4.5 out of 5

It's not very often that I give a restaurant 4.5 out of 5 stars, but it happened Friday.  My mom arrived just as I was finishing class on Friday and we headed to Grand Rapids to meet my cousin for lunch.  The drive was horrible.  We hadn't had much "weather" all winter and then sure enough as mom is driving into Holland we get an icky icky storm.  Go figure. My cousin had recommended that we stop by a little place called "Marie Catrib's", so I'd googled the the address and that's where we headed.  It was a little crowded in the store, so we had to wait a moment and then we were seated at a cozy table (we could have waited longer and sat less cozily, but we're all family and have been even cozier before).  The waiter brought the menu and I began to look over it.  I saw some information about gluten free bread and the next time the waiter came back we inquired further into it. The initial screening on all four types of gluten free bread came back positive. I had choices. I probably should have inquired further, but I didn't want to jeopardize anything, so I took a bit of a leap of faith.  I actually cried as I looked over the menu and realized I had choices.  Lots of choices.  I ordered a roast beef sandwich without the cheese and without some sort of sauce that had way too many vowels in it because the sauce was not Joy-friendly.  The sandwich came and I just looked at it. Here was an honest to goodness sandwich, made in a restaurant, that was safe for me to eat.  I didn't look at it long before I dug in.  It was delicious. Phenomenal.  I even got to get up and look at the dessert  case, but passed on desserts because they didn't have an ingredient list handy and Marie was at the doctor and couldn't be reached.
The service was excellent, the food was delicious.  The only thing that would have moved this restaurant from a 4.5 to a 5 would have been to have ingredient lists handy so I could have thoroughly checked things. I really wasn't supposed to have that many carbs at that point in time (I'm still paying for that!), but if I get a chance to go there again, carb restrictions or not, I'm going!