One spoonful of sticky toffee pudding at a café in northwestern England, and we were euphoric. Surely, this was the last word in extravagance. The pudding before us was warm and spicy, an impossibly moist gingerbread cake larded with chopped dates and sopped with buttery caramel syrup. But when we oohed and aahed, the waitress deflated our culinary egos by admitting that the kitchen secured its pudding from McClure, a big-box restaurant provisions vendor across the road. A clerk at McClure frankly told us, “Our sticky toffee is fine, but if you want the best, you must go to Cartmel. There is none richer.”

We set off, heading toward that 12th-century hamlet to hunt for exemplary renditions of the signature dessert of Cumbria County. The landscape there, rolling pastures where fat sheep graze, begs to be traversed on horseback behind a pack of yodeling hounds, but our transportation—a borrowed indigo and silver twin-turbocharged Rolls-Royce V12 Ghost—was quite alright, too.

As we glided into Cartmel, we espied in the window of the Cartmel Village Shop a sign that read The Home of Sticky Toffee. One in a long line of cakelike “puddings” that dates to the arrival of French cooks after the Norman Conquest, the dessert was not actually invented here. Its parentage is claimed by two Scottish hotels, the Udny Arms and the Saplinbrae House, while a competing theory traces its roots to southern England.

The dessert took particular hold, however, in the northwest. Indeed, Cartmel is to sticky toffee pudding devotees what Memphis is to Elvis fans. Cartmel Village Shop serves neat little rounds that are rich, dense, and vividly spiced. As in most locations, the date-stippled batter is steamed in a mold until set and then turned out onto a plate and smothered in caramel sauce.

We puzzled over Cartmel Village Shop’s seeming variations: sticky banana, chocolate, and ginger puddings. Yet as we motored through the Lake District, we noticed that “sticky” is a favorite adjective for any caramel-soaked dessert. A couple of places were out of sticky toffee pudding, so we comforted ourselves with sticky cake (which we’d have a hard time differentiating from the pudding), sticky tarts, sticky ice cream, and sticky toffee scones.

Taking the M6 highway north, we approached the town of Carlisle. Farmland here is occupied by dairy cattle, which helps to explain the goodness of the local toppings: whipped cream, custard, and, especially, ice cream. Against the warm pudding, a frozen scoop turns to cool rivulets that swirl into the amber sauce. We had the best ice cream of the trip at Cumbrian Cottage Farm Shop and Tea Room, just east of Carlisle in Hayton. Banana-flavored, it was a righteous match for a pudding that was intensely spicy, floating in a toffee sauce so dark it was nearly black.

Back south, in Staveley, we found the fireplace-cozy pub Eagle & Child Inn. It was here, after an echt Cumbrian dinner of steak and kidney suet-crust pie and sausage with creamy mashed potatoes, that we discovered the alpha and omega of our quest: a golden-sauced fluffy cake that yielded to the lightest pressure of a spoon.

“Texture is so important,” chef Lorna James told us. “My mother’s recipe calls for cream, and by that she meant top cream.” Top cream, also known as double cream, is the especially luscious, high-butterfat stuff that floats to the top of the cream pot.

How good is James’ sticky toffee pudding? As we ensconced ourselves in the car after supper at Eagle & Child Inn, an old gent strolled over. He looked from the Flying Lady hood ornament to the pub’s glowing window and informed us that we had just eaten “the Rolls-Royce of stickies.”

See the recipe for English Sticky Toffee Pudding »

Cumbrian Cottage Farm Shop and Tea Room
Brampton Road, Hayton, Cumbria
44/1228/670-518

Eagle & Child Inn
Kendal Road, Staveley, Cumbria
44/1539/821-320

Cartmel Village Shop
Parkgate House, The Square, Cartmel, Cumbria
44/1539/536-280

The post England’s Sticky Toffee Pudding Trail appeared first on Saveur.

Skirting the Florida Panhandle, Route 98 connects the fishing villages of Franklin County to the Apalachee Bay, where peninsular Florida joins the mainland. A 220-mile stretch of it is known as the Big Bend Scenic Byway, which makes sense, since the sweeping arc of asphalt edges one of the nation’s most beautiful coastlines, with views of the Gulf of Mexico to the south and Spanish moss-draped forests inland.

This blessedly underdeveloped section of Florida is nicknamed the Forgotten Coast. But, for its culinary treasures, we find it unforgettable. Meaty, deep-cupped oysters, harvested from beds where the Apalachicola River flows into the Gulf, sparkle with creamy, briny freshness. The wild and cultivated mollusks lead a menu of other marine delights and Dixie fare; we’ve feasted here on shrimp, crab, grouper, mullet, and catfish, as well as fried chicken, biscuits, even casseroles.

We began our most recent journey on the waterfront deck at Apalachicola’s Boss Oyster, sucking down some of the historic fishing hamlet’s bountiful catch. Though we could have ordered the raw oysters crowned with flying fish roe or draped in Thai chile, wasabi, and ginger, they were so spectacularly plump and bright that we devoured them without embellishment. We also loved them fried, the oysters’ lusciousness enveloped in a spicy coat of golden breading. Offering a big, scrumptious taste of the South were the Grand Grits—cheese grits topped with a cream sauce, smoky tasso ham, and fresh, juicy shrimp.

Speaking of shrimp, the best ones in town are at Apalachicola Seafood Grill, a lunchroom with a smattering of tables covered in oilcloth and a short counter where locals gather. Pulled from the waters of the Gulf, the shrimp are sweet and remarkably tender. They arrived at our table spangled with oregano and parsley, flavored with a tingle of pepper and a wisp of grill smoke.

Leaving Apalachicola the next day, we drove eastward on a segment of Route 98 that’s as close to the water as a road can be. Turning off the AC and rolling down the windows, we breathed in the salt air until we pulled into the sleepy village of Carrabelle, 30 minutes away. Yay, We Have Oysters! read a chalkboard sign at The Fisherman’s Wife, a small restaurant located in a clapboard house, painted white with baby blue shutters. Owner Pam Lycett really is a fisherman’s wife; her husband was out on his shrimp boat when we stopped in. Cooled by slow-spinning overhead fans, we dug into an oyster po’boy. Splayed open and overflowing with bivalves, it was far too massive to pick up and eat, so we plucked at it, oyster by oyster, forking up the warm, sweet meat and zesty crust and blending it with bitefuls of fixings—lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayo—and pinches of airy bread. Fried green tomatoes in a veil of translucent breading and crispy hush puppies the size of eggs rounded out our meal in grand Southern fashion.

Then it was time for dessert. Miss Pam’s Key lime pie, with its thin graham cracker crust, delivered a triumvirate of creaminess, sweetness, and citrus twang. Watching as we took photographs of it, a pair of diners wearing hunting camouflage approached. “If you want to see something pretty,” they suggested, “go to Posey’s for crabs.” How could we refuse? As soon as the check was paid, we hopped in the car and headed farther east, following the road as it turned north over Ochlockonee Bay and leapt into the town of Panacea, named for the supposed healing qualities of its mineral springs.

With its wood-paneled walls, nautical doodads, and long foldout tables, Posey’s Steam Room and Oyster Bar epitomizes the vacationer’s dream of the Florida seafood shack. Bring your own fish and they’ll cook it for you, at $8.95 per person. And their enormous blue crabs doused in Old Bay seasoning really are gorgeous. We feasted on them, our lips tingling, then dug into fried mullet in a toasty, snappy cornmeal crust, and a standout version of the Mobile Bay specialty known as West Indies salad: lump crabmeat marinated in vinegar and loads of tangy onion, with saltines on the side.

As the afternoon sun started to fade, we left Gulf waters behind, heading north into a Florida that is rainforest lush. Our destination: the Wakulla Springs Lodge, a two-story Moorish-Deco edifice built in the 1930s and little changed since. The lobby walls were adorned with backlit midcentury photos of bathing beauties frolicking and glass-bottom boats gliding over the adjacent spring basin. Next to the original walnut-walled elevator (close the iron gate yourself, please) was a poster from the 1954 movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, which was filmed hereabouts.

The lodge’s restaurant menu includes deviled crab, ham-laced navy bean soup, and its legendary Oysters DuPont—bivalves broiled under a blanket of sweet crabmeat, briny capers, and feta cheese. But as good as our dinner was that night, our favorite meal here was breakfast. Bright and early, birds outside the dining room’s great arched windows, busy on their morning errands, provided a colorful backdrop to our table, which was crowded with sizzled ham steak, cheese grits, biscuits and sausage gravy, and, best of all, fried chicken. Cooked to order, the chicken arrived after a 25-minute wait, still too hot to handle. But we gobbled it down as soon as we could, ripping into its crunchy crust and tearing off pieces of steaming meat. It was fried chicken at its finest.

Later that day, we drove to the nearby town of Crawfordville to visit Spring Creek Restaurant. At this tree-shaded fish-camp lodge, we dug into the legendary fried soft-shelled crabs and a side of cheese grits, stuffed tomatoes, and crispy hush puppies.

The final stop on our Panhandle journey was Mineral Springs by the Bay, not a restaurant but a smokehouse and bait shop that we entered through a haze of smoldering hardwood. Proprietors Tim and Kim Williams insisted we take some of their Leftover Spread, which was chock full of capers and big hunks of tuna, cobia, and salmon. Lacking crackers or suitable crudités, we consumed a pint with a plastic spoon as we peeled off Highway 98 and headed north toward Tallahassee.

See the recipe for Oysters DuPont »
See more scenes from the Forgotten Coast »

Boss Oyster
125 Water Street, Apalachicola
850/653-9364

The Fisherman’s Wife
201 8th Street, Carrabelle
850/697-4533

Mineral Springs by the Bay
1612 Coastal Highway, Panacea
850/984-2248

Posey’s Steam Room and Oyster Bar
1506 Coastal Highway, Panacea
850/984-5243

Spring Creek Restaurant
33 Ben Willis Road, Crawfordville
850/926-3751

Wakulla Springs Lodge
550 Wakulla Park Drive, Wakulla Springs
850/421-2000

The post Forgotten Coast appeared first on Saveur.

We happened to cruise into the town of Fulks Run, in northwestern Virginia, on what devotees know as Fried Ham Friday. What luck! One day each week, the big table at the back of Fulks Run Grocery, a small provisions store, is cleared so that people can sit down and eat sandwiches at what normally serves as the ham shipping department for Turner Ham House. The legendary hams, made by Ron Turner using his great-grandfather’s formula, are dry-cured with sugar, salt, and saltpeter. They come enveloped in a fragrant cloud of titillating porcine perfume, and they deliver the exquisite salty-sweet punch for which Virginia hams are famous. On Fridays, nickel-thick slices are first soaked in water to mellow their intensity; then they are lightly breaded and fried crisp in an electric skillet. There are no condiments, no adornment whatsoever, and no side dishes—just a sheaf of exquisite brick-red meat in a spongy bun. This sandwich costs $3.50, an astounding bargain.

Best of the Blue Ridge – Skyline Drive

Fulks Run is west of the Thornton Gap entrance of Virginia’s Skyline Drive, the 105-mile, two-lane road that threads through the Shenandoah National Park. Cruising along it, and neighboring roads, we found ample opportunities to partake of the area’s fabulous foods. This is Blue Ridge Mountains food, a comforting mix of 18th-century English and African-American traditions brought to bear upon such local ingredients as blue-ribbon hogs and backwoods moonshine. Fried chicken, biscuits, and peanut soup are passions here, too, as is baking with mountain-grown apples.

Ten minutes from the town of Front Royal at the highway’s northern terminus, we pulled into The Apple House, a deli that takes full advantage of the local crop in velvety, crunchy-skinned apple-butter donuts plastered with cinnamon sugar. Apple fritters, sugar-glazed and chockful of fruit, are equally marvelous. Both, we discovered, are good car snacks while traveling along the mountains’ crest. But we needed to sit down to eat the housemade apple dumpling. It’s a muddled mess of soft-baked Golden Delicious apples, buttery pie crust, and caramel glaze that demands a fork, and it’s delicious enough to warrant unwavering concentration, especially in autumn, when Virginia apples are at their peak.

The second day of our trip, we got a big taste of the region’s fare and its culture at the Hi Neighbor Restaurant in Strasburg, just 20 minutes west of Front Royal. We took a seat in an upholstered ’50s-style booth with a view of buck trophies on the wood-paneled walls and the communal table where locals convene for morning coffee klatches. This neighborhood eatery features breakfast meats from Crabill’s in nearby Toms Brook. Here is scrapple that is a perfect balance of ground pork, cornmeal, and flour, sliced from a loaf and fried to a crisp. Sausage patties are rough-hewn and succulent. You can even order that farm-country favorite, puddin’ meat, which our waitress described as “like scrapple, but without the cornmeal.” The texture of soft oatmeal, puddin’ meat is best enjoyed on pancakes or waffles, topped with a scattering of raw onion. It is enough of a local delicacy to warrant the sign above a shelf of boxed cereals that boasts, WE HAVE PUDDIN’ MEAT.

Best of the Blue Ridge – Hi Neighbor

“Is the chicken skillet-fried?” we asked a member of the Hi Neighbor staff taking a coffee break at the Formica counter. “It sure is,” she replied. “And I know, because I’m the one who cleans the skillets!” We ordered it right away. It was a straightforward flour-battered bird with no folderol or fancy seasoning. Its perfectly brittle crust was modestly salted, its dark meat immodestly luscious. The country ham here was good, too: Big slabs of it were chewy and well-aged, their lip-smacking saltiness balanced by a spill of sweet, stewed apples on top.

We headed south afterward, driving an hour or so until we hit Triple Oak Bakery, in Sperryville. Although this shop is just barely a restaurant, we discovered no nicer opportunity to savor the easy-going rural foodways of the Blue Ridge. As at the Fulks Run Grocery, there is no dining room (although there are plans to build one), but the one-room store has a lawn out back where baker Brooke Parkhurst was happy to set up folding chairs so we could enjoy mocha cake and apple pie by the bank of the Thornton River. There, we heard the strident call of a crow. But it was not a crow; it was Parkhurst calling like one. Within seconds, a small murder of black birds arrived to perch on nearby branches and toddle across the lawn. Parkhurst and the crows were deep in conversation, cawing back and forth, and when she noticed our puzzled expressions, she said, “I speak fish crow, not regular crow,” as if that explained things. She did tell us that the flock is fond of her because she feeds them pieces of cream puff.

Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie

Our favorite of all pastry sources turned out to be Red Truck Bakery, which we found in Warrenton, east of Sperryville, in a renovated 1921 Esso gas station. Red Truck’s Brian Noyes bakes intriguing specialties: double-chocolate cake laced with Culpeper County moonshine; sweet-potato bourbon-pecan pie; and, in the fall, Shenandoah apple cake, a maple syrup-glazed Bundt cake made with fresh apples, apple cider, and apple sauce. It’s a sweet prelude to a spin through Horse Country, the nation’s premier source of fox-hunting apparel, located just around the corner.

The big surprise of our trip, however, came twenty minutes east of North Garden, at Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie. This hip, happy place, decorated like an old garage, makes pizza with a Shenandoah Valley twist. Atop the chewy-crusted pie is a crown of lemon-laced fresh arugula along with shavings of parmesan and the corker: curls of country ham from Turner Ham House back up in Fulks Run. It is a bewitching combo, the ham a fine Virginia analog of prosciutto di Parma.

Even more than the kitchen’s Virginia-accented pizza, what really endeared us to Dr. Ho’s is that it serves hot milk cake. A farmhouse classic, this ivory-hued cake is such a straightforward dessert that it rarely appears on restaurant menus and is often referred to, even in vintage cookbooks, as “old fashioned.” Made right, as it is here, with a fluffy white crumb and an uncomplicated buttercream frosting, it is moist and egg-rich—a mother’s-hug Dixie treat.

Without a wisp of appetite remaining, we left Dr. Ho’s heading for the southern end of Skyline Drive, which also happens to be the northern start to the Blue Ridge Parkway, another beautiful mountain road that led us to a treasure-trove of barbecue parlors. But that is for another story.

See the recipe for Hot Milk Cake »
See more scenes from Skyline Drive »

Fulks Run Grocery
11441 Brocks Gap Road, Fulks Run
540/896-7487

The Apple House
4675 John Marshall Highway, Linden
540/636-6329

Hi Neighbor Restaurant
192 West King Street, Strasburg
540/465-9187

Triple Oak Bakery
11692A Lee Highway, Sperryville
540/987-9122

Red Truck Bakery
22 Waterloo Street, Warrenton
540/347-2224

Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie
4916 Plank Road, North Garden
434/245-0000

The post Best of the Blue Ridge appeared first on Saveur.

“Make me hurt,” murmurs a slender young woman in business pinstripes and high heels before placing her order at the window inside Bolton’s Spicy Chicken & Fish, a tumbledown eatery on Nashville’s east side. Twenty minutes later, we watch as she carries a wax paper package to a table. She peels back the wrapper, revealing a massive hunk of fried chicken enveloped in a glistening veil of pepper-red crust beside a slew of dill pickle chips. There is a slice of white bread on top of the chicken, as well as below, to soak up the spicy grease. It looks like a sandwich, but the bones are still in there, and its heft makes picking it up seem absurd. While plastic knives and forks are available, like everyone else here, she doesn’t use them. This is chicken to tear apart with your fingers, to pick at, to gnaw every bit of meat off of every single bone. This is Nashville hot chicken.

With each bite, beads of perspiration build on the woman’s brow. She undoes the top buttons of her blouse, removes her earrings from her earlobes and drops them on the table; she begins to sniffle and breathe heavily, to fan herself and whisper, “Mercy!” several times, as if in a euphoric trance. Finally, when she wobbles to her feet to throw away the bones, she sighs, “I’ll be okay,” to no one in particular and steps out into the sunny Music City streets.

Bolton’s is one of a handful of Nashville restaurants specializing in hot chicken, as well as hot fish. While the fish—usually fried whiting splashed with hot sauce and served as a sandwich—has comparables in other cities with thriving soul food scenes, hot chicken is in a class by itself.

Each hot chicken joint has its own carefully guarded recipe, but the basic idea is to marinate chicken in a brine of buttermilk infused with cayenne, paprika, garlic powder, and other spices. Then it is dredged in more spice and double-fried. Finally, when the chicken is fresh from the hot oil, it is slathered in a fiery buttery paste that melds with the crust, creating a crunchy, pepper-charged coat, resulting in an infernal delight. Yet, stunning as hot chicken is, heat alone is not what hooks devotees. Aqui Simpson, who opened a hot chicken restaurant in 2007 called 400 Degrees, is convinced it’s as much about flavor as ferocity. Good hot chicken should be spicy, yes, but that heat should be tempered by sweetness, juiciness, and an umami richness.

It is said that hot chicken was created as a form of revenge in the 1930s to purposely hurt the first person ever to eat it. Thornton Prince, the proprietor of a fried chicken restaurant, had a lady friend so irritated by his carousing that early one morning, upon his return from who-knows-where, she served him a plate of chicken with enough pepper punch to drop his sorry ass. But the booby-trapped bird backfired: Mr. Prince liked it. He liked it so much that he put it on his menu. Today, Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, now operated by Thornton’s great-niece André Prince Jeffries, is the Olympus of Nashville’s hot chicken universe. Proprietors of all the other hot chicken places in town learned to love it here first. It was Prince’s that first tucked the ferocious bird between slices of bread, and Prince’s that scattered pickle chips around it. The seemingly unassuming strip mall joint is also responsible for establishing the near-ubiquitous heat scale of mild, medium, hot, and extra-hot. Prince’s medium is as incendiary as a four-alarm Texas chili. And the hot version tests our pain-pleasure tolerance so emphatically that we have yet to find the will to try extra-hot.

Its intensity explains why hot chicken is one preparation in which an otherwise bland breast is like a blank canvas to paint with spice. That’s not to say that versions made with dark meat aren’t a thing of extraordinary pleasure. At Hot Stuff Spicy Chicken & Fish, a spiffy-clean storefront southeast of the city, we poke the tines of a fork through the brittle red crust on a thigh and watch as juices come pouring out. This piece is crazy moist, sopping the bland supermarket bread with a slurry of spices and chicken fat, transforming it into a starchy, savory pudding that almost no one leaves behind.

Hot Stuff’s chicken comes in degrees of heat that go from Lil Spice and Lemon Pepper to X-, XX-, and XXX-hot. Ordinary hot (no X) clears our sinuses and takes our breath away. While a manager suggests sweet fruit tea as a salve, it has little effect on a ravaged tongue. What does work, we find, is cake. Hot Stuff’s counter is arrayed with slices of layer cake made by local baker Spencer Middlebrooks. And the cooling effect of his tall, silky yellow cake with caramel-tinged mocha frosting is just what our blazing taste buds need.

Though the city’s hot chicken joints are informal, this is by no means fast food. For good hot chicken, you wait. Each order is fried to order because a heat lamp would risk a softened crust on a dish in which frangibility is fundamental. Regulars know to phone in their order 20 minutes before they arrive. On the small tarmac around Pepperfire Hot Chicken, which has no indoor dining, cars crowd willy-nilly as their drivers read newspapers, talk on cellphones, or doze while listening for their names to be called on the loudspeaker.

Isaac Beard opened Pepperfire in the fall of 2010 and is one of the few white men among Nashville’s hot chicken purveyors. Beard, a Nashville native, is convinced that this specialty of the city’s African-American communities can captivate the country just as its profile in his hometown has grown into a source of citywide pride and the inspiration for an annual hot chicken festival every Independence Day. He may be right. Recently, hot chicken joints have started popping up as far away from Nashville as Brooklyn’s Peaches Hot House and Cackalack’s Hot Chicken Shack in Portland, Oregon.

Hot chicken does have a way of inspiring devotion that verges on addiction. A woman we met in line at Prince’s gleefully told us she eats extra-hot five days a week (the restaurant is closed Sunday and Monday). I can’t help it, she said. “I just need it.”

See the recipe for Nashville Hot Chicken »

400 Degrees
319 Peabody Street
615/244-4467

Bolton’s Spicy Chicken & Fish
624 Main Street
615/254-8015

Hot Stuff Spicy Chicken & Fish
1309 Bell Road, Suite 218, Antioch
615/712-6100

Pepperfire Hot Chicken
2821 Gallatin Pike
615/582-4824

Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack
123 Ewing Drive
615/226-9442

The post Hot Country appeared first on Saveur.

U.S. 101—a two-lane road that snakes through California, Oregon, and Washington, nearly all of it along the Pacific—might be the most sublime drive in America, especially the 363-mile segment that runs along the Oregon coast, where we traveled last spring. As we traversed cliffside expanses, we spied pods of gray whales passing by in ocean waters. When the road dipped down to sea level, we stopped to ride horses between towering dunes and rocky shoreline on a broad beach studded by colossal basalt rock formations.

We had always wanted to visit this part of the country. We knew it as the place our dear friend the late James Beard loved so much. Long ago, the famed American culinarian regaled us with reminiscences of summer trips from his family’s Portland home to a beach cabin in the oceanside town of Gearhart. It was there, he told us, that he learned to savor wild berries, hazelnuts, and salmon—silvery coho and the mighty Chinook, the Pacific’s largest salmon species, caught in the ocean or in the region’s rivers during their treacherous upstream migrations to spawn.

But salmon is just part of the state’s seafood bounty. Oregon also offers halibut, albacore tuna, whiting, clams, oysters, shrimp, and, best of all, Dungeness crab. Though named after the town of Dungeness in Washington, this wide-bodied crustacean is found in abundance in Oregon. And, from an economic standpoint, it’s the state’s most important catch. Not even considered food until the late 19th century, Dungeness crabs are now trapped from December through mid-August, their sweet, tender meat served in everything from chowders to savory dips. We were eager to sample it all.

We concentrated our journey in the upper third of the state, driving from the mouth of the Yaquina River north to the great Columbia at Oregon’s northern border; it’s a portion of coastline that lies within an accessible two-hour drive from Portland. In South Beach, where the Yaquina spills into its bay, we gobbled lunch at South Beach Seafood, a fish market attached to a 24-hour convenience store selling an immense inventory of energy drinks and beer. The ultra-casual café on the premises serves impeccable Dungeness crab, cooked straight off the boat in cauldrons by the highway out front. Their shelled meat is sold in pearly lumps piled into a plastic cup, alongside a wedge of lemon and some optional horseradish-heavy hot sauce. Taking a seat at a picnic table, we enjoyed ours the way Beard once told us to—unadorned.

Like other outfits dotting the coast, South Beach Seafood uses hickory and alderwood to smoke salmon, tuna, sturgeon, sable, mussels, and oysters. Wild Chinook salmon is made into “candy” by glazing nuggets of its smoked pink flesh with pepper and brown sugar. Each firm, moist piece packs a provocative woods-meet-sea punch.

The following morning we headed over the Yaquina Bay Bridge to Newport, the self-proclaimed Dungeness Crab Capital of the World, and were immediately taken with the city’s bustling harbor, which was filled with fishing boats unloading crabs, as well as salmon and halibut. It was here that Oregon’s commercial seafood industry began in the mid-19th century, when prolific oyster beds became a source for restaurants in San Francisco. Oregon’s coast is home to plenty of sustainable fishing operations, both small and large, that haul in, cure, can, and even cook their catches. Newport’s main drag, Bay Boulevard, is lined with canneries, fish-packing plants, and a bounty of seafood restaurants and fishmongers. The best meals in town, we were told, could be had at opposite ends of the waterfront, at Local Ocean Seafoods and a place called Ocean Bleu @ Gino’s, both seafood markets with adjacent eateries.

At Local Ocean Seafoods, we found each variety of fresh fish marked with a placard indicating which vessel had caught it and by which fishing technique: hook-and-line, purse seine, trawl, pots, longline. No farmed shrimp or salmon here! We perched at the counter facing a lively open kitchen and took in the aroma of a briny shrimp stock that sat bubbling in a great pot on the stovetop. As we watched the high-spirited staff compose beautiful plates of food, we were continually fed lagniappes: a sliver of grilled tuna, a seared scallop, a coconut prawn.

Local Ocean’s house fish buyer, Amber Morris, a red-cheeked woman with an infectious smile who is known to regulars as the Fish Goddess, told us she keeps costs down and wares fresh by heading out to the docks each morning to buy directly from about 50 fishermen. As we downed cups of Dungeness crab soup glowing with roasted garlic and pulled hunks of snowy grilled halibut off wooden skewers that topped a brilliant panzanella salad, we sighed with pleasure, and the Fish Goddess beamed. There was just one dessert on the menu, and it was swoon-worthy: a “parfait” of lemon shortcake layered with berries, mangoes, and whipped cream.

Later that day we headed to Ocean Bleu @ Gino’s. This modest little joint serves seafood sourced from boats berthed right across the street: tiny, sweet Yaquina oysters harvested just upriver; black cod, salmon, and sable, which are smoked in-house; Dungeness crabs delivered live to a seawater tank. We dug into Ocean Bleu’s gooey warm dip of crab, sour cream, Monterrey Jack, and parmesan, followed by perfectly pan-fried crab cakes, their creamy filling leavened with whipped egg whites and bolstered by puréed scallops, and their golden crusts topped with spicy chipotle aïoli and cool pineapple salsa. Throwing caution to the wind, we ordered one more entrée: paprika-dusted grilled shrimp and whole Manila clams served in a creamy risotto infused with the mollusks’ juice. Our shared food coma reaching its peak, we headed back to the hotel, beyond satiated but eager for the next day’s journey: a two-hour drive to the village of Gearhart, James Beard’s boyhood vacation spot.

Gearhart is home to about 1,500 people, a surprising number of whom crowd into a convivial coffee shop called Pacific Way Bakery & Cafe each morning. It’s a tiny spot with a couple of chairs and counter stools, plus outdoor tables under which customers’ dogs hunt for crumbs. We started the day here with pastries, coffee, and conversations with locals, who strongly suggested we come back for dinner. That evening we feasted on Pacific Way’s hefty parmesan-crusted halibut fillets, the flavor of the flaky white fish punched up with a snappy parsley sauce. Served alongside sautéed broccoli rabe and mashed potatoes, their earthy, clean taste enhanced with roasted garlic and a touch of chicken stock, it was just the type of American comfort food Beard would have loved.

Our last stop, the city of Astoria, a mere 20 minutes away at the northernmost end of Oregon’s coastal highway, lacks the dramatic natural charisma that defines so much of the state’s oceanfront, but it has a gritty sea-town appeal all its own. A good example of this aesthetic is Bowpicker (the first syllable is pronounced like the front of a boat), a restaurant housed in a small dry-docked fishing vessel. As we shared our final meal of the trip, a simple order of fish and chips that turned out to consist of beer-battered hunks of albacore tuna coated in a crisp gossamer crust, we wondered aloud what made the batter so delicious. “It’s a secret,” said a waitress, “but we don’t know what the secret is.” We speculated that, perhaps like Ocean Bleu’s crab cake, the batter was leavened by folding in egg whites. If the fried seafood of the Oregon coast shares this secret, we wouldn’t be surprised; after all, it was a technique we learned ourselves years ago from an Oregon son named Beard.

See a travel guide to the Oregon coast »

The post From Western Waters appeared first on Saveur.

For our money, the best innovation in American baked goods since sliced bread might be mail-order pie: great regional wonders delivered directly to your doorstep.

For handmade butterscotch chip (A), pecan (H), or Texas Trash (M)—a carnival of pecans, caramel, coconut, chocolate chips, graham crackers, and pretzels—we turn to Texas’s Royers Round Top Café (979/249-3611; royersroundtopcafe.com).

The** Key lime pie** (B) from Key West Key Lime Pie Co._ (877/882-7437; keywestkeylimepieco.com)_ has a silky filling and a bright lime bite; a more portable option is the Key lime pie bar (K), a slice dipped in dark chocolate and planted on a stick.

Pennsylvania’s McClure’s Bakery (717/442-4461; faithhopeandshoofly.com) dishes up shoo fly pies (C) rich with a dark, gooey molasses filling.

Louisville’s Homemade Ice Cream & Pie Kitchen (502/459-8184; piekitchen.com) makes a killer lemon or chocolate chess pie (D), both riffs on the sweet Southern classic, while the Bay Area’s Three Babes Bakeshop (415/617-9774; threebabesbakeshop.com) offers a** salty honey walnut pie** (E), an elegant spin on a traditional nut pie.

The towering Caramel Pecan Levee High Apple Pie (F) from Missouri’s Blue Owl Bakery (636/464-3128; theblueowlgiftshop.com) is a showstopper: 18 apples packed high into a ten-pound pie.

The Willamette Valley Pie Company (503/362-8857; wvpie.com) also goes long on fruit pies, from apple (G) to peach (I), but marionberry (N), made from a local fruit, is our favorite.

Though considered a holiday specialty, we order mince pie (J) from Virginia’s Red Truck Bakery & Market (540/347-2224; redtruckbakery.com) year-round: here, suet-laced pastry and a fruit filling gets a sprinkle of bourbon sugar.

Whole cherries are layered into pies from Michigan’s Grand Traverse Pie Company_ (866/444-7437; gtpie.com)_, then topped with either a delicate crumble for the** cherry crumb** (L), or chocolate fudge for the cherry ganache (O).

The all-berry pie (P) from Massachusetts’s Centerville Pie Co. (774/470-1406; centervillepies.com) is loaded with blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, and raspberries, while the shaker lemon pie (Q) from Brooklyn’s First Prize Pies at Butter & Scotch_ (646/338-6812; butterandscotch.com)_is a duet of smooth custard and chewy lemon slices.

Despite its silly look upon delivery, the apple pie in a paper bag (R) from Wisconsin’s the Elegant Farmer _(262/363-6770; elegantfarmer.com)_goes in the oven, bag and all, and emerges with buttery fruit and a crisp crust.

Jane and Michael Stern are_SAVEUR contributing editors._

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The first thing that springs to mind when you think about Buffalo, New York, is probably its eponymous chicken wings. But after numerous visits to this city of 259,384 just a stone’s throw from Canada, we can assure you that it’s also a confectionery gold mine. From Cynthia Van Ness, director of Library and Archives at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, we learned the credit is largely due to the many Greek immigrants who came here at the turn of the 20th century, opening hundreds of European-style confectioneries during the city’s boom years.

1 Marshmallow cream is covered in coconut, cashews, and milk chocolate for the quirky Charlie Chaplin.

2 Candied macadamia nuts drenched in milk chocolate and rolled in powdered sugar result in King Condrell’s Buffalo Snowball.

3 Take a nugget of milk chocolate, drizzle it with hot fudge, and voila-the decadent hot fudge truffle.

4 This dipped raspberry from Aléthea’s is a fresh, ripe berry rolled in sugar and dipped in chocolate.

5 Buffalo’s famed sponge candy is a hunk of burnt sugar covered in chocolate.

6 At Aléthea’s, spicy candied ginger is coated in buttery milk chocolate.

7 Turtles, including these milk chocolate, caramel, and peanut versions, can be found all over town.

Buffalo’s signature sweet is itself a European import: sponge candy a bite-size block of nearly weightless golden spun sugar enveloped in milk or dark chocolate. But that is just the beginning. In Buffalo, chocolatiers concoct their own marshmallow sauce, understand the nuances of caramel, and temper cocoa butter to a luxurious smoothness. Best of all, several sweets shops also churn out their own ice cream, serving elaborate sundaes and shakes.

One of our favorite destinations is Aléthea’s Chocolates in the Buffalo suburb of Williamsville. The place is a chocoholic’s dream, with candies in every shape and size arrayed on shelves and tables and trays, ready to be gobbled one by one, or by the handful, as the case may be. Dean Tassy and his father, Gust, opened Aléthea’s in 1967, naming it after Dean’s great-grandmother, who was famed for the sweets she created in her native Kozani, Greece. On our most recent Buffalo trip, we stopped in to sample their exquisite dipped raspberries, the fresh, ripe berries rolled in sugar and covered in chocolate; hot fudge truffles; and spicy candied Australian ginger coated with dark chocolate. Each time Dean handed us something to taste, he took a piece for himself. “At the end of the day I’ve had enough,” he said. “But every morning I want more.”

While variations of sponge candy can be found from London to the Pacific Northwest, nobody else uses the care employed by Buffalo’s top candymakers. “We respect the sponge,” said Dean, who boils white sugar with water and corn syrup, and then whips it like crazy, adding baking soda a little at a time. Covered overnight, the golden candy rises like an ethereal cake. Dean said the dense, chewy parts around the outside should be thrown away, leaving only the most fragile sponge. “That’s why our candy is so light.” The experience of eating sponge candy is heavenly. Your teeth sink through a thick coat of chocolate before hitting the spun sugar center, which feels crisp and brittle before evaporating into a pleasing burnt-caramel memory.

A heftier choice is the Buffalo-only candy called the Charlie Chaplin. Found in nearly all the city’s sweets shops, it’s a formidable hunk of marshmallow cream topped with tender coconut and crunchy cashew-studded chocolate. You can order it as a loaf that you slice or opt for a two-bite snack served on a toothpick. How it got its name, no one knows for sure. A common speculation is that Chaplin fell in love with the candy and often had a chocolatier friend make it for him. That’s a nice story, but as far as we can tell the actor never had any special connection to the city.

In the suburb of Cheektowaga, we paid a visit to Mike’s. Founded some 50 years ago by Anastasia Melithoniotes and her late husband, Mike, this cozy candy shop sports a display room filled with pans of cooling nonpareils. Mike’s fluffy marshmallow blocks are especially good covered in milk chocolate and topped with a hail of chopped walnuts for what’s known as a Stolen Haven (the shop’s twist on the more common moniker, Stolen Heaven). Instead of relying on a candy thermometer, Susan Walter, the Melithoniotes’ daughter, uses her spatula to smear slowly cooked caramel on a marble slab. If she can lift and ball it up without it sticking to her fingers, it’s ready to be drizzled with chocolate and showered with roasted peanuts for one of the buffest candy turtles we’ve found anywhere.

While plowing through a boxful of Mike’s sponge candy, it dawned on us that the charm of Buffalo’s fine confections is their reliance on regular chocolate—the kind we loved as kids—instead of the fancy artisanal stuff. Chocolate here is sweet and simple, with direct appeal to the pleasure centers of the brain—a point that was driven home further at a shop called King Condrell’s in Kenmore, where we fell in love with a kitschy confection known as a Buffalo Snowball, a candied macadamia nut dipped in milk chocolate and rolled in powdered sugar.

Along with chocolates, several of Buffalo’s top confectioners offer outstanding ice creams, as well as stand-out syrups and sauces to pour over them. Located in the suburb of West Seneca, Sweet’s on the Hill uses ice cream from Nick Charlap’s, a creamery south of the city. Charlap told us the secret of his radiant ice cream is milk that’s been vatpasteurized, a slow process that gives each flavor, even vanilla, a depth of lingering taste without the overwhelming richness of high-butter-fat brands.

For those who like chocolate sauce on their ice cream, choosing among the offerings in Buffalo’s parlors can be daunting. Sure you can get hot fudge at King Condrell’s, but they also give you the option of thinner bittersweet chocolate or warm French chocolate, which is as dark and thick as pudding.

Any of these places will let you dream up your own ice cream concoctions, but we suggest leaving the composing to Buffalo’s maestros. The hot fudge at Aléthea’s, for example, is especially profound when it’s paired with marshmallow sauce atop buttercrunch ice cream and sliced bananas on the towering dessert known as a Mount Olympus Frappe. Condrell’s turtle sundae comes in a wide silver boat blanketed with thick whipped cream and plastered with pecan halves. The nuts glisten with enough salt to enhance the sundae’s sweet components. But restrain yourself to only one pecan piece per bite. That way you’ll have enough room on your spoon for the whipped cream, hot fudge, caramel sauce, and decadent ice cream, too.

Aléthea’s
8301 Main Street, Williamsville
716-633-8620

King Condrell’s
2805 Delaware Avenue, Kenmore
716-877-4485

Mike’s
2110 Clinton Street, Buffalo
716/826-6515

Nick Charlap’s
7264 Boston State Road, Hamburg
716/312-0592

Sweet’s on the Hill
1203 Union Road, West Seneca
716/675-3981

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Our favorite place to start the day just might be the Track Kitchen_._ This supremely casual breakfast club draws the equestrian set who winter in Aiken, South Carolina, home to the renowned Aiken Training Track. Sheiks, cowboys, jockeys, foxhunters, and grooms pour their own coffee and gossip about the huntsman who lost his hounds or an up-and-coming stallion’s prepotency, all the while feasting on owner Carol Carter’s scrupulously prepared pancakes, country ham, and Western omelettes. The beloved domain adjoins the training track on a soft dirt road that remains unpaved out of concern for the hooves of horses who—in this town at least—always have the right of way.

Track Kitchen
420 Mead Avenue
Aiken, South Carolina
803/641-9628

Jane and Michael Stern are SAVEUR contributing editors and authors of roadfood.com.

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“Every cookbook author needs a Judith Jones,” Madhur Jaffrey wrote in the 2012 edition of the SAVEUR 100, lauding the elite Knopf editor of Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking (Knopf, 1984) as well as titles by such heavyweights as Marcella Hazan, Edna Lewis, and Julia Child.

In 1984, our first cookbook, Square Meals, filled with hearty classic American dishes of yore—think tuna noodle casserole—was also published by Knopf, though Jones was not our editor. We’d sit in the office right next to hers, talking raucously with editor-in-chief Bob Gottlieb, who acquired our book, and Martha Kaplan, our editor, about such culinary mischief as Undescended Twinkies, a dessert in which whole Twinkies are set into a Jell-O base, and roast pork with a “sinner stuffing” of bourbon-soaked dried fruit.

At some point we learned that Jones had overheard all of our silly conversations, and because she was well known as an editor of lofty epicurean tomes, we felt like schoolhouse rowdies, our knuckles in need of a good rap. One day she cornered us in the hall, saying, “I have something to tell you two.” We expected a good talking-to, but what we got was “P&H Truck Stop. The raisin bread is grand.”

Sure enough, the déclassé diner in Newbury on the way to Jones’ Vermont farmhouse was a gem. Each time we brave the diesel fumes that surround the P&H and are rewarded with the delicious bakery aroma that envelops us once inside, we remember that it was Knopf’s legendary cookbook editor who first sent us there.

See the Recipe for Roast Pork with Sinner Stuffing »

Jane and Michael Stern are SAVEUR contributing editors.

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Hunting for breakfast in Tallahassee, Florida, we were clued in by a Florida A&M student to a restaurant she described as “motherly and upright.” Olean’s Cafe is located directly across from the FAMU campus in a retrofuturistic, spire-topped structure that was built, originally, as an outpost of Mahalia Jackson’s short-lived fried-chicken franchise. Now, you can drop by for soul food meals starting at 7am, and the hungrier you are, the better: It’s practically impossible to get a meager meal in this one-room eatery.

At Olean’s, the process is simple. Step up to the counter and make your choices either by reading the moveable-letter menu on the wall or by simply taking a look at the options arrayed on the steam table. Whatever you select, it’s put into a Styrofoam clamshell container by servers who rely on their (gloved) hands to select clusters of bacon to push into a little segment of the tray, throw sheaves of sausage patties in with scrambled eggs, and place fried chicken parts atop hot waffles—though they do employ some utensils, reaching for a brush to drip butter onto grits, or a big spoon to separate a serving of the Olean omelet

About that omelet: The Olean version is less a traditional omelet than it is a casserole, each serving of which is a block of food about the size of a half-brick. It reminds us of a high-rise frittata: eggs baked with sausage, ground beef, potatoes, onions, peppers, and tomatoes, all under a mantle of melted cheese. Every forkful is a different permutation of taste and texture; a single portion is a mighty meal. But you’d be forgiven for skipping the omelet for the fried chicken, available with or without a waffle as its trivet, its flavorful meat hugged by gnarled, breading-crusted skin; it fairly drips with fatty juice with every bite. It is, without a doubt, the most flavorful chicken imaginable.

Chicken and Waffles at Olean’s Cafe

The menu posted on the wall lists an Obama breakfast, which comprises large portions of grits, eggs, pancakes, bacon, and sausage, all impossibly stuffed into a single takeaway container. Proprietor Olean McCaskill explained that the concept dates back to the Presidential election of 2008, when the lavish bargain meal (today $6) competed with what was dubbed the McCain breakfast—the comparatively modest combination of grits, eggs, and toast. The latter is gone from the menu, and the 44th President remains, unabashedly, a house hero. The morning we stopped in, one server wore a t-shirt from the 2012 campaign that said, “Congratulations Team Obama. The 47% Have Spoken.”

Besides Barack Obama, the other beloved icon in this restaurant is Jesus Christ, testaments to whom cover the walls in the form of bumper stickers (“Get Out of Hell Free — John 3:16” and “Try Jesus: If You Don’t Like Him, The Devil Will Always Take You Back”), posters for church events and gospel sings, plaques with religious homilies, and bas-relief praying hands. If you don’t drink ice tea with your meal, an equally sweet alternative is Hawaiian Punch-colored “Jesus Passion Juice,” the secret ingredient for which, Olean confided, is love.

For lunch, Olean’s menu lists a full repertoire of classic southern side dishes such as collard greens, mac ‘n’ cheese, fried okra, braised cabbage, blackeyed peas, and candied yams. Everyday entrees include catfish, smothered pork chops, baked or fried chicken, and chitlin’s. Ribs are featured Thursday, mullet Friday and Saturday. And of course, Olean’s is closed Sunday.

Olean’s Cafe
1605 S. Adams St., Tallahassee, FL
850/521-0259

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Upper Crust whitefish

“By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in The Song of Hiawatha. We recalled that epic poem last October as we drove beside that same Big-Sea-Water—the Chippewa moniker for Lake Superior. We were wending our way up Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on U.S. Highway 41 through a blaze of autumn leaves toward the highway’s terminus at Copper Harbor.

Longfellow’s Hiawatha came here to fast, but we had come to feast on the region’s unique road foods. One sign that we were in the right place? The prevalence on myriad tavern and café menus of the Cornish pasty (pronounced PASS-tee). The emblematic regional food—an all-in-one meal of beef, potatoes, rutabagas, and onion that’s baked inside a crimped half-circle pastry pocket—is a legacy of mid-19th-century British settlers who flocked here to work the iron and copper mines. While ore mining is history in these parts, locals remain fiercely loyal to pasties, which are far more common than even hamburgers.

Crossroads Lounge pasties

Marquette’s Crossroads Lounge sells a guaranteed one-pounder made of pork and beef, but we found ourselves nearby at Jean Kay’s Pasties & Subs, a tiny eatery with just a few tables and a big take-out trade. Sitting there, we watched as one customer picked up $171.45 worth of pasties for his coworkers at a nearby auto mall, followed shortly by a woman who planned to ship a dozen to her homesick son in Mississippi.

The restaurant is named after Jean Kay Harsch, who opened a small bakery in Iron Mountain in 1975 with her husband and their son, Brian. The family sold that location in 1983, but Brian keeps his parents’ traditions alive in the store he runs in Marquette. “We make our pasties the old-fashioned way—with suet,” Brian explains. Given the pasty’s origins as a portable lunch for miners, durability is a signal virtue, and the beef fat helps the crusts stay flaky.

Our next stop, just a mile and a half away, was Thill’s Fish House, where we went to exalt in one of the best offerings of the Upper Peninsula: fresh fish. This waterside seafood market is family run; the first generation of Thills came to the area half a century ago, and various Thills have been supplying local restaurants with fresh fish ever since. Inside, it smelled deeply of smoke and brine, and on offer were handsome hunks of smoked lake trout, walleye, smelt, and whitefish, all of which just about melt on the tongue. If you can hold out, have the staffers wrap up some slices in white paper—they’re perfect for a picnic or, in our case, a road trip.

Fish in the backseat, we headed west on 41 to the old mining town of Ishpeming for a visit to Lawry’s Pasty Shop. The cinder block shack has a fluorescent No-Doz ambience, pour-your-own coffee, and a neon “open” sign that blinks on at 7 a.m. Traditional pasties, made using Madelyne Lawry’s original recipe, are hefty hand-formed crescents of tender crust loaded with beef and vegetables reminiscent of a portable pot pie. A sign on the cash register admonishes: “It’s Not PAY-STREE…It’s Not PAY-STEES…IT’S PASS-TEE!!! YOOPER FOOD OF DA GODS!”

“Yooper,” derived from U.P. (Upper Peninsula), is the local term for a full-time resident. It also describes the in-your-face bumpkin pride that pervades the region as you travel into the forestland of the Northwest. On the roadside in Ishpeming, a raffish enterprise named Da Yoopers Tourist Trap & Museum sports a sign that reads: “Welcome to Yooperland. Relax—Enjoy—Spend All Your Ca$h. But Please Don’t Move up Here.” Outdoor museum displays include the world’s largest working rifle and a 23-foot-long chain saw. Inside you can buy a glossary of the “Yoopanese language” (e.g., No Hunting means “Shoot This Sign”).

A visit is enough to rev you up for a big Yooper meal, and our next stop had us veering north along the Keweenaw Bay to a land that seems ever more remote and separate from the rest of the United States. Indeed, when we sat down at Suomi Home Bakery and Restaurant in the town of Houghton, we really did wonder if everyone in the big bakery—café was speaking a foreign language. It took a few moments to recognize their tongue as English; Yooper English is a curious blend that sounds Finnish, German, and Canadian all at once, and it’s especially strong northwest of Marquette.

In fact, there are more people of Finnish descent in the U.P. than anywhere else outside of Europe, so the Suomi menu’s headline of “Tervetuloa! Welcome!” and its bilingual listings are hardly affectations. You can get familiar voileipiä (sandwiches) for lunch and rice pudding for jälkiruoka (dessert), but we recommend aamiainen (breakfast), served all day, for which braided nisu—or wheat—bread perfumed with cardamom is made into Finnish French toast, and pannukakku is the star attraction. The waiter described it as a Finnish pancake, but we found it to be more like a crustless egg custard pie—sweet, creamy, fundamental. One large cake is about a half-inch thick and is served in four-by-four-inch squares with a side of warm raspberry sauce.

Jampot monks

One of the best tips we got on this trip came from a customer at Suomi who told us that his wife used to make nisu and saffron bread at home until they discovered Toni’s Country Kitchen up in Laurium. What a find! As we entered the one-room diner, which buzzed with chatter, we looked left into a kitchen where bakers were rolling dough on a floured table and another woman was forearm-deep in a pan of ingredients, hand-mixing pasty filling. Toni’s pasty is a beaut, its crust fine, light, and savory, the rutabaga and potato sliced wafer-thin, the hunky beef shot through with sweet onion flavor. For dessert, we munched on some lovely sticky buns and cinnamon-bread French toast, but the real knockout was the nut-rich povitica. The name for this babka-like loaf comes from the Croatian word for “swaddled” and indeed, swaddled by fluffy bread in each slice was a buttery swirl of cinnamon-walnut filling. It put run-of-the-mill cinnamon breads to shame, and we packed some to go.

Our goal as we headed ever northward and approached the end of Highway 41 was Jampot, a fairy-tale hut in the Eagle Harbor forest where monks of the Society of St. John make and sell breads, muffins, cookies, and jam. Simply stepping out of the car in the parking lot by Jampot can be a religious experience, thanks to the warm smells of baking bread and sourdough cakes filled with fruits marinated in wine and rum. We grabbed a banana-walnut bread packed with blueberries, a bag of molasses-rich gingerbread cookies, and a lemon-frosted pumpkin muffin, then drove to a nearby snacking spot overlooking beautiful Lake Medora, just five miles short of Copper Harbor. Gazing at the opposite shore, where autumn trees were perfectly mirrored on the blue waters, we were thankful our teachers had made us read all of that lengthy Song of Hiawatha. We thought of the last canto, of the lines that read:

Bright above him shone the
heavens,
Level spread the lake before him;
From its bosom leaped the
sturgeon,
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every tree-top had its shadow,
Motionless beneath the water.

We saw no sturgeon, but otherwise, there we were with Hiawatha. Not so bad with a slice of povitica in hand.

Crossroads Lounge
900 County Road 480, Marquette; 906/249-8912.

Da Yoopers Tourist Trap & Museum
490 North Steel Street, Ishpeming; 800/628-9978.

Jampot
6500 State Highway M26, Eagle Harbor; no phone.

Jean Kay’s Pasties & Subs
1635 Presque Isle, Marquette; 906/228-5310.

Lawry’s Pasty Shop
2381 U.S. 41, Ishpeming; 906/485-5589.

Suomi Home Bakery and Restaurant
54 Huron Street, Houghton; 906/482-3220.

Thill’s Fish House
250 East Main Street, Marquette; 906/226-9851.

Toni’s Country Kitchen
79 Third Street, Laurium; 906/337-0611.

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