Pasties, Upper Michigan?

[Bill Pisarra, Jr.]

Will be in the Upper Peninsula in a couple of weeks, coming up through Wisconsin. Looking for good pasties, thanks in advance.

[Mary Niepokuj]

A couple of years ago we had some great pasties in a town called Laurium - it's adjacent to Calumet, which is up north of Houghton. I'm afraid I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it was also a Finnish bakery - it should be pretty easy to find if you're in that area. Pasties in really touristy areas - i.e., near Mackinac Island - were pretty mediocre.

[bill pisarra, jr.]

We ended up being in the Munising area most of the time. Sydney's Restaurant gets an honorable mention, but we thought the best ones were at Muldoon's Pasty Shop, west end of town on M28. They make a variety, but not surprisingly we went with the Traditional (with rutabagas, mind you, which some might argue is not traditional.) They were excellent and they were big. If you pull up in the morning when they are baking the day's batch, the aroma is almost unbearable.

Surprised the pasty has remained a regional dish, never broken out. I can imagine them having wide appeal. Tis a pity.

[Yooper Family]

Pasty Gourmets...go to pasty.com.....RIGHT NOW! The webmaster has a great Upper Michigan site where the elderly residents of the Stillwaters "Old Folks home" make pasties for mail-order.
Follow the "golden pasty" links for a dose of real time nostalgia.
Being a native of that county, KEWEENAW, I have my own secret family recipe and admit to never having mail-ordered one...but I "herd dey'er pretty good".
Rutabagas not traditional?? Oh, come now...We're using up da root cellar, ya know? (I confess to playing with the recipe...Mine is for sale to da highest bidder).
The second-only-to-mine pasties in the Munising area are to be found at da bait 'n tackle shop in AuTrain....da one on yer left, (There's only one road into town) meaning, by Gawd, da Eastside...Made from scratch by large dough-rolling women with something to prove...and the arms to follow through.
Go 'dere!....'tank me later, it's okay,
BERTA

[magnolia]

Now that's interesting...the pasty (rhymes with but is far from 'nasty') was the staple food of UK miners, particularly Cornish miners. The Cornish pasty is a meal-in-one, sweet and savoury wrapped in dough. The pastry part was discarded because the miners' hands were so dirty - sort of built-in biodegradable packaging. Wonder whether there's a correlation? I have loads of info on Cornish pasties that I will sift through over the weekend and give you the highlights if you are interested...

[berkleybabe]

Absolute correlation--the typical lunch of immigrant copper miners in the Upper Peninsula (aka as UP, peopled by native Yoopers.)Right off the boat to Michigan mines. Still can bring a tear to a real Michigander, to get the real deal from them Yoopers.

[jen kalb]

magnolia, this staple of the cornish miners was carried with them when they came over to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U-P, therefore "yoopers" in local slang)to work the mines there, along with lots of Finns, Swedes and others. Its basically the same thing as the cornish pasties one gets in UK but has its own variations and is the big local specialty in that area.

[brian marshall]

I am familiar with many pasty spots in upper Michigan, but there is also a knockout recipe close to Detroit. Mine. My family goes back to the Calumet area more than 100 years ago and the recipe has remained both true and delicious, no need to alter. I sell only the traditional recipe pasties and I get few complaints. Call me at [phone] for a true treat, priced right.

[berkleybabe]

So where are you? Storefront or private catering? Give us the 411! (Must be in Detroit metro with the 810 area code...)

[Don Korb]

Da name of da place is Toni's, pretty good eh?