Another weekend exploring foods from another city! This time, I had the opportunity to explore the great Upper Penninsula, better known as the "UP."
Our final destination was Houghton, Michigan, but we made a dinner stop in Marquette, home of Northern Michigan University and the largest populated city in the UP. After some quick search on Yelp for a restaurant recommendation, we stumbled upon a newly opened Irish pub called The Wild Rover. The hubs and I both ordered a boxty, a traditional Irish potato pancake, after reading rave review after another on the 'net. Mine came filled w/ cheddar and bacon, covered w/ heavy gravy. Hello~ heart attack! Normally I would have been all over this, but after a pit stop at McDonalds for a large order of greasy fries just a few hours before, my stomach had its share of artery clogging-ness.
Bacon & cheese boxty
So why were we driving 9+ hours to the UP, you ask? For my bro-in-law's graduation! After seven long years, he's finally done it, and we're all so proud of him!! Way to go!!
The hubs took this cool shot - no photo editing either!
The in-laws & moi. There was no Obama-esque speech, but a good graduation nontheless!
Oh, and I can't forget to mention the single physical activity did the entire weekend - I decided to take advantage of the lovely hills and squeezed in a quick hill repeat workout before continuing the celebration into dinner!
We headed to North Shore restaurant in downtown Houghton. I started off my feast w/ a cup o' BOOYAH! You read that right! Who knew "booyah" not only means "indication of satisfaction of accomplishment," according to Wikipedia, but also refers to a wild game stew! I had to get it, just to say I got served a cup of booyah :)
Cup o' Booyah! Delicious!
Then I got a traditional filet as my main dish. The gi-nourmous broccoli frightened me after recent trend of brocolinis I've encountered, but the parmesean risotto cakes were a good starch addition!
Filet w/ brocoli and parmesean risotto cakes
For dessert, I opted for The Sleeping Bear - dark choco cake w/ oozing bittersweet choco inside; served w/ mixed-berry frozen custard and berry coulis. The bomb cake was DA BOMB and the frozen custard tasted wooooonderful! I could eat that alllll day :)
Sleeping Bear Bombshell
Although nothing to do w/ food or running, I wanted to post this pic since it makes Houghton look so exotic and fabulous:
Portage Lift Bridge, pic courtesy of the hubs - isn't he talented??
Before our departure, we headed to Suomi for our last breakfast at the famous Finnish restaurant. For some reason the UP has a large population of Finnish people. And I fell in love w/ nisu, a Finnish sweet bread.
Finnish French Toast made w/ Nisu bread
A weekend full of eats and celebration. Congrats bro-in-law, and thanks Houghton for showing me how beautiful Michigan can still be!
haha, I read "Suomi" and before I got to the next line, I thought to myself, "hey! that means Finland in Finnish! I wonder if the people who named their restaurant that know that..." I can't believe you liked finnish food...I was there for almost 3 months and never had Nisu :(
ReplyDeleteHmm, maybe I should open up a brunch place and call it "Nihon!"
ReplyDeleteAre you coming back to MI ever??