Food of the North Country

The food of the far north of New York is plain, filling and local: a hot dog under meat sauce, cheese from the dairy country, maple in March, apples in the fall and a Quebec habit or two picked up across the border. Most of it is within an hour and a half of the cabins, and the rest you can cook in a cabin kitchen. This is how we would eat our way through a weekend here, with the story behind each dish and the road miles to where you find it.

How to eat a North Country weekend

Our advice is to plan the weekend around one drive and two meals at the cabin. The drive is to Plattsburgh for michigans, about 61 road miles east of the cabins, with a cheese stop in Chateaugay on the way out. The cabin meals are the ones you shop for in Malone and cook on the grill and the stove: red hot dogs made in Malone, salt potatoes, a cheese board, and maple syrup on Sunday's pancakes.

Each of the three cabins has a full kitchen, a grill and a fire pit, so the cooking half of the plan works in any season. The eating-out half depends on the calendar. The michigan stands around Plattsburgh keep their own seasons, the maple farms open their doors on two weekends in March, and the orchards sell cider from late summer into the fall. The table near the end of this post puts it all by month.

This post leaves the restaurant list to the where-to-eat page, which covers breakfast, dinner and late food near the cabins, and the stores to groceries and supplies. What follows is the food that belongs to this corner of the state, and where we would go for each.

The michigan

The michigan is the food Plattsburgh claims as its own. The Town of Plattsburgh describes it as a natural-casing hot dog in a split-top bun under a seasoned meat sauce, with mustard and onions if you want them. The onions are the part that needs a word of local vocabulary. You can have them on top of the sauce, or "buried," tucked under the sauce or the dog. Order "two with, buried" at a stand and you will get two michigans with the onions underneath.

The sauce is the point. It is made from ground beef, tomato puree and spices and simmered for hours, and most recipes lean on cumin, with chili powder, black pepper and sometimes allspice or paprika. It is a meat sauce with no beans. Purists accept onions and yellow mustard on top and nothing else: no beans in the sauce and no cheese on the dog.

The bun matters too. Michigan buns are steamed top-loaders, similar to the New England split-top style and a little sturdier, so they hold the sauce. And the dog itself, at many stands, is a red one made in Malone, about ten miles from the cabins; more on that below.

You will see two names on the signs, michigans and red hots. They are the same thing. Clare and Carl's calls itself a "Texas Red Hots" stand, and there is no Texas connection in the name; it is one of the region's two words for the same hot dog.

Michigan, Detroit or Plattsburgh

Nobody agrees on where the michigan came from, and the town is happy to say so. In 2022 the William G. Pomeroy Foundation gave the Town of Plattsburgh a marker from its Hungry for History program, which marks historic regional foods. It stands at 4736 US 9 and reads, in part, that the michigan "was advertised as early as 1927" and that the "origin of name is buried in local lore."

The 1927 advertisement is the firmest piece of evidence. It ran in the Plattsburgh Daily Republican and announced that Eula and Garth Otis would open a "Michigan Hot Dog Shop." Eula Otis is the center of the story. In a 1984 Press-Republican interview, Nitzi Rabin, who ran one of the early stands, said she coined the name "michigans" and supplied his sauce; Adirondack Life's history of the dish adds that the couple came from Detroit, where she learned to make meat sauce, and moved to Plattsburgh in the 1920s. Seven Days tells a second version: in the 1940s she worked at Clare and Carl's and greeted customers with "I'm from Michigan," and the name stuck to the dogs. The Pomeroy Foundation is more careful: many people believe Eula learned the recipe in Michigan, it says, and that may explain the name, but it is not confirmed.

The other Michigan story starts with George Todoroff, who founded the Jackson Coney Island restaurant in Jackson, Michigan, in 1914. A popular version has his sauce traveling to New York. Adirondack Life points out that Todoroff never left Michigan, which makes that version hard to credit.

Then there is Detroit. Meat-topped hot dogs there were sold by Greek immigrants, and the cumin in michigan sauce is often traced to those Greek roots. Detroit's own Coney sauce uses beef hearts, which give it a taste of offal that a michigan does not have. The closest relative, by Adirondack Life's reckoning, is the Flint Coney, from the other big Michigan car town. In the Midwest these dogs are called Coneys; around Plattsburgh they carry the name of the state.

The stands came after the Otis shop. Nitzi and Jack Rabin opened Nitzi's in 1935, reportedly with Eula Otis's recipe, almost a decade after the first michigans in town. Clare and Carl Warne first served dogs in 1942. Gus' Red Hots opened in 1951, and McSweeney's in 1991. Each of the old stands has its own sauce, and arguing about which is best is half the fun of a visit.

Red hots made in Malone

The hot dog under a lot of that sauce comes from Malone. Glazier Packing Company makes its Classic Red Hot Dogs in Malone, and the company first made franks in 1903. They are pork and beef in a red casing, the "red snappers" of the North Country, and purists say a michigan should be built on one. Gus' Red Hots has used Glazier's dogs since it opened in 1951, and McSweeney's has used them too.

For the cabins, that makes the simplest North Country supper a pack of Glazier's on the grill. Look for them in the cooler when you shop in Malone. The company also sells through its online store and ships across the United States, Alaska and Hawaii included, so you can have the taste sent home after the trip. Besides the red hots, Glazier sells pickled products and a line it calls Adirondack Smoked Meats.

Where to eat a michigan from the cabins

The stands are around Plattsburgh, a drive of about an hour and a half. From the cabins the road runs north on County Route 25 toward Malone, east on US 11 through Chateaugay, then along the Military Turnpike and NY 374 into Plattsburgh. Clare and Carl's, on State Route 9 south of downtown, is about 64 road miles from the cabins, and the Pomeroy marker stands nearby.

In July 2026 the town's Michigan Month passport named five stands: Gus' Red Hots, Ronnie's Michigan Stand, Clare and Carl's, McSweeney's Red Hots and Michigans Plus. The Plattsburgh guide covers the city around them; here is what sets a few of the stands apart.

• Gus' Red Hots. The diner-style building on Route 9 is one of the first things Vermonters see when they drive off the Plattsburgh ferry. It opened in 1951 and added a dining room in 1975. After about a year and a half closed, it reopened under new owners, Rob and Jenette Steele, on May 31, 2021, and they set out to keep the old place as it was.
• McSweeney's Red Hots. Steven and Mike Farrell opened the first McSweeney's in 1991, down Route 9 from Gus', and one of its places stands on the old Nitzi's site. When Seven Days made the rounds of the stands, McSweeney's sauce was the hottest of them, with whole pepper seeds in it.
• Clare and Carl's. Serving since 1942, the oldest michigan stand still in business. Order your onions buried here.
• Ronnie's Michigan Stand. In Morrisonville, west of the city (the hamlet is about 59 road miles from the cabins), and on the michigan scene since 1959.

Hours change with the seasons at all of them, so check each stand's current hours before you make the drive.

If you are here in summer, plan around two dates. July is Michigan Month in the Town of Plattsburgh, with a passport you pick up at Town Hall, City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce or a stand, stamped at each of the five; in 2026 the first 25 people to return a full passport won a T-shirt. Then, on Saturday, August 1, 2026, the town held its second Michigan Fest at the Clinton County Fairgrounds. The first one, in 2025, drew nearly 4,000 people and raised about $16,000 for the Battlefield Memorial Gateway Project. Watch the town's site for 2027 dates.

Closer to the cabins, Bokie's Drive In on US 11 in Malone, about ten road miles away, serves hot dogs, poutine and ice cream in its season; the where-to-eat page has its hours.

A michigan in the cabin kitchen

If the stands are closed, or you would rather eat on the deck, the michigan is easy to make at the cabin. The sauce takes a pot, a wooden spoon and an hour or two.

1. Start the ground beef raw in the pot with tomato puree and a little water, and break it up fine as it cooks. A michigan sauce is fine-textured, with no big lumps of meat.
2. Season with cumin first, then chili powder, black pepper and a little paprika or allspice. Some cooks add a splash of vinegar and a little brown sugar.
3. Simmer it low for one to two hours, stirring now and then, until it is thick enough to sit on a hot dog without running off.
4. Grill or simmer the red hots, steam the top-split buns, and build each one: dog, sauce, then mustard and chopped onions on top, or the onions buried under the sauce.

Adirondack Life's recipe also allows a few personal touches: prepared mustard in the sauce, fresh onions, garlic, beer, cider vinegar or hot peppers, and in spring, wild leeks. What it rules out is beans and cheese. Leftover sauce keeps in the refrigerator for the next day's lunch, which is the kind of cooking at the cabins we like best.

Poutine and the Quebec border

The Quebec border is about 21 road miles north of the cabins, and Quebec has been feeding this part of New York for a long time. Many of the French Canadians who fought in the Continental Army settled afterward in the Canadian and Nova Scotia Refugee Tract, especially along the west shore of Lake Champlain, and the historian Patrick Lacroix suggests they may be considered the first Franco-Americans.

Poutine is the Quebec dish you are most likely to meet on a North Country menu. It is fresh-cut fries with cheese curds and gravy, and it first appeared in rural Quebec snack bars in the late 1950s, near the cheese factories of the Centre-du-Quebec region. Two towns there claim it. In Warwick, Fernand Lachance said he first put curds on fries for a regular customer in 1957 and told him it would make a "maudite poutine," a damned mess. In 1963 he began serving it on a plate, and when customers said the fries went cold, he poured gravy over them to keep them warm. In Drummondville, Jean-Paul Roy said he invented it at his drive-in in 1964, after serving fries with a sauce since 1958 and watching customers add the curds he sold by the bag. Poutine reached Quebec City in 1969 and Montreal in 1983.

The cheese is what Quebec cooks care about. Purists hold that a real poutine uses fresh, squeaky curds of the kind made where the dish began, and the version that turned up in New York and New Jersey in the 1970s, known there as disco fries, used shredded mozzarella instead. When you order poutine on this side of the line, it is fair to ask which you will get.

Around Plattsburgh, poutine has been on the menus of the michigan stands too: in 2015 the county's tourism office listed Gus', McSweeney's and Michigans Plus among its poutine stops, so a michigan with a side of poutine makes a two-country lunch. Near the cabins, poutine is on the menu at Bokie's and at Mo's Pub and Grill on US 11 in Malone. For poutine at the source, Montreal is about 78 road miles north, and the Montreal day trip has the plan; the border guide has the crossings and the documents.

Cheese curds and North Country cheese

This is dairy country, and the numbers show it. In the 2022 Census of Agriculture, Franklin County's farms sold $149 million worth of products, and $108 million of that was milk. The county had 32,313 cattle and calves at the end of that year, and its biggest crops by acreage were hay and corn for silage, both grown to feed cows. On US 11 between Malone and Chateaugay you drive through the farms that make those numbers.

In Chateaugay, about 22 road miles from the cabins on US 11, the dairy cooperative Agri-Mark makes McCadam cheese and some Cabot cheeses at its plant there, and in 2021 it began a $16 million expansion, the second phase of a $30 million modernization. McCadam itself goes back to 1876, when William McCadam started making cheese in Heuvelton, in St. Lawrence County. The company's farm and cheese store at the plant sells its cheese in seven flavors, from Muenster to horseradish cheddar, on weekdays and Saturday mornings; the company asks you to call first. It is one of several farm stands and creameries within reach of the cabins.

Fresh curds are the hardest thing on this menu to find near the cabins. None of the dairy stores we checked lists them, so ask at the counter in Chateaugay. If the answer is no, a sharp McCadam cheddar torn into small pieces makes a good cabin poutine with oven fries and a pot of gravy. It will not squeak, and it will still taste of the dairy down the road.

Milk country close to the cabins

The closest farm food is about four road miles from the cabins. The Cook Farm's on-farm store, Cooks' Country Store on Ragged Lake Road in Owls Head, is open around the clock with a self-checkout kiosk. The farm raises goats, pigs, turkeys, chickens and ducks and grows its own produce, and it is best known for its goat's milk soap, which makes a good present to take home.

The store is also a good cheese stop for the cabins, since it stocks other makers' goods next to the farm's own. Its shelves carry McCadam and Cabot cheese, cheese and yogurt from Meier's, a cheesemaker in Fort Covington, milk from Hidden Acres Dairy, maple syrup from Brandy Brook Maple Farm, honey from Adirondack Honey and bread from Brainardsville Bake House. That is a cheese board, a breakfast and a pancake topping four miles from the deck. Curds are not on its list.

Ice cream is the other way the dairy country feeds visitors. Cornell Cooperative Extension of Franklin County runs an ice cream trail each summer, with a punch card you pick up at any stop, and its 2026 stops ran from Malone, Burke, Brushton and Chateaugay to Saranac Lake, Bloomingdale and Tupper Lake. A cone at a stand on US 11 is a fine end to the michigan drive.

Only 12 percent of Franklin County's farms sell directly to consumers, which makes the farm stores and stands that do worth seeking out.

Maple in March

Maple is the North Country's spring crop. New York's Maple Weekends in 2027 fall on March 13 and 14 and March 20 and 21, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., when farms across the state open their sugarhouses to visitors. The spring page has what else is open in March. For this weekend's menu, all you need is a jug of local maple syrup for Sunday morning, and a sugarhouse tour if your dates fall on a Maple Weekend.

Apples, cider and the McIntosh

The McIntosh apple has a North Country story. John McIntosh was born in the Mohawk River valley of New York in 1777 and moved north to Upper Canada in 1796. In 1811, clearing land at Dundela, in what is now eastern Ontario, he found about 20 apple trees in an old clearing, transplanted some, and one gave unusually good fruit. His son Allan learned grafting in 1835, and the family began growing the apple in quantity. It was first called the "Granny," then the "McIntosh Red."

The Adirondack Coast's tourism office calls the McIntosh, crisp and tart, a Clinton County trademark, and names Apple Jack's, Chazy Orchards and Rulfs Orchard among the orchards that carry it. Some of them press their own apples into cider and use the cider in their doughnut mix, and the tourism office says you can smell the doughnuts about a mile away. The nearest orchard to the cabins is Prairie's, just outside Malone village, about 11 road miles away, the first stop for apple picking near the cabins. For this weekend, the advice is to buy a half gallon of cider on the way in and a dozen doughnuts for the next morning.

Apples also round out a michigan run. The orchards around Peru and Chazy are near Plattsburgh, so a fall Saturday can be michigans for lunch, an orchard in the afternoon and cider in the car for the drive back.

Salt potatoes

Salt potatoes come from Central New York, not the North Country. They are a Syracuse dish, and the lakeshore where they began is about 188 road miles southwest of the cabins. They earn a place in this post because they are on summer tables all over upstate New York, they go with a grill supper at the cabins, and they are the easiest dish here to cook.

The story is the salt industry. Syracuse sits beside Onondaga Lake, where salt springs fed a huge salt works; in the mid-1800s the city made about two million bushels of salt a year, nearly all the salt used in the United States at the time, and at its peak in the 1870s Onondaga County supplied about 90 percent of the nation's salt. The Haudenosaunee first showed Europeans the springs. The salt was made by boiling brine, and the workers, many of them Irish and German immigrants, brought potatoes to work and boiled them in the brine for lunch, with butter. By the 1880s the taverns on Syracuse's North Side were serving salt potatoes hot with melted butter, alongside beer.

In 2021 the Pomeroy Foundation and the Onondaga Historical Association put up a Hungry for History marker near the lake, at 106 Lake Drive in Liverpool. It credits salt industry workers with popularizing "potatoes boiled in brine & paired with melted butter" and says they were served in local taverns "as early as 1883."

Today they are sold as a summer kit: a five-pound bag of small potatoes with more than a cup of salt packed in for the brine. June, July and August are the big months, and the Fourth of July weekend is the biggest of all. At the cabins, boil the small whole potatoes in that heavily salted water until a knife slides in, drain them, and let the salt dry to a white crust on the skins. Serve them with a bowl of melted butter for dipping, next to michigans or red hots off the grill.

Spring greens from the woods

Spring brings two wild foods that North Country cooks wait for. Fiddleheads are the tightly coiled young fronds of the ostrich fern, ready for about four to six weeks from late April to early June. Other ferns have fiddleheads too, and some are harmful, so buy them from someone who knows the plant unless you know it yourself. Cook them thoroughly: rinse until the brown papery covering is gone, then steam them for 10 to 12 minutes or boil them for about 15. Raw or undercooked fiddleheads have made people sick, so give them the full time.

Wild leeks, also called ramps, come up in April. They are uncommon in the Adirondacks, because most of the soils here are acidic and the leeks prefer limestone, and a patch can take years to recover from even a small harvest. Quebec lists them as threatened and bans their sale. If you find them at a market or a farm stand, they are a spring treat scrambled into the morning eggs or stirred into a pot of michigan sauce. If you see them in the woods, leave them for the next visitor.

Black flies are out from mid-May to late June; the bug guide has what works, and The Modern Pine's large screened room makes a good place for a spring supper.

The food calendar

Here is when each of these foods is at its best near the cabins. Dates past 2026 are the producers' usual seasons, so check before you plan a trip around one.

The Franklin County Fair has been held in Malone since the 1850s, and its nine days in August bring the midway, the grandstand and the livestock barns that show where the county's milk comes from.

A weekend menu at the cabins

Here is how we would put it together for two to four people staying Friday to Sunday.

Friday

Shop in Malone on the way in, about ten road miles north of the cabins: red hots (Glazier's if the cooler has them), top-split buns, onions, yellow mustard, ground beef, tomato puree, cumin and chili powder, a bag of small potatoes and a box of salt, butter, eggs, and a block of sharp cheddar. In the fall, stop at Prairie's for cider and apples. At the cabin, start the michigan sauce while you unpack, and by the time the hot tub is warm it is ready. Supper is michigans off the grill with salt potatoes and melted butter, and the fire pit after.

Saturday

Leave mid-morning for Plattsburgh, about an hour and a half east by US 11. Chateaugay comes first, about 22 road miles out, and the McCadam store opens Saturday mornings for a cheese stop; check the hours first. Lunch is two with, buried, at a Plattsburgh stand, and in the fall an orchard near Peru or Chazy fills the afternoon. If a tasting room is on the plan, pick a driver before the first glass; the region's breweries, wineries and distilleries are a day of their own. Back at the cabin, set out the cheese with apples and crackers, and make cabin poutine with oven fries, the torn cheddar and a pot of gravy.

Sunday

Pancakes with local maple syrup and the last of the cider doughnuts, then the leftover michigan sauce over eggs for a late breakfast before checkout. If you are leaving by way of Malone in summer, a cone from one of the ice cream stands on US 11 is the last stop of a North Country food weekend.

The three cabins each have a full kitchen, a grill, a fire pit and a private hot tub, and you can book on the listings or book direct.

Questions

Sources

Facts on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. Hours, fees and schedules change; confirm before you go.

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22. wrvo.org wrvo.org/2024-07-03/its-more-than-a-potato-why-salt-potatoes-mean-so-m
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