Canter Bridge

When I called my Long-Lost Cousin Maggie to tell her we had made another surprise landing in our beloved Northwoods and were renting a cabin south of Iron River (population 1,123 when everybody answers the door), she asked ‘Are you eating at the Delta Diner?’ Long-Lost doesn’t count for much in these northern climes when good eating is the topic.

Though we’d never heard of the establishment in question, the Good Wife and I had within the hour traveled the seven miles down County Road H, duly registered our names, and were outside chatting with the other Northwoodsmen waiting their turn. Good thing. There’s no place like it.

We were soon seated at the counter, the only newbies in a cluster of seven guests who were seated at the same time, the sign out front (‘You waited an hour? Must be our slow season.’) being a modest exaggeration on this Friday morning in August. We were introduced to a just-detailed-enough narrative of the Diner’s new, no-tipping business model and its more famous menu. Both were interesting and appealing from the outset.

The Good Wife elbowed a gaggle of less fortunate visitors aside to claim the last remaining Stuffed Hash Brown of the day: smoked pork, cheese, an egg on top, and a faster clean plate than I am accustomed to seeing in front of my petite lady. She washed it all down, as did I, with enormous quantities of the delicious Delta Dawg coffee (un-diner brew if ever there was such thing) that is roasted at nearby Bayfield’s Big Water Coffee.

My gaze fell upon the subtly understated ‘The Omelet’, and I was soon tucking into a ‘cheeseburger omelet’ of enviable proportions, held up around the shoulders by a side order of hash browns and lubricated by the Delta Dawg.

The bread, which my wife reckons is an unworldly cross between rye and sourdough, is—as one puts it these days—‘to die for’.

Everything was delicious. More impressively, everything at the Delta Diner is done well and with the customer in mind. Even the two Delta Diner mugs we picked up at the counter are solid, four-season-type coffee-drinking instruments.

Northwoodsmen are famous for striking up a conversation with any stranger without the slightest reticence, and our eating companions were—true to form—not strangers for long. But the staff was also cordial, attentive, and kind. One part of the Diner’s business model is the selection, care, and feeding of a university intern. The young woman from the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management’s program who is the Diner’s very first intern will by my lights almost certainly fulfill her desire to own her own restaurant one day. When we engaged her for a chat, she took a seat at the counter beside my wife, the better to converse as humans actually do in the wild, rather than hurrying on to the tasks that without doubt awaited. We made friends. One veteran leaned over and whispered of the Diner in the hushed tones the circumstances made to seem fitting, ‘It’s an institution’.

The establishment, an old railway diner, is immaculate. I can certify that, if the odd mood should strike, you could have your breakfast in the very clean men’s room and emerge to live a long and satisfying life.

The Northwoods will throw a new surprise at you whenever you least expect it. This one, just around the bend on one of those beautiful North Country county roads, is worth stopping for when you stumble upon it. And then driving to repeatedly with earnest determination after that.