Travels through the Northlands
It’s been a few years since I was able to get the time and reason to make a long road trip but the opportunity presented itself recently and now here I am, 1,500 miles richer. My rough route was Boulder to a little town about an hour outside of Rapid City, SD. From there due east through SD and into Pipestone, MN before I headed northeastward. I stayed on rural highways to Duluth, then stayed on Highway 2 through Ashland, WI and on into the UP (that’s “Upper Peninsula of Michigan” to those of you not from Michigan or the northwoods). I stayed on Hwy 2 through the UP to the Mackinac Bridge, then into northern Michigan where I now rest.
First, two general observations. I’ve made this trip a few times, always along slightly different routes, but more or less the same trip, the last time about five years ago. Since then two things have happened: 1) wireless internet has hit the rest of the country; 2) indie coffee shops have hit their stride. I mean no patronizing in either case, just the facts.
A few years ago there was no such thing as “free wi-fi” in the rural middle of the U.S. Now, it’s everywhere. It’s on marquee boards of cheap motels, LED signs of gas stations alongside the current price of gas, and sandwich boards outside of run-down sandwich shops in towns of 428 souls. It’s shocking to see the variety of establishments you now see the sign proclaiming “free wireless,” “wireless internet!!” or “free wi-fi.” Again, this is not along the interstates but inside the little towns you must pass through as you traverse Highway 23 through Minnesota or 123 through the UP.
Indie coffee shops have been around for a long time, and even in my road trips of 15 years ago were not too hard to find. But they’ve risen to a new level. They are no longer rare in small towns and are now multiplying like bacteria in the larger towns.
My first “find” was Coffea Roasterie in Sioux Falls, SD. I stumbled into this shop after eating a late 3pm breakfast at the venerable Cracker Barrel (I don’t need to describe Cracker Barrel because, if a term is to be defined by a single instance, Cracker Barrel is the exact definition of “seen one, seen ‘em all.” They are all absolutely identical, and blindfolded and dropped into five, you would have no reference to find any distinctions; I only eat there because I like the breakfast fare…) and then grabbing some gas. I had just started to type “coffee” into my GPS when I looked up and saw a coffee shop across the street. I was initially dubious because I was nowhere near the center of Sioux Falls, but well on the outskirts and just off an interstate exit, and this place looked from the outside like it was designed and run by a mall developer. I was to be pleasantly surprised.
The owner of the shop, Paul, made me my preferred mocha: small and strong with just a little milk. The chocolate was powdered and I was given a choice between milk and dark. It mixed well, the coffee flavor shone through, and I was very happy for the next ten or twenty miles. His shop is new and modern with a big, bright seating area, and for late afternoon on a weekday in what more or less was a strip mall area, had quite a few patrons. To put it in Boulder context, the shop has more Saxy’s feel and less Trident or Roma feel — glossy, polished and clean, edged to an older “sophisticate” and not to a tatted-up, smelly college hippy (that last is written with a bit of affection, by the way).
I had the impression that Roasterie is very successful. I didn’t have time to discuss business or their roasting (hit their webpage, they roast their own brews), but it is all clearly working well. As their About Us page says, “We have been working in the coffee industry for years…” and it’s obvious. The only thing that seemed incongruous to me was the larger setting. This was a shop set in the usual ideal location for a Starbucks or other huge chain whose only aim is to grab as many marks as possible, not to be a coffee shop. Yet they clearly want to be a coffee shop, not be a Starbucks one-off. The location just off I-29 next to a Cracker Barrel and a huge gas station and shopping mall was weird, but having only whizzed through, maybe there’s something I’m missing about the immediate area.
My other coffee shop find of the trip was the Black Cat Coffeehouse in Ashland, Wisconsin (they don’t have a webpage). Ashland is a semi-college town, perhaps in the same way that Boulder is a semi-college town. Boulder has a huge university, but while the university’s presence is felt everywhere, the city isn’t dominated by it. The same could be said about Ashland: Northland College is here, but the city has a bigger life of its own outside of the college. Black Cat is definitely a college town coffee shop, in full contrast to Coffea Roasterie which seemed to cater to an older, more professional crowd. Black Cat is old brick walls, worn-in tables and chairs, and a back-room library that had me wanting to become a grad student again. My dry cap was solid and tasty and needed no sugar for support. They use two roasters: Alakef out of Duluth for their espressos and (I think, but I’ve lost the card I took with me) Tuvalu out of Verona, Wisconsin for their regular grind. They also had a good-looking cafe menu and I would have loved to order food had I had the time to spare. In my short five minutes in the shop it was clear that they enjoy a strong community presence: all of the patrons sitting seemed to know all who wandered in the shop. Black Cat is just the kind of place I’d want near my small college.
The food find of the trip was a bar and grill in Willmar, Minnesota called Grizzly’s Grill, the only thing open after 10pm in Willmar. Grizzly’s is a chain, and doesn’t pretend like it isn’t, but it only has about a dozen locations in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin, which I considered a huge plus. It’s a chain to cater to the northwoods eater (“Fresh Flavors of the Northwoods”), and I’ll take that. I would have been happier had there been moose and other game on the menu, but I understand that’s prohibitively hard to do for a restaurant (especially a chain) outside of Alaska and Montana. Food was good, service was great and I was too full for dessert. I don’t cater to chains very often, but I didn’t have better food anywhere along the rest of the ride.
