The Smoky Grail

Smoked salmon and I have had a long relationship all over Michigan. I've sampled it all around the Lower and Upper Peninsulas, and every bit of it was delicious. Michigan is a veritable playground of smoked fish purveyors, and I have done my fieldwork. But a girl is allowed a favorite — and mine is Gustafson's.

Gustafson's is in Brevort, Michigan — a roadside smokehouse on US-2 in the Upper Peninsula, about twenty miles west of the Mackinac Bridge. Cross into St. Ignace, point the car toward the Lake Michigan shoreline, and in under half an hour you're there. On the right day, the maple smoke finds you before the sign does.

And what a sign. A green fish leaping over the words SMOKED FISH, with beef jerky and cheese curds underneath, homemade jam on one side and wild rice on the other. Then the giant yellow letters — GUSTAFSONS — spelled out along the fence like the place is announcing itself to the whole highway. Because it is.

Gustafson's has been family-owned since 1978, and the fish is smoked right there, over maple wood. The salmon is the one I dream about. I like mine drier and smokier than most — and Gustafson's smokes across a whole range, so somewhere in that case there's always my piece. I can pick it just by looking at it; I know my fish on sight, and I'm almost always guaranteed to get it exactly how I like it. The perfume of it when I open the paper is more intoxicating than any of my bougie perfumes. I have never once made it home intact: barely out of the driveway, I'm already into the plastic, then the paper, scarfing a piece down in the car. They smoke whitefish and lake trout too, and make a smoked fish dip that has no business being as good as it is. Get the salmon. Then get the whitefish anyway. You'll thank me somewhere around Marquette.

Half the fun is that the fish counter shares a roof with everything else a UP road trip runs on — groceries, beef jerky in more flavors than I can responsibly list, cheese curds, jams, wild rice, and a gift shop with a wall of wooden signs funny enough to slow your whole schedule down. They sell Stormy Kromer hats there, which tells you everything about whether a place understands the assignment. Around here, we notice hats.

Here's how I know it's the real thing: it always came home. That was the standing rule — nobody went to the UP and came back empty-handed, least of all The Chief after a weekend of snowmobiling or four-wheeling with the boys. Gustafson's was the price of reentry at our house — the whole price. Not flowers, not a list of things. Just the fish. It was my be-all and end-all; I never asked for anything else. Ask The Chief where my favorite smoked salmon is and he won't hesitate — there's only ever been one answer. And on an ordinary weeknight, months after a trip, I'd sit down to a plate of that smoked fish with a mound of plain white rice — the way my Filipino half insists smoked fish is meant to be eaten — and it was perfect. No sauce, no fuss. Just smoke, salt, and rice. The Upper Peninsula and my mother's table, agreeing with each other completely.

People throw the words "holy grail" around. I don't. This is mine — the Smoky Grail. If you're crossing the bridge, you have no excuse: it's twenty miles, it's on the way to everywhere else in the UP, and every other smoked salmon you ever eat will be delicious. It just won't be Gustafson's.

If you go: Gustafson's Smoked Fish, W4467 US-2, Brevort, MI — GPS 46.019007, -85.037093, if you'd rather let the map do the finding. Open daily (listed 8–6; hours can shift with the season, so peek before you detour). Bring a cooler — you'll want more than you planned, and the fish deserves a cold ride home.