Dons Lunch

When I was a kid, my family had a seasonal fisheries business. Our primary product was the annual market for Anguilla Rostrata otherwise known as baby American eels or glass elvers. In the stage of their lives that we caught the eels they were between 2 and 3 inches long and transparent.

In late May and early April they have made it back to the brackish waters of Maine all the way from the Sargasso Sea on their way up river to spawn. We'd catch them, buy them from other fishers on the rivers, box them up in kilos and ship them out to the Asian markets where they would be put in farms and grown about 6 ft. long for the resaurant market. It was a good gold rush type market in the late 70s and early 80s before the State of Maine started taxing anything that moved and requiring a commercial license to catch them.

My point in telling you all of this is that you best dip for elvers on the mouth of the river that empties into the Atlantic on the rising tide in the dark of night. It is decidedly 3rd shift work.

When it was fishing season in the spring, my dad and I would routinely stop at Don's Lunch in Westbrook at 3AM on the way home. After a hard working, cold, wet night, nothing on the face of the planet is more welcome to a growing boy than a Big One (a double cheese burger that would put any chain burger to utter shame!) with mustard and smothered with cooked onions, two cheese dogs with raw onion and mustard and a hot coffee (all for small pocket change!)

When I was a kid, Don's "Lunch" stayed open something like 6pm to 6am mostly to serve the 3rd shift folks making tires at Yudy's Tire across the street from their old location.

I was pleasantly surprised a few months ago on my way into Portland for an evening with my wife, to notice that Don's is still on Main St in Westbrook (though at the other end of the strip) and that their food is EXACTLY as delicious as it always was.

If you ever get to the Portland area (Westbrook is the Western Suburb of Portland) I highly recommend that you drop in. Not cardiac friendly food, but in moderation, it is a small slice of heaven!