MAY 4, 1988
“Oh, I see you’re out for a home-cooked meal, too,” said Roy Bakken as he and his wife, Yvonne, sat down in the booth next to ours in the Tomahawk Cafe one night last week.
“Yes,” I said. “This is my idea of a home-cooked meal.”
Actually, when you go for a meal at this truck stop cafe near the intersection of U.S. Highway 2 and Interstate 29, you are going back to the basics. There’s nothing fast about the food. Nothing fancy, either. If you want pheasant under glass or oysters Rockefeller, you won’t find them here. You might, however, find lutefisk and lefse. This is one of those places where they peel a batch of potatoes every morning and make up a big pot of soup. They roast whole turkeys—none of this turkey roll business. People come in here and order meat and potatoes. With it, they get gravy and vegetables. And they get soup and coleslaw.
I heard the Bakkens order roast pork sandwiches. And later on, I heard Roy Bakken say, “Pretty good.” That’s exactly what Constant Companion says when he is pleased with something. Men don’t get exuberant.
I should have settled for a sandwich, but instead I ordered the dinner special: Polish sausage and sauerkraut with hash browns and coleslaw. CC ordered roast pork and dressing.
We started with a cup of navy bean soup, which was good. I mean real good. As we continued on with our meal, we found everything good. The coleslaw was crisp, and the potatoes were fried to a golden brown. The food reminded us of dinners people used to eat at noon. If there was any complaint, it would have been that there was too much food. Some people, we understand, order a half a dinner.
Pies are a specialty at the Tomahawk Cafe. You see them when you enter the spacious restaurant. They are going round and round right inside the front door in one of those twirling display cases. Sometimes, I get kind of dizzy watching them. There’s a wide choice of homemade pie every day. And they are good. Cream pies are $1.25 a slice and fruit pies are 95 cents. Ask for them a la mode, and it will cost you 30 cents more. But you get Bridgeman’s ice cream, which to my mind is about as good as it comes.
The Tomahawk Cafe is one of those places that keeps you coming back. In the first place, it’s clean. In the second place, it’s homey. The other night, a trucker was sitting at the counter working a crossword puzzle. People were eating their turkey and dressing and Gordon and Colleen Kuklok’s children were helping out clearing tables and running the cash register. The children are Heather, 13, Callie, 12, Meaghan, 10, and Eamon, 9.
Business has been good in the two years the Kukloks have been in their new location. Gordon Kuklok says his philosophy is to serve good food and make it reasonable. They are busiest Sunday, when they serve roast turkey and dressing for $4.25 and hot turkey sandwiches for $3.25. The hours are between 10:30 A.M. and 2 P.M.
Steady customers count on the Tomahawk for soup. They don’t need a calendar. They know that if it’s pea soup, it’s Monday; bean soup, Tuesday; macaroni-tomato, Wednesday; chicken rice, Thursday; old-fashioned tomato, Friday; and vegetable beef, Saturday.
Marilyn says, “Tomahawk has closed down, and there is no new restaurant in its place.”