Lakeside Charm and Farm-Fresh Ambition: A Guide to the Rising Food and Wine Scene in Michigan’s Harbor Country
Point to the city of Chicago on a map, then draw the letter “U” along the shore of Lake Michigan, and your finger will land on the tiny little town of New Buffalo, the heart of what locals call Harbor Country. With a beautiful marina, lakefront sandy stretches along Lake Michigan that are doppelgängers for ocean beaches, and a high concentration of great local restaurants, the area has long been a vacation area for Windy City dwellers. Populations tend to swell in the summer months of July and August, but up until recently, the area was mostly a seasonal getaway.
Over the last few years, though, community-focused projects like Granor Farm have drawn an even higher caliber of chef, such as James Beard Award finalist and cookbook author Abra Berens, who now serves as the property’s culinary director. The farm’s impact on the area has been enormous. The abundance of organic produce, seedlings, herbs and flowers created a local ecosystem that can support other restaurants and local chefs, while the fine-dining service offered during their Taste of Granor meals raised expectations across the area.
At the same time, young winemakers have begun to explore the potential of growing vines in the region due to the porous, rocky soils left behind by receding glaciers on the lakeshore. This quickly-draining terroir, along with proximity to the lake’s microclimates, makes it an ideal pocket for planting vineyards, and a new generation is following in the footsteps of the area’s earliest pioneering winemaker, Jim Lester at Wyncroft Wine.
There are other, more practical reasons the area is thriving. People of all ages moved out of cities like Chicago in waves during the pandemic, driven partly by the rise of remote work and partly by increasing rent in urban areas. When these newcomers decamp to smaller communities like Michigan’s Harbor Country, some of them open bottle shops that double as indie music venues, like the recently unveiled Out There, or Southern cafes like Viola, and the result is a food and wine oasis that’s batting way out of its league.
With a pair of excellent, locally owned boutique hotels, an agriculturally driven brewery, and a day-to-night deli that morphs into a speakeasy at sundown, this little enclave has all the makings of America’s next great food and wine scene. And since it’s only about 90 minutes by car from Chicago, and less than an hour from South Bend and Kalamazoo, it’s easily accessible from quite a few directions. Here’s a rundown on the best of what Harbor Country, and a couple of neighborhoods just beyond it, have to offer.
