Greenstone Grill is one of two restaurants on Isle Royale. It's the only one open during the small…read moreshoulder season between when flights/ships start landing on the Island for the season and when Rock Harbor fully opens. As such, you really only have two options for food for those staying at the Rock Harbor Lodge - bring your own food, or eat at Greenstone Grill. Since they pretty much have the market cornered, my expectation going in was Sysco/Aramark (their wifi is labeled Aramark, but all their food packaging says Sysco) supplied ingredients cobbled together, which is not necessarily bad if the food is well executed. We brought enough food to the island to last for most of our meals, but we were still interested in trying this place out for some warm and freshly cooked food.
The Greenstone Grill is entirely counter service and has 7 tables inside, with more outside. It gets quite busy during lunch, especially when one of the passenger ships has just docked. They sell snacks, cereal, and some quick sandwiches if you're just picking up food for a trail - obviously these are very expensive when compared to the mainland ($4 for a cup of fruit!?). If you want to sit down to eat, they have a menu of hot foods, with breakfast served until 10:30AM, then lunch served until the kitchen closes at 5PM. The register is open until 6 so you can pick up snacks and items in the fridges.
Local Whitefish Sandwich ($15) - This consists of a large piece of battered and fried whitefish inside of a typical hamburger bun, and topped with two slices of tomato, lettuce, and a heaping portion of cole slaw. The whitefish is surprisingly good. I was expected a mushy, chewy mess with old fishy flavors, but the whitefish is quite tender, mild in flavor and flaky. The batter is delicately crisp, fried to perfection. It's seasoned simply with salt and pepper and works well in the sandwich. The slaw on top is pretty typical: creamy, tangy, probably ladled from a pre-made mix. The dish comes with a small 2oz cup of tartar sauce. I'm not sure it's needed since it just covers up the flavors of the fish. The sandwich also comes with a side of lightly salted kettle chips. Pretty standard. They actually forgot to give us the chips at first and I had to go back up to the counter to get them. (4/5)
The Superior Pizza ($16.75) - Remember as a kid when you made your first pizza on a premade crust and thought that the more toppings you place on top the better? That's essentially what this pizza is. The 12" crust seems to be premade, more similar to unleavened flatbread than a pizza crust. The cornicione is more like cracker bread than a nice chewy, glutinous crust. They are extremely generous with the toppings, including sausage, ham, green peppers, mushroom, onions and plenty of mozzarella. Some of the toppings aren't really even embedded in the pizza, but rather just haphazardly scattered loosely on top due to the bounty of the other pizza toppings. The pizza is so overloaded that as soon as you lift a slice, everything slides off, leaving just the soggy crust and a layer of tangy, sweet tomato sauce. They add so many wet, thickly sliced vegetables on the pizza that there is literally a pool of water/vegetable juices covering the pizza. This is not a good pizza at all, and I would be irate if I received this at any other restaurant. But, let's be honest here - this is the only pizza you can get anywhere near Isle Royale and I'm sure this is like manna from the heavens for campers who hike the multiple day long trek from Wendigo on the other side of the island. The majority of people seemed to be ordering the chicken tenders and fries, which did look good. Maybe I should have gotten that instead of the pizza. (1/5)
Given that this restaurant is located in the middle of nowhere and they only get resupplied occasionally via ship, it's a miracle that it even exists on the island in the first place. If you're on Isle Royale and you want some fresh food made for you, instead of camp food cooked for yourself, this is the place to go.
Bathrooms - There are bathrooms in the building next to the restaurant, but they don't open up until later in the season. Other than that, the closest ones are about a 5 min walk away, near the visitor center.
Overall rating of the food this visit: 2.5/5. I'm leaving my final rating a 3 purely based on the food I received. If you take all the other intangibles into consideration, this is at least a 4.
