Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Michigan is my home state, but go north and cross the Mackinac Bridge and the U.P. is a whole other world — copper and iron country, wrapped in three of the Great Lakes and buried in snow, settled by Finns and Cornish and Italians who cooked to survive the work and the cold. It gave us the pasty, the cudighi almost nobody outside Marquette County has ever heard of, smoked Lake Superior whitefish, cardamom nisu, Trenary Toast, and a thimbleberry jam you cannot buy anywhere else on earth. In a couple of weeks my son and I are driving the whole thing — over the bridge, along the Superior shore, home base in Ishpeming — to eat our way back through a list I've been building my whole life. This is that list, and the world that made it.

A World Apart

A World Apart Cross the Mackinac Bridge and you're somewhere else — a peninsula attached to Wisconsin, cut off until 1957, wrapped in three Great Lakes and buried in lake-effect snow. Why the U.P. became its own country, and why its food did too. Explore →

Copper, Iron, Timber & Fish

Copper, Iron, Timber & Fish The industries that built the table. Native copper the Ojibwe mined 8,000 years ago, the iron ranges around Ishpeming, the white-pine drives and the fish tugs — cold, hard, dangerous work that demanded a cheap, portable, reheatable lunch. That lunch was the pasty. Explore →

Who Came, and What They Cooked

Who Came, and What They Cooked The Cornish "Cousin Jacks," the Finns who made this the most Finnish place in America, the northern Italians of the iron range, and the Swedes, French-Canadians, Croatians and Germans alongside them — and the food each one left on the table. Explore →

The Pasty

The Pasty The U.P.'s definitive food — a Cornish miner's hand pie the Finns adopted so completely most people think it's theirs. The rutabaga that defines it, the crimp fights, and the great ketchup-versus-gravy war. Lehto's and Muldoon's on our route. Explore →

Cudighi

Cudighi The sandwich the Iron Range kept to itself: a sweet-spiced Italian sausage — cinnamon, nutmeg, clove — that a few thousand people love and almost nobody else has heard of. What it is, where it came from, and why it never left Marquette County. Explore →

Lake Superior Whitefish

Lake Superior Whitefish The fish the U.P. runs on — fresh, planked, and above all smoked. The commercial fishery, the honest story of its decline, the treaty rights that govern it, and Thill’s Fish House in Marquette, smoking its daily catch since 1961. Explore →

The Finnish Table

The Finnish Table Nisu and pannukakku, viili and mojakka, squeaky cheese and cardamom coffee — and the sauna that ties it all together. The baking and cooking of the most Finnish corner of America. Explore →

Trenary Toast

Trenary Toast The U.P.'s coffee-dunking rusk — a twice-baked, cardamom-and-cinnamon toast so hard you have to dip it, made in a tiny town since 1928 and sold in brown paper bags. The American grandchild of the Finnish korppu. Explore →

Thimbleberries & the Wild Larder

Thimbleberries & the Wild Larder The berry you can't farm or ship — which is exactly why thimbleberry jam is a prized, hand-picked Keweenaw souvenir — plus the monks' Jampot, wild blueberries, morels, maple, and deer camp. The U.P.'s foraged and hunted table. Explore →

The Whole Table — and a Trip Back

The Whole Table — and a Trip Back Poutine with cudighi in it, porketta, supper-club fish fries, Jilbert’s ice cream and the rest of the U.P. table — and the road trip my son and I are about to take to eat our way back through all of it, from the bridge to Ishpeming. Explore →