The Glenwood

Across Main Street from Portage Lake, in an early 1900s building that was first a warehouse for “Fountain of Youth” bottled water and later a summer resort (think: Dirty Dancing meets roadside supper club), is today a locally loved restaurant called The Glenwood. For the past 30 years, the white tablecloth and knotty pine-paneled dining room has bridged a delicate gap—charmingly stuck in time without feeling dated. It’s the kind of place where an annual one-week vacation isn’t complete until you’ve dined here. 

“Some people stop at the restaurant before unpacking their cars,” co-owner Donna Ervin says. Reserve a table on the enclosed porch overlooking the water, order a French 75 made with locally grown and distilled Iron Fish gin, the blue cheese-studded “woodland salad” with chef-owner Chris Short’s cherry mustard vinaigrette, and the freshwater perch or whitefish that come on dinner plates inked with the Glenwood name. 

Even if you don’t think you have room for it, at least consider dessert. Each evening’s selections are presented tableside on a dessert tray of old-school, styled samples. If one of the night’s choices is cherry pie—made with cherries from Smeltzer Orchards and baked by Ervin herself—find room. Whether you’ve unpacked your car or not, you are undoubtedly in cherry country.