Lake Superior Flavors: A Field Guide to Food and Drink Along the Circle Tour

From the founders of the popular food website Heavy Table comes Lake Superior Flavors, a celebration of food culture around the shores of the greatest of the Great Lakes. Author James Norton and photographer Becca Dilley take readers on a culinary tour around Lake Superior, hitting high-traffic tourist spots and cultural institutions as well as off-the-beaten-path discoveries.

Norton and Dilley also meet food producers and artisans—fishermen, cheesemakers, brewers, and more—and explore the culinary history and current food culture of four distinct regions. Along the North Shore of Minnesota, Norton and Dilley ride along with a herring fisherman struggling to preserve his way of life. In Thunder Bay and Ontario, the authors investigate the roots of the locavore movement in a remarkable conversation with an Ojibwe woman about native food. In the remote Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan, the pair encounters a group of philosophical gourmet monks who make jam from foraged berries. And along the south shore of the lake, they talk with a Wisconsin cheesemaker and goatherd who takes his flock on a nightly walk—cocktail in hand. Alongside Norton and Dilley’s travelogues are capsule reviews of restaurants, insightful tasting notes, and sidebars featuring important dishes of each region—from smoked fish and skillet-popped wild rice to pannukakku (Finnish pancakes) and cudighi (Italian meatball sandwiches).

Showcasing the wild beauty and rugged authenticity of the places and people along the circle tour, Lake Superior Flavors is ideal for local foodies and for visitors who want to learn about food traditions through delicious eating and lively traveling.

James Norton and Becca Dilley run the Heavy Table website and are the authors of The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin. Norton is a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor and Minnesota Monthly and makes frequent appearances on Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current station.