Spurnpiker's Journal: Foraging for breakfast in the heart of Port Clinton
Food cooked over a campfire always tastes better. So does food cooked by someone else.
On a recent camping trip I set out to do just that; let somebody else do the cooking. It was a solo trip, so I couldn’t rely on campmates to prepare meals. But there were plenty of folks at the campground. I suppose I could have tried to wheedle one of my neighbors into extending a breakfast or dinner invitation. Or casually walk by their picnic table, point to something on their plate and ask, “Hey, you gonna eat all that?”
I resigned myself to venturing out into the backroads of Ottawa County in search of a restaurant.
As mentioned in a previous column, after registering at East Harbor State Park and putting up my tent, I drove to Marblehead for brunch. I stopped at the Marblehead Galley where I ordered a Lake Erie perch dinner and a beer. Really hit the spot. Especially considering that I planned to return to my tent for an early afternoon nap.
What I didn’t mention in that column was that I had hoped to get something to eat at Channel Grove Marina, which is about halfway between the campground and Marblehead.
Recalling the past fondly and trying to find it in the present
Why? Nostalgia. I sometimes ate breakfast there when we went on family fishing trips in the ’60s. We had an old Johnson Seahorse motor but couldn’t afford a boat. So we’d go to Channel Grove, rent a v-hull boat for the week and fish out in the harbor.
Before heading out onto the lake — or on the way back in — we’d stop at the marina for gas and a bite to eat.
I wasn’t optimistic when I turned off of Ohio 163 onto Channel Grove Road. The days of renting a boat on the cheap in Lake Erie’s Western Basin are long gone. As are places that cater to the blue-collar crowd. I asked a woman on the dock whether they still served food there. Her look alone gave me the answer.
So, I shook the dust off the animal skin I was wearing, dragged my knuckles across the parking lot and made my exit.
My humiliation suddenly turned into determination. Before the camping trip was over, before I headed home, I’d find an honest-to-goodness ma and pa restaurant — a place with a history, a place where they catered to people like me, unashamed of our tattered animal skins and calloused knuckles.
Early the next morning I crawled out of my tent, wended my way through a throng of raccoons, climbed into my truck and headed for Port Clinton.
Looking for a ma and pa restaurant in Port Clinton
“Who knows?” I said to myself and the trash pandas pawing at my truck, clamoring for handouts. “Maybe I’ll find a nice little ma and pa restaurant there.”
In decades of vacationing and fishing around Lake Erie’s West Basin, I’d never really spent much time at Port Clinton. Sometimes we went there to get our fish cleaned. On one occasion, I drove there to bail one of my fishing buddies out of jail. (Another story for another time.)
I parked my truck near the fish cleaning place and shuffled down the sidewalk wading through dozens of gulls that apparently were too satiated to fly. They made little effort to get out of my way as I walked south on Madison Street.
The only other two-legged creature stirring — the only one without feathers — was a man sweeping the sidewalk in front of a bakery. I asked him if he could recommend a good downtown eatery.
He pointed toward a railroad overpass down the block and said, “See where all those cars are parked? Best place in town.”
As I walked through the front door of Ala Carte Cafe I felt as though I had entered a portal into the past. The unpretentious décor and clientele, the aroma of comfort food, a welcoming smile from a waitress behind the counter.
“Just sit anywhere,” she said.
She, I’d later learn, was Diana Fisher. She’d been working there for 30 years.
Taking it all in
I sat in a booth at the back of the restaurant and took it all in. At a table in the front of the restaurant was a group of casually dressed men, getting breakfast before heading out for some walleye fishing. You could sense their anticipation and hear it in their conversation.
A lone woman sat in a booth on the other side of the room, across from the fishermen. She looked to be in her thirties. She wore loose-fitting clothing and a thick stocking cap, clearly overdressed for a balmy summer morning. Sometimes people dress to shelter themselves from more than the weather.
An old man perched on one of the chrome-rimmed stools at the counter, watching the weather forecast on TV. You got the impression that he’d been sitting there all his life and they built the restaurant around him.
Like the staff and clientele, the food was unpretentious. Comfort food. Real breakfast. I ordered a meat omelet.
When it came time to pay up, I thanked my waitress and told her I’d be back.
“We open at 4:30,” she said.
I returned the next day, although not quite that early. I found what I’d been looking for on this trip — a real ma and pa restaurant that wasn’t just in the heart of town; it was the heart of the town.
Postscript: I returned to Port Clinton and Ala Carte Café once again. Last month, I drove up to chat with the owners and learn more about the restaurant and its history. More on that later.
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Foraging for breakfast in the heart of Port Clinton
