Eat at Joe’s in Empire, Michigan

What’s a great northern Michigan small town without a great northern Michigan bar like Joe’s Friendly Tavern in Empire, Michigan?

Much as Empire is one of those quintessential northern Michigan small towns, Joe’s is one of those quintessential small-town joints where you immediately feel at home the moment you walk into the door and belly up to the bar. And people have been making themselves at home at Joe’s for about 70 years!

We’ve loved going to Joe’s for years. I remember it being one of the first places Tim and I went out to eat when we started going “up North” years ago.

It’s a great place to stop for a cold beer on a hot summer day, and it’s an equally great place to go for a hot bowl of soup on a cold winter night.

When I finally conquered the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb a few years ago, the first place I went after coming back down from the top of the dune was Joe’s—to enjoy what I considered to be a well-earned beer and cheeseburger.

Summer brings a lot more tourists and family groups out to Joe’s. The pace slows down during the cold winter months when you might only have to share the place with a regular or two who wander into the bar to pluck their personal mugs from a rack on the back wall to help themselves to coffee. Our most recent trip to Joe’s was during the winter, when we had the place to ourselves, and I shot these photos. 

Joe’s Friendly serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but visitors may best know the place for its burgers. Joe’s burgers come from meat freshly ground in their own butcher shop each day, and the humble patties earned coverage in the New York Times, the Flint Journal, the Lansing State Journal, Traverse City Record-Eagle, Traverse Magazine, the Detroit Free Press, and the local weekly, the Leelanau Enterprise.

Check out the appetizer menu for a real northern specialty, fried smelt with tartar sauce. Order these little fried fish to share with your table mates. Smelt are so small, they aren’t boned before cooking, so be sure to eat them quickly as bones harden as the fish cools.

If you want to have a more swanky dining experience, try Joe’s version of “surf and turf”, a burger with grilled onion accompanied by a half pound of fried smelt.

Other menu favorites of mine include: grilled cheese sandwiches (one of my pet peeves are restaurants that have grilled cheese only on their kids’ menus and don’t allow adults to order them), corn-meal dusted lake perch or walleye, whitefish cooked campfire style (steamed in tin foil after a quick marking on the charbroiler), or tater tots as a side dish with your meal.

Take a little bit of Joe’s home with you by purchasing a T-shirt, sweatshirt, or a jug of Joe’s own draft root beer at the bar before you leave.

I can’t wait for my next trip north because writing this definitely makes me hungry for to visit Joe’s Friendly for a burger or some fried smelt!

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Comments

[Fried Hog]

A hit in Empire would sure be welcomed.

[Dominique King]

Empire/Leelanau County isn't the easiest location to get a hit in, but I managed to spend enough bills there that at least a couple of them stuck around and got hit :)