St. Louis’ love affair with the Great River Road is long overdue. When I first discovered it years ago, it was never discussed in local newspapers or magazines as a recreational spot except for an occasional vague referral to “Alton Lake” – which, as a Missourian, I assumed was an actual lake, not a part of the Mississippi River. Anyway, as a scenic drive, it has no peer close to the Metro area, and particularly at this time of year, our leaf peepers come almost as thick as those in New England. And having spent a little time there, I can tell you a good autumn here will hold its own with New England’s.
The trip itself is highly conducive to a day of hooky if you wish to avoid any traffic. But if a little Sunday drive is what you have in mind, I have a good excuse for you. The Pere Marquette Lodge in the state park of the same name serves Sunday brunch. The park begins just north of Grafton, where the Illinois and Mississippi rivers meet, and the lodge itself is about seven miles north of the stoplight in Grafton.
The lodge building looks modernish, but inside it is one of those main rooms that are a throwback to national park construction ideas before World War II – rustic magnificence, a huge fireplace and a high, beamed ceiling. If it weren’t for the upholstered chairs, the dining room would feel like something out of an Adirondack camp. And there isn’t a buffet line in sight.
No, it’s not a menu brunch, it’s a buffet. But the buffet is set up in another room, down the hall. The trek is a little farther than anyone would like, especially those with difficulty handling a plate, but the dining room is far too small for a buffet this size. And the carnivores that this brunch is aimed at surely wouldn’t like to be crowded.
It’s a Sunday dinner sort of brunch. Biscuits and sausage gravy, both pretty good but not exceptional, and scrambled eggs and potatoes, both suffering from life in a chafing dish. Sausage and bacon maintained a surprising degree of crispness and moisture, two seemingly incompatible qualities. And there was an omelet station near the Belgian waffles, which are real Belgians, not regular waffle batter poured in a deep-well iron.
But all this is prologue.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a whole turkey on a buffet line. It was a Norman Rockwell turkey, golden and moist, carved to order – why, someone asked for some of the crisp skin and was smilingly served. Forget traumatic Thanksgivings of the past and the bald eagles that nest nearby in the winter; this is our real national bird. There’s a whole ham, too. And usually there’s a steamship round of beef, but on my recent visit, the supplier had fouled (or beefed) up and sent a brisket. The chef gently simmered it until it was nearly falling apart and taught someone to carve it properly, across the grain. And the fried chicken was crunchy, greaseless and well-seasoned.
Careful choosing among the sides and salads can yield some excellent results. An odd, pale dish (nothing is labeled) turned out to be a sort of chicken-and-dumpling casserole. Smoked whole salmon probably isn’t smoked, but it’s better than much of what comes out of a plastic wrapper. A pasta salad made with – of all things – ravioli was strikingly good, with a little crabmeat thrown in with it for good measure. Even the crab salad, which these days one assumes is made with the fake crab meat, was tasty.
Not everything is great – the green salad was grocery store mix, the cucumber salad had been marinated waaaay too long and why aren’t green beans and ham hocks there in place of anonymous carrots? The sweet rolls and muffins were fresh but soggy, making one wonder about a too-rapid thawing.
The dessert table was not the 24 feet advertised, but there was a fair variety of cakes. Don’t pick any of them until after trying the clearly homemade cobbler. You may find, as I did, that the idea of all you can eat of, say, blackberry cobbler, a publicly admitted weakness of mine, is too endearing to pass up. The nibbles I had of other items just didn’t hold up to the glory of the cobbler.
Pleasant, helpful service, absolutely no dress code – and no reservations at all except for parties of five or more. There’s some logic to this. Between the drawbridge to the north in Hardin and the traffic bottlenecks that can occur in Grafton in peak season, there are often problems in being punctual on this stretch of Illinois 100.
This article appears in March 2024.