Northern Waters Smokehaus — Restaurant in Duluth

On a day trip to Duluth, we decided to stop in to the smokehouse based on online recommendations and reviews. After our visit, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s both over-priced and over-hyped.

Don’t get me wrong, the sandwiches are good. They’re tasty, and everybody was generally pleased, but they didn’t knock our socks off. The bread and all the ingredients are great. Nice combinations of flavors.

Are they $16 a piece ala carte good? No way. The sticker shock of over $70 for four sandwiches (there was a mysterious “convenience charge” tacked on after the already high prices) put a sour taste in our mouths. You’re not even paying for atmosphere: it’s essentially a walk up window right next to a super noisy shipping dock, with some picnic tables on a small wooden deck. Not much in the way of charm.

And they make sure there are multiple opportunities to tip. Tip for what? After dealing with a kinda cranky cashier you’re making me get up and collect my own food and buss my own table. At these prices, the owners should be paying all of their “sandwich artists” 25+ bucks an hour or giving them all college scholarships! They shouldn’t need tips. (Maybe I’m suffering from tipping fatigue, but it just felt gouge-y.)

To add insult to injury, we didn’t get our sandwiches for over 40 minutes. These are cold cut assembled sandwiches. No way in the world they should take that long — there were only three people in front of me in line when we placed our order. Their system is to write your name on a brown paper bag and stick it on the counter outside the service window when ready. They are also supposed to send you a text when your order is ready. After an extended wait, I was checking the bags for names and couldn’t find mine. An employee peeked out of the window and said, “I’ve got a bunch of orders sitting inside here. What’s your name?” Sure enough, my family’s sandwiches were sitting inside, unavailable to us. I asked him how long they had been sitting there. He didn’t answer. He was apologetic when I told him that I also didn’t receive any texts that my order was ready. The apology was honestly too little, too late.

Also bear in mind, this was all happening at around 2 PM on a weekday… not exactly the lunch/weekend/holiday rush.

I mean, let’s be real: the sandwiches are good, but they’re not nearly good enough to justify the prices or the extended wait time.

P.S. An extra star was earned for the tastiness of a separate order of smoked Lake Superior lake trout. (Sadly, it also was being held hostage inside, rather than being the intended shared appetizer.) It was excellently prepared and delicious. If we ever come back (we’re not close), maybe we’ll order ahead and...

A number of people have mentioned northern waters smokehouse to me, so I decided to give it a try. I selected a good sized whole whitefish and a big chunk of lake trout to take home and try, as these local species and personal favorites. I don’t know if these fish were from Lake Superior or not, but the species are represented in local waters.

Prior to smoking, the whitefish was cut several times on one side, presumably to speed the brining and smoking process. These cuts made removing the skin and bones from the fish a little easier, but also obviously increased the penetration of the brine and sped the drying process so that the flesh was salty, leathery and off white in color. Whitefish jerky, really. The preparation suggest processing that is meant to provide a product that stores well long term and is physically stable for packaging and shipping rather than yielding a product consisting of the delicate textures, bright white flesh and subtle flavors I usually associate with smoked whitefish. To be clear, the Northern Waters whitefish is not bad, very different from some of the other excellent products available in the area.

The lake trout was was processed as a fillet rather than a chunk of fish in the round and dried to a jerky consistency as well, though I give it higher marks for the subtle seasoning and better overall flavor than the whitefish, probably because it is any oilier fish to start with. It was a little sweet and reminded me flavor and texture wise of candied salmon I’ve had Elsewhere. As with whitefish, smoked lake trout can be a delicate and wonderfully subtle food that is not so on the nose as the Northern Waters Product.

Overall this is a neat little shop with a wonderful array of products. The smoked fish isn’t bad. I will try some sausages the next time I’m in the neighborhood, they...

Extremely disappointed. Every year we come up through the Duluth area, we’ve made Northern Waters Smokehaus a regular stop, and usually multiple times, making sure we went home with a bunch of smoked fish and bison buddies. We first tried Wednesday as we passed through, but had missed them by an hour of closing, so we took a photo of the hours to make sure we would get a chance at some good food with their posted closing time of 6pm. After hours hiking Tettegouche State Park, we made the hour dive back to Canal Park arriving in the line outside the order window at Northern Waters at 4:02 pm. We were all super eager and had picked out what we wanted on the drive down. As we stepped in line, a woman came up to us and said matter-of-factley “The lady in front of you is our last customer for the day. We won’t be serving anyone else”. As she was turning away, my husband replied that the hours today were till 6 pm. She just glanced at us and said, “Yeah. We just decided to close early because we are short handed”. Then turned away and off she went. I stood there for a moment or two kinda stunned and of course extremely disappointed. I get being short staffed and having a busy 5 hours can make you cranky, but she could have been a smidge sympathetic. It was just like, nope we’re not serving you, just the person in front of you and then not even uttering a simple sorry. I don’t know what was worse, the rudeness, disrespect, and being shooed away or being let down for a second day in a row after going to great lengths to make it there well within the posted hours. So yeah, the food is good, but I think being treated kindly is important and this experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Thanks for all the good years Northern Waters and much luck...