When my oldest friend @a4xjeeper asked me to travel to Wisconsin with him to pick up a Jeep Willy's that he had just bought, I really didn't know what to expect when it came to what our meals would look like. I knew for a fact that shortly after getting on the road, but before we made it to the expressway we would probably be stopping at McDonald's to grab a breakfast sandwich.
I know him well enough that I could have placed his order for him. A sausage McMuffin with a sweet tea (light ice). I had my water, so I just got a sausage McMuffin and I was good to go. Say what you want about McDonald's, I don't think they are that bad. I won't argue that it probably isn't healthy for you, but as far as fast food goes, it's just consistently decent.
As I said in this post, we ended up stopping in Marinette Wisconsin for lunch. If the timing would have matched up right, I am sure we might have stopped at Clyde's in Manistique for a burger, but we were making such good time that it would have been 10 in the morning if we stopped and got lunch there.
We were actually a bit concerned that nothing was going to be open in Marinette when we pulled into town because of the time change. While it was just about noon in the Eastern Time Zone, it wasn't quite 11 over in Wisconsin. That severely limited us on the number of choices we had.
We pulled into a Mexican restaurant in Marinette, thinking we could just wait in the parking lot until they opened at 11:00 AM. Then @a4xjeeper found a place that was already opened and it sounded promising.
Mickey-Lu's was just down the road from the Mexican restaurant and quite honestly if you blinked you might miss it. In fact, I did almost miss it and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid going past the driveway.
If you can read the sign, you might notice that it says Bar-B-Q. That was the main thing that drew us to this place, but unfortunately, that was a bit of a misnomer. Honestly though, that was about the only thing I could find wrong with this place.
As I said, it's tiny inside, but the smell that was wafting out into the parking lot gave us a really good idea of what we had in store. Our stomachs were rumbling even more as we walked up to the front door.
My buddy and I agree that when you are traveling, you should really do your best to avoid places that are chains or something you could get when you are at home. Mickey-Lu's definitely fit the bill on all counts. The decor was eccentric with all kinds of old time games and posters. They also had a pretty short menu as far as roadside diners go. Which is fine with me, it made it pretty easy to pick what I was going to get.
We sat down at a couple of the stools that surround the diner counter and we started getting served by a nice lady with that world class midwestern charm that you would expect from Northern Wisconsin. As good as a hamburger sounded, since we were in Wisconsin, my mind immediately went to bratwurst.
I was a little embarrassed when I asked the waitress if the bratwurst were locally sourced or if they were just the Johnsonville style that you can get in the grocery store. Don't get me wrong, Johnsonville are good, but I can get those at home.
It seems she has been asked that before because she just laughed and let me know that the brats were hand made at a local meat market in town. I was sold! One bratwurst please!
@a4xjeeper got a burger.
Not only was the meat locally sourced, but the buns were also made at a local bakery. They were absolutely delicious. As I said, my friend got a simple burger and I got a brat with mustard and onions. A single was $3.00 and a double was something like $5.00. You can't get a much better deal than that. They don't have a deep fryer there, but they offer a bag of chips with your meal. Apparently, their shakes and malts are very good too, but we didn't try one of those. We were kicking ourselves for not.
Personally, I think the coolest part of the experience was how they cook your food. They have this open air charcoal pit in the middle of the building. It looks almost like a pizza oven. they place the proteins and buns in there to get cooked and charred up and then they put together your order.
There was a pie carousel sitting next to me on the diner counter and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to order the last slice of blueberry pie they had sitting on the top rack. It looked delicious!
I can't begin to describe just how fantastic this meal was. We were actually very tempted to stop on our way back through and eat there again!
Instead, we stopped at a place about an hour or so outside of Marinette in Escanaba called Mo's Pub. That's not entirely true. We initially stopped at another place in Escanaba Michigan, but after driving through the parking lot and realizing there wasn't a place to park the truck and trailer with the Jeep on it, we ended up parking on the street. We went into that other place and found that it was going to be a 45 minute wait for a table. On top of that, the bar was completely full, so we couldn't even squeeze in there.
We had already been kicking around the idea of driving all the way home that night, so the last thing we wanted to do was waste 45 minutes plus waiting to eat dinner.
We were walking back to the truck when I looked up and noticed the sign for Mo's on a diagonal across the street. My friend tightened down the chains on the trailer while I walked over to see if we could get a table.
They were busy, but there was definitely plenty of space for us.
Since we were in the upper peninsula of Michigan, I was really excited to get some whitefish. It's pretty much a staple up near the coast of Lake Superior and if you have never had Lake Superior whitefish, you really don't know what you are missing. Unfortunately, they didn't have whitefish, but they did have perch and it is pretty rare that I will turn down a nice perch dinner.
We actually both got the same thing for our meal, so I only took photos of one of them. I know that the US gets a bad rap for the portion sizes being so large, but even I will admit that this was a ton of food. Well worth the money that we spent on it, but I was only able to eat about half of it. The fries were so good that I was tempted to eat them all, but instead, I decided to only eat half of them and save more room for the fish.
I ate every piece of perch on my plate. I had maybe one bite of the roll, half of the baked beans, and a few bites of the coleslaw. This was actually the first time I have ever seen baked beans with a perch dinner. In case you are wondering, that item in the lower right hand corner is butter for the roll. Just to the left of it was the tartar sauce for the fish.
We were able to get in and out of Mo's in a half hour and back on the road to make it home. We were talking about it on the road and we were actually happy that the first place ended up being too busy. While I am sure they had good food, this meal at Mo's was absolutely phenomenal and if I am ever up this way with @mrsbozz, I plan on taking her there (even though she doesn't eat fish).
As far as road trips go, this one was hit all the right spots when it comes to food.
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