Grand Marais Restaurants

North Shore Lodge
(906) 494-2361
The restaurant at the motel at Coast Guard Point serves up home-style food in a comfortable setting, nothing fancy. Whitefish, when available, is a specialty. Sandwiches are $5-$7. Homemade pies use fresh fruit when in season. There's a deck outside, with a partial harbor view, for cocktails.

Sportsman's Main Stop
(906) 484-2800
Local people are thrilled to have a year-round restaurant open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and where they can get a beer with their meal. Amy and Dennis Hassenzahl prepare from scratch baked goods, hash, sausage gravy, and such. Typical breakfasts are $7-$8, dinners $13-$14. Everything from hot dogs to steaks is on the menu. Fresh whitefish is often served. Baked chicken and baked ribs get compliments. A family atmosphere is the rule ‘til after 9 or 10, when the Sportsman's becomes more of a bar. Logging tools, a mounted moose head and fish create an Up North mood in this old saloon.

West Bay Diner
(906) 494-2607
This 52-seat diner, deli, and bakery is one of those memorably idiosyncratic places that can continue to thrive in some resort areas. The front portion is a 1949 Paramount Diner (made by the preeminent manufacturer of classic diners). It has a front deck so customers can sit and take in a view of the bay. Come in the back door, and before you get to the deli counter and dining area with fireplace, there's a mini-book shop of nature, select fiction, and regional books, chosen by co-owner and baker Ellen Airgood, now a novelist of note with South of Superior.
     People rave about Rick Guth's huge club or grilled sandwiches and subs ($7-$10) on Ellen's fresh bread, and about the whitefish sandwiches ($10 or so). Burgers are usually a choice of two from beef, buffalo, elk, venison, or antelope. Ellen bakes very good muffins and cinnamon rolls, and monster cookies loaded with raisins, nuts, chocolate chunks, and more. The diner's soups have a huge following, as do the big breakfasts in slower times. In busy seasons, there's a fresh salad bar, available separately or with a special, often whitefish ($11-$12, depending). There are cappuccino and espresso drinks and ice cream sundaes and cones, too—and pizza. It all adds up to a very busy place.
     Deli customers who want the good bread, meats, and cheeses and the salads (tuna, potato, pasta, slaw, etc.) have been trained to call ahead for next-day pickup.
     The menu tells about how owners Rick and Ellen checked out the diner, in original condition but dilapidated. It was then owned by diner artist Jerry Berta, stored near his Rosie's Diner in Rockford north of Grand Rapids, Michigan. One November Rick and Ellen trucked the diner across the Mackinac Bridge to Grand Marais and started to work. Miraculously, they were ready to open by the next summer. Historical note: President Kennedy's staff ordered two cheeseburgers for JFK from here, when it was the Matamoros Diner in Pennsylvania.

Lake Superior Brewing Co./ Dunes Saloon
(906) 494-2337
At this laid-back microbrewery-restaurant, the front tavern section and its bar go back to the logging boom circa 1900. The dining room is in back. In summer, fresh whitefish, locally caught, is the big seller, as a very large sandwich with fries, or as a dinner ($14 or so) with potato and salad bar. Sandwiches and burgers ($6 to $7.50), meal-size salads, and homemade pizza are available year-round. Scotch egg is a tasty appetizer that goes well with stout. It's a hardboiled egg wrapped in sausage, then dipped in egg, rolled in bread crumbs, and baked. Winter means no whitefish, but steaks and homemade soups.
     Excellent cream soda and root beer are made here, in addition to beer. Owner Chris Sarver started making beer here before the current craft beer boom. He rebelled at having to pay way too for a six-pack of his favorite English beer, if he could get it at all. So he decided to duplicate it himself. Chris and his father made the brewing system here from scratch, adapting used equipment. (After all, they were already pros who designed automation systems for automotive assembly lines.) The brewery's stainless-steel tanks are on view to diners.
     A few staple brews are augmented by a changing variety of other brews. The popular favorites: Sandstone Pale Ale ("a nice, hoppy ale for hops geeks, not quite an Indian Pale Ale in bitterness," says manager David Beckwith) and Cabin Fever ESB (Extra Special Bitter, a malty, amber beer with a hoppy finish). Short tours available upon request.

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