house and they were excellent. They came with a marinara sauce as well. The onion rings might be the best I've ever had and that is one of my favorite foods. The onions were sweet And the beer batter was outstanding.

The atmosphere was great and we could actually hear each other talk. The exterior of the building is really cool with a lighthouse as part of the façade. We made a reservation and we're seated immediately and had great service from Brandi. We were there at 2:30 in the afternoon on a Monday and they were busy but not...