St Ignace Truck Stop — Restaurant in Moran Township

I can't believe I am the first guy to write a post about this place. First of all, I want to say that I worked as a chef for many years. I live on Mackinac Island and I've never walked in this place until this past Thursday.

This is-- without a doubt-- the best family-type restaurant in St. Ignace. As a chef, I am sick of all the Northern Michigan crap that only serve half-assed food because they figure they'll never see you again.

First impression: The place is absolutely spotless. Incredibly clean for a so-called "truckstop."

The cook made the food look like artwork. My girlfriend had ham and eggs and I could have taken a picture of it for a food magazine. Oh, what's the big deal, right? The big deal is that the cook grilled her ham ON A CHARCOAL GRILL and he even scored it. (For the non-chefs reading this... when you score meat on a grill, that means you turn it halfway through the cooking process and give the meat nice diamond-shaped grill marks.)

I have eaten breakfast at 4-star hotels and have never in my life seen ham and eggs with grill marks. Eggs and hash browns were also picture-perfect. The toast they served was extra-thick, fresh and NOTHING like the limp toast at the chain restaurant that is right next door.

I had pork roast which was just awesome. The pork was perfectly tender, but not mush. Like something your grandmother would make. There were tiny vegetable fibers in the gravy...because it was obviously made from house-made stock. No canned gravy here.

I can't believe I never stopped in this place. If you want to feed your family well,...

The cooks here are a joke. I personally have 10+ years in restaurant management..and know a bad seed when I see one. We came here for my birthday lunch on our 7 hour ride back home from the UP and wanted to try out a few different items on the menu. We ordered hamburgers with no bun and nachos to share. We were sat down right infront of the cooks window and could hear every conversation they had.. not only were they loud about everything they were saying, but they were walking by the window eating fries or chips while cooking the food!! That’s sick! To top it off they literally were talking about our order as if we couldn’t hear them.. Saying “ oh yeah buy a bunch of food and order a Diet Coke” and “oh they want the nachos first so I need to put those in the microwave” the nachos are literally called “Baked Nachos”... we watched them pull the nachos out of the microwave and told them we didn’t want anything to do with them due to the fact that he “baked” them in the microwave.... when we told him that, all he did was literally shrug his shoulders and say “mmm lunch!” At that point we knew what we were dealing with... and that’s an Extremely unintelligent person who has NO business working there or cooking food in general. He has no pride or ambition, just a piss poor attitude and terrible customer service skills.. heck.. hospitality in general.. you guys lost $50+ today...we let the waitress and guy know how we felt and walked out. We never will...

This restaurant was recommended to me by a friend who said he had a good whitefish dinner there. So, being in the area, we stopped and gave it a try. I am a big fan of whitefish, so I had the whitefish (broiled) dinner. It included a choice of sides (I had a side salad, it was fresh and crispy), choice of potato (I chose baked), a vegetable dish (corn), a nice dinner roll, and lots of butter. Everything was nicely prepared, plain and simple, with nice-sized portions -- a very complete and satisfying meal! I was very pleased with the whitefish, the chef had seasoned and broiled it to perfection. My wife had the walleye fingers, her dinner contents were basically the same as mine, except she ordered mashed potatoes which she was sure were made with real potatoes. She wasn't ecstatic about the breading on the walleye fingers. She got a generous portion so I got to try a couple. The fish was good but I agreed that I had had better breading. I imagine that this is a matter of personal taste, you may find them to be just fine.

The restaurant was very busy when we visited. The cooks and wait staff really kept things moving. Although there were some signs warning that there might be delays due to being short-staffed, I think that their efforts kept the delays to a minimum. My commendations to them!

The restaurant has an extensive menu and I saw many other choices that looked very interesting. I'll be anxious to return and try...