Great Escapes 2008: Duluth-Superior

No Minnesotan needs an introduction to Duluth, only a reminder. And it is this: There are, of course, two Duluths.

There’s Duluth when the wind is not blowing east to west off Lake Superior, when strong adults can walk upright, when small children, pets, and the elderly are in no danger of being swept up and flattened against a light pole or a brick wall by gales howling unimpeded from Ontario to Canal Park. This is the Duluth of fine days for exploring one of America’s genuine cities, a place that looks like nowhere else in the lower forty-eight. A place that proudly eschews most of the bland Sunbelt–chic aesthetic that has turned the rest of the country into mile after monotonous mile of charmless, Anywhere USA strip malls and franchise restaurants.

The other Duluth, when the big lake actually is howling, is, well, let’s just call it an adventure you can brag about to your cousins in Florida, and leave it at that.

As someone who owns a place twenty miles south of Superior, Wisconsin, and spends every other weekend in the Twin Ports come sun or sleet, I’m protective of the two towns’ reputations. My fur gets ruffled when I hear some overpampered metropolitan making snide jokes about whether mukluks and sled dogs are allowed in Duluth’s best restaurants or if “better restaurants” means the 3.2 beer joints down by the Superior docks. Cute.

If you feel better making cheap jokes, knock yourself out. But as a weekend émigré, I’ve grown fond of Duluth and its, uh, not quite as chic and glamorous sister city, Superior. But then I don’t go there looking for some slushy Nordic version of Palm Springs. Take the two towns for what they are, I say. Savor the distinctive characters you stumble across. They are their own reward, which is to say a change of pace from the Twin Cities.

SUPERIOR

My niece and her husband once counted the bars from the docks of Superior south down Tower Avenue and out Wisconsin 35 to our place. They lost track somewhere past forty-three. Point being: It’ll be years after the asteroid hits before Wisconsin runs out of beer.

The classic Superior gold standard for beer and burgers is, of course, The Anchor. Everyone in Bloomington seems to know about The Anchor; it’s that kind of iconic joint, a cluttered womb of dusty nautica overwhelmed by the sizzle and scent of frying burgers. And we’re not talking wretched frozen patties, we’re talking big, shamelessly greasy burgers that no human can resist or eat without profound aftershocks of sweet, sweet guilt. (My wife, a Rachael Ray/Nigella foodie, still recalls her first Anchor burger with the misty-eyed wistfulness usually reserved for a long-lost lover—I really should fly into a jealous rage over the things.)

Eddie's in Superior

Several years back, we were tipped to Eddie’s, a steak-and-ribs place so far out on the east side of Superior you think you’re in danger of falling off Highway 2 into the Upper Peninsula. The building is some kind of wood-frame storefront relic of a long bygone era. Although it’s adjacent to a railroad line, its décor is built around automobile Americana. Old oil cans. Models of classic Edsels. Elegiac paintings of fifties cruisers and the Flying Red Horse. Somebody’s kitsch collection put to decorative use, basically. Eddie’s garlic-infused steak has never let us down, and the ribs, with their thick, gooey brown sugar– and–vinegar sauce fall apart in your fingers, which means lots and lots of licking. (It’s a great date place.)

But as at The Anchor, it’s the clientele that is the real sauce on a night out. While The Anchor gets its share of UMD frat and sorority kids and “in the know” Twin Citians, few if any Cities folk know about Eddie’s and even fewer consider driving more than a block off Tower Avenue. Most are in such a desperate hurry to flee Superior’s swank-deprived, working-class vibe all they can think of is getting back over the Blatnik Bridge ASAP and into some lakeside suite with foil-wrapped mints on the pillows.

Not so long ago, a night at Eddie’s put us in the company of a three-generational family dinner, with the eldest of the clan well informed on current events and very hard of hearing. Grandpa was some kind of Bob LaFollette–style populist with no great affection for certain high members of the current national government. Somehow his ninety-decibel opinions of candidates and programs meshed nicely with the steak, ribs, and imagery of big-finned, cheap-gas, V-8 fecklessness.