“Since opening in 1999, I have sought to introduce the North Shore of Lake Superior community to new cooking styles and cuisine. Today, I try to keep three core ideas in mind: simplicity, honesty, and awareness. Simplicity; ingredients should not be overly altered. This demands that each ingredient is of exceptional quality. Honesty; no tricks, no gimmicks, no hidden surprises, just sincerely genuine good food. Awareness; conceive, prepare, and present your food with mindfulness. Lately, beer has become a particularly exciting area to showcase fantastic local Minnesota products. We currently have beers and ciders from twelve Minnesota breweries. The best part is they’re not just on our menu because they’re from Minnesota, they’re on our menu because they are truly great products.”

Caramelized carrot with béarnaise, garlic, thyme, butter, maldon salt, sour, and bitter greens; goat cheese cake with white peach, rosé, and elderflowers

The narrow strip of highway that heads out of Duluth and threads between the Sawtooth Mountains and Lake Superior is the summertime path of armies of tourists, all of whom seem to stop to find out what Scott Graden is cooking up where pine trees and gray wolves define the Northern forest. Graden cooks with local lake herring from one of the few remaining commercial boats that work Lake Superior’s waters, and does beautiful work with local maple syrup and north country blueberries.