We had ventured over the small Lake Michigan lakeside town of Grand Haven during our vacation in the Grand Rapids area to hang out on the beach and to probably find some place to have lunch. After spending some time walking the beach, we ended up in downtown Grand Haven looking for a place to eat. We had been in Grand Haven about 9 years ago and had lunch at The Kirby House, so we didn't want to go there. We found a place just down the street from The Kirby House and decided to give it a try for lunch - The Copper Post.
The Copper Post is located in a historic building that dates back to 1872 when it was originally the Grand Haven Post Office. Over the years, the building had housed a number of businesses, but over the past 30 plus years it has primarily been restaurant space. For over 20 years, the building housed the popular Rosebud restaurant before it closed in 2014. A place called the Wooden Nickel occupied the space for less than a year before it was replaced by the Grand Haven Brew House. Unfortunately, the Grand Haven Brew House lasted just short of two-and-a-half years before the doors closed in August of 2017.
Two men who owned a real estate/property management firm in Grand Haven - John Groothuis and David Ten Cate - came forward to take possession of the building. They formed a company - Capstone Hospitality - and brought in two other partners - Doug Vanse and Mike Thorp to complete the investors in what would be a new restaurant. Thorp had an extensive background in running restaurants before he joined Capstone Hospitality and he was brought on as the managing partner of the restaurant. And Thorp completed the management team as he hired Lee Bigby as the chef and general manager. The Copper Post opened its doors in late May of 2018.
We had parked down Washington Ave from the Copper Post and walked back to the restaurant located on the corner of Washington and S. 1st Street. (see map) The corner front door entrance opened into the bar area complete with hard wood flooring and ornamental copper ceiling. The bar was lively with the lunch crowd. We had our choice of sitting at a high table-top in the bar, or for a more conventional table in the dining room. My wife decided on the dining room.
The dining room was just back behind the bar area and featured a wall of banquette seating, a smaller bar that was probably used if the dining room was being used for a private function, and a series of posters of vintage Saturday Evening Post magazine covers. I didn't figure out the connection between the restaurant and the Saturday Evening Post until I found out later that the Copper Post was the old post office for Grand Haven.
When we walked into the dining area, it was about half full and the tables that didn't have people seated at them had not been cleared yet. There was just one table in the middle of the dining room (I hate banquette seating) that was cleared and we took that one.
The big reason why the tables hadn't been cleared is that there was just one young lady working the dining room. Her name was Hannah and she was working her butt off trying to keep up with the lunch rush crowd that was starting to thin out when we got there. Hannah came over and apologized for not greeting us sooner, but my wife and I have come to expect slower than normal service as restaurants try to work through staffing issues.
Hannah took our drink order and I ordered up a Bell's Two Hearted pale ale. My wife, however, went with one of the Copper Post's specialty drink - the blueberry mojito. It was like a regular mojito with white rum, only it featured blueberry juice and whole blueberries with a splash of soda water and a lime. My wife enjoyed it tremendously. I was reluctant to try it because while I like blueberries, I didn't think I'd like the combination of the rum and blueberries together.
The menu at the Copper Post was an interesting mix of food items. Appetizers such as crispy Brussels sprouts, jumbo shrimp with a Cajun beer butter, and a smoked garlic artichoke dip with goat cheese and pita chips jumped out at me. They also had burgers and sandwiches such as a Cubano sandwich and a fried walleye Po' Boy. Salads such as a southwest fiesta salad made with Jamaican jerk chicken and a classic wedge salad were also available. And on Saturday and Sunday, the Copper Post serves breakfast and has an all-day happy hour for bloody marys, mimosas and screwdrivers.
I thought about getting a burger - their Copper burger with onion straws and provolone cheese was interesting to me. But, then again, I wasn't all that hungry as we stopped for coffee and a croissant at a bakery in Grand Rapids earlier in the day. My wife, of course, has to have three squares a day, and she was hungry for something more substantial than just a salad.
We were looking at some of the entrees - the shrimp appetizer was available as a meal with two sides. There was a barbecued mac & cheese bowl with pulled pork added to it, but my wife thought that may be too heavy. And she wasn't interested in the Jamaican jerk chicken entree.
What we ended up getting was the pulled pork platter - 1/2 lb. of in-house smoked pulled pork with a choice of two sides. Fries, tater tots and cole slaw were available as the regular sides, but for an upcharge we could have gotten sweet potato waffle fries, mac & cheese, crispy Brussels sprouts, onion rings or or a house-made potato salad. My wife let me pick a side - of course I went with tater tots. To my surprise, she picked the cole slaw. I would have bet that she would have gone with the crispy Brussels sprouts. She said, "I knew you wouldn't eat them, so I went with something that I know we'd both like." She's so considerate sometimes, almost too considerate. I wouldn't have mind trying their Brussels sprouts.
The pulled pork platter was served on a small cookie sheet on wax paper. (Here's a tip from Road Tips - go out and buy about 4 of the 10"x13" for your home. We use them all the time for everything from serving food on them to holding meats for grilling.) There was definitely more than a half-pound of pulled pork on the patter. There was also a generous serving of tater tots along with the pork. The cole slaw came in a 4 ounce styrofoam container.
The pulled pork was actually very good. Most, tender, and it had a lot of flavor. The pulled pork came with a sweet and smoky barbecue sauce served in small 2 ounce cups. I thought I'd need more barbecue sauce, but the way that Hannah was still running her tail off trying to keep up, I just let it go.
The tater tots were, well, tater tots - it's pretty tough to screw up good tots. But the cole slaw was outstanding. It was sweet and creamy and went extremely well with the pulled pork. My wife and I were very happy with our choice of the pulled pork and our two sides.
When we finished up, Hannah came over to check to see if we wanted any dessert. She tempted us with a slice of cheesecake or a smoked caramel flan, but I was full enough. My wife was interested in something that she saw on the dessert part of the menu - Ice Box ice cream bars. Hannah said, "Oh, those are great." She said that the ice cream bars are made up in Muskegon by the Ice Box Brand gourmet ice cream company. "You can find them at a lot of places," she told us. "They're pretty famous around here."
There was a listing of what Ice Box Brand ice cream bars they had available at the Copper Post on the wall near the front door. There was a caramel cashew bar and a strawberry-lemon bar with a shortcake coating. That my wife thought long and hard about. The Key Lime Pie bar got my attention. But in the end, we decided to forego the ice cream bars and go find a local brewery as our dessert instead .
The Copper Post was a pleasant surprise for us. The pulled pork platter with cole slaw and tater tots that we shared was perfect for lunch that day. Our service from Hannah - who was saddled with being the server and bussing tables because of the lack of staff - was very good. She was friendly and accommodating even though she was running her butt off. And the ambience of the historic old building in which the restaurant was housed was comfortable with a laid-back vibe. We really didn't know what we were getting into when we went in to the Copper Post, but it turned out to be a nice experience.
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