During our stay on the Keweenah Peninsula, we stayed in the historic Victorian Hall bed and breakfast. Laurium is an interesting little town, it’s a small village next to the larger town of Calumet, and back during the copper mining hey days Laurium held a lot of the Victorian homes of the various owners, professionals, and other well-to-do folks associated with industry in the area. It’s also the home of George Gipp (as in “win one for the Gipper”). While the town definitely isn’t as affluent as it used to be, it’s still a pleasant, quiet town to stay in while in the area.
Laurium doesn’t have a lot of restaurants (most of those are over in Calumet), but it does have a Mexican place (the Matador), a pasty shop (Toni’s), and a diner (Miners). For breakfast before our day hiking in the Keweenah, we decided to drop in and check out Miners Cafe.
The Miners Cafe has the sort of nice ambiance of “friendly neighborhood breakfast joint”: a bunch of tables in a cozy space, a rather lot of “country bric-a-brac” on the walls (much of it for sales), and an attentive waitstaff running around to all the tables taking orders, topping off coffee, and checking in on people. Menu-wise, it’s one of those “breakfast all day” places, with a variety of breakfast specials including combo plates like the “Hungry Miner” (3 eggs, 3 slices of bacon, 2 toast, and hashbrowns), and a whole page of omelettes (including the Pasty (hamburger, sausage, carrots and onions), the Hawaiian with ham and pineapple).
Myself, I decided on the Corn Beef Hash Omelette, a relatively straightforward omelette with corned beef hash, onions, and more hashbrowns, and had a few pleasant surprises: First of all, for a nominal “two egg omelette”, this was a suprisingly large and filling plate of food, I’m wondering if they occasionally throw a third egg in, or just have unusually large eggs. Second surprise was the toast: often at a diner I’ll just get two slices of whatever the local commercial bakery bread is, but this was a nice, hearty, thick-sliced bread. So, the overall plate was filling, well-executed (they put a good sear on the hash before putting it inside the omelette), and generous.
Miners is open for lunch as well, with a selection of burgers, melts, and club sandwiches. We didn’t make it back for lunch on our trip, but it looks like a good enough place that we’d love to come back for lunch on a future visit.
