Review: Trout Town Country Café, Kalkaska, Michigan

It’s not very often Mary and I find a restaurant that we’ll go back to time-and-time again in a very short period of time. This past weekend, however, we visited the Trout Town Country Café in Kalkaska, Michigan, four times between Friday evening and Sunday morning. It certainly wasn’t our intent to have multiple meals there for the sake of this review. Sure, I could have used an excuse along those lines to generate multiple visits. (You know, me saying things like, “Honey, it’s for the blog!“) But frankly, after that first visit to the restaurant on Friday evening we both wanted to go back. And once we took the boys there Saturday evening, the Trout Town Country Café’s Sunday Brunch Buffet was definitely a given. Besides, Mary wanted to try that Baked Oatmeal at least once. Ok, so I’m getting ahead of myself.

I must say that all was not wine and roses. I do have some complaints, which I’ll talk about later on. But I’ll tell you what, with the friendliness of the staff (including Chef/owner Dan Bloomquist himself), and the food being incredible the majority of the time, I’ll give Chef Dan and his crew 4-out-of-5 Titanium Sporks right out of the starting blocks.

We had seen a blue state-placed sign for the Trout Town Country Café along M-72 east of Kalkaska on our way into town. Without a decent internet connection it took us a while to figure out exactly how to get there from our hotel. That it turned out to be walking distance was a bit wacked, and besides, we never did walk to get there. Come to find out, we should have just followed the arrow on that dang-blasted state-placed sign to get there the first time …

Reading the menu, the rather small restaurant showed its pedigree:

Trout Town Country Café is locally owned and operated by Chef Dan Bloomquist. Dan has been in the restaurant business for approximately 23 years …

Hmmm … we know more than one of these kinds of places, particularly Bolles Harbor Café. Besides this, on the wall near the register was a recent award. It seems Chef Dan won for Best Presentation in the Taste of Trout competition at the National Trout Festival in April.

Ok, Chef Dan, this is your home turf. Let’s see whatchya got …

On our first visit Friday evening, I ordered the all-you-can-eat fish:

This fish is cod, cut into squared-off strips from filets, then deep-fried for a beautiful golden crunch. The finished fish is lucious and moist, and very flaky. It’s served with some great French fries, a hard roll, and what may have been a handmade tarter sauce. Oh, and then there’s that non-creamy cole slaw that was both tart and sweet, with a freshly-cut crunch, that arrived before the entrée. You bet your sweet bippy I had more of that fish!

Mary was actually a bit startled at how good her half-rack of pork ribs was:

Also served with those nice French fries and a hard sesame roll, the meat on these ribs fell off the bone as they should. The sauce had just the right amount of balance between spicy and sweet that makes it difficult to put down. Unique here was a short metal bucket for Mary to drop the bones into. That the server provided three Wet Naps instead of one shows how much they understand how people really eat ribs.

I did get a chance to chat with Chef Dan briefly Friday evening. He was hosting more than cooking, and as they were very busy he had lots to do. But he was gracious as he could have been given the number of patrons in the restaurant.

As full as we were, we didn’t want to pass on the homemade pies! Mary took a piece of blueberry pie back to the hotel room, while I traveled with a piece of the coconut cream pie. These were nicely done, with flaky crusts. I didn’t have any of the blueberry pie (the Pomeranian got to finish that off!), but that coconut cream was thick, rich, and superb, needing only to be washed down with an ice-cold glass of milk. Thankfully, the room had a working fridge, and I’d already bought some 2% milk …

We went right back for breakfast on Saturday morning. One of the dishes we were intrigued by from its menu description was Dan’s Specialty French Toast:

(C)innamon and vanilla soaked thick sliced Vienna bread with a pecan and corn flake coating, grilled to perfection and served with maple syrup or strawberry sauce and whipped butter …

Ok, yeah, sure, that sounds pretty darn good! Well, to be honest, it looks and tastes great as well!

We found out later these beautiful pieces of French toast aren’t as good when they’re cold. But fresh out of Dan’s kitchen, glistening with melted butter and syrup, we simply couldn’t stop eating them. They’re addictive! Outside they have a great crunchy coating, while inside the Viennese bread was moist and soft. The Pomeranian ended up with two of Mary’s half slices as she ended up full from just four of them. This is a serious breakfast dish, and is one of the more unique variations of French toast I’ve seen. We love it.

Saturday evening, after retrieving both Aaron and Adam from Camp Tapico, we headed back to the Trout Town Country Café for their Saturday Night Southern BBQ. I ordered the BBQ Beef Brisket:

It was difficult to pick up this BBQ beef with a fork as it constantly dropped into smaller pieces! The beans seem to be homemade (I know they’re not Bush’s, that’s for certain). And the beef gravy on the garlic mashed potatoes was rich and thick. The piece of cornbread was a little on the dense side for me, but that’s southern-style anyway, so of course, that’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s not Chef Dan’s fault I grew up with the northern-and-lighter version …

Adam was impressed with how we’d described Mary’s half rack of ribs from the previous evening, so he went ahead and ordered a full rack:

This was just as good as the rib from the night before, and Adam was able to finish them off. No, this actually didn’t come with the cornbread shown here. My camera washed-out the light-colored hard roll these ribs and potatoes came with. The piece of cornbread you see here is a stand-in for the hard roll so this picture would look almost as good as it tasted.

We did go back Sunday morning for the brunch buffet that’s served from 9 a.m. till 2 p.m. … but unfortunately, Adam and I weren’t as impressed with the buffet. In fact, we were downright disappointed.

Before I continue, I must explain that Mary ordered the Baked Oatmeal and ate as much as she could. We were packed solid with food from previous meals at the Trout Town Country Café, and felt happily satisfied. But she really liked that oatmeal.

On to the part that’s difficult to write because of all the great food we’d already enjoyed …

Breakfast buffets are hard to do. I ran one for a Frisch’s Big Boy in Columbus from April 1983 till June 1984. It’s seriously difficult to keep things at the right temperature and maintain food quality when few customers are allowing little-to-no rotation of what’s on the buffet.

Here’s where my promise from some months ago kicks in big-time: I refuse to do a negative review of a restaurant without it being constructive. I already want you to feel like you should seek out the Trout Town Country Café in Kalkaska, this week if you’re attending the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City, or at some other time! Do not allow what I’m about to write about the Sunday brunch get in the way of your enjoying Chef Dan’s other fantastic dishes!

Part of the problem is that of holding large steam pans over Sterno cans for an extended period. Regardless of the amount of water in the bottom pans, the Sterno cans themselves will still spot-heat. It simply can’t spread the heat evenly throughout the pan. What happened was the scrambled eggs ended up being mostly cool except for what was over the Sterno, with the biscuits and gravy being the same way. Chef Dan is the first I’ve seen who maintains Eggs Benedict on a buffet, and also in these kinds of pans. Unfortunately, the bottoms of the English Muffin halves were so hard Adam and I couldn’t cut them with the serrated butter knives. We had to pick them up and bite them/tear them with our teeth. When we did, that’s when we realized that, instead of the egg yolks being runny as expected, they were more like soft-boiled eggs.

Breakfast buffets that aren’t in a catering situation work best when steam tables are used for all the foods that are to be hot. Sometimes, zones are necessary within that steam table. Premade waffles and their fruit toppings, along with biscuits and gravy and such, need a lower holding temperature than bacon and stout sausages do. Scrambled eggs are better in smaller quantities with faster turnover rates, as are hash browns.

But things like Eggs Benedict take more than a little extra touch for a buffet. Like omelet buffets in high-end hotel restaurants, Eggs Benedict really need to be one-off items, made only when people ask for them. We tried such things in Columbus, but never had the kitchen staff to maintain enough consistency in the timings.

I love breakfast buffets. Being the key person for the one I maintained in Columbus was a real eye-opener to the work involved in doing it right. The best buffets I’ve seen are of the hotel variety; the Sheraton in Abu Dhabi, the Hamilton Princess in Bermuda, and the Marriott World Center in Orlando. In each of these, dedicated Chefs worked the egg stations, and in the Sheraton, also the pancake and waffle station. You can successfully run scrambled eggs in small quantities on a steam table. But the hired help is then so dedicated to the job at various times they may as well stay there and cook the eggs as-ordered anyway.

This right here is why restaurant reviewers go back multiple times to the same restaurant prior to writing a review. If we had only gone for the Sunday Brunch Buffet, we may not have gone back. But quite frankly, and very honestly indeed, Chef Dan has created some of the best dishes we’ve ever eaten anywhere. Dan’s Specialty French Toast is something to savor, and all the BBQ dishes we had and shared were mighty tasty indeed.

4-out-of-5 Titanium Sporks. That’s my rating for the Trout Town Country Café in Kalkaska, Michigan.

We will eat there again. And again … and again … and again …

… and you should, too.