5 Ways The Smokehaus is Homegroaning

Homegrown Music Festival is a special time of year for Duluth, it’s like a yearly ritual where locals can party away seasonal depression and put the bitter cold behind us. Here are 5 ways the Smokehaus celebrates during Homegrown.

1 – Officially with music – The Smokehaus is full of folks who play music, so naturally we’ve got a pretty good representation in the Homegrown lineup! Here’s a list of the fine humans playing the festival, and the projects they play in

Brian Ring – Lion or Gazelle, Amy HZL

Amy Hazel (Performing with Secret Badass) by K.Prazlowicz

Amy Hazel – Secret Badass, Amy HZL

Cedar – Moondogs

Pete Biasi – RAW SPACE, The Ball Slashers

Jacob Swanson – Rick McLean, Heaven’s Gate Away Team

Ned Netzel – Prone, Àlamode, Yester

Jeremy Ehlert – Red Mountain

Kate Harrison – Homegrown Poetry Showcase

Greg Cougar Conley – Amy Abts

2- Unofficially with music – Since there’s so much fun to be had this time of year, Homegrown is just not enough to contain our needs and  satisfy the masses. This is why several of our musicians are playing music during Homegrown, but not as part of the fest.

Greg Cougar Conley – Wino WI (Unofficial show at Red Herring Lounge)

Pete Biasi & Jeremy Ehlert – Low Forms (Soup Before Supe)

3 – With Food – The Smokehaus had a pop-up at Hoops Brewing for the Mayor’s proclamation and to make sure everyone had a good base before the festival started. We had a great time kicking off the fest! We’ll be there on Friday, May 4th as well with Polish 

and German Brats. Come and get it!

4 – With Art – Beyond music, the Smokehaus is filled with visual artists as well as Prøve Collective co-owners Taylor Kline and Flo Matamoros. The Prøve Collective is now showing “The 20th Anniversary Homegrown Illustration Show” which features twenty different artist-rendered caricatures, depicting the region’s cultural luminaries dressed as the Homegrown Chicken mascot. The show will be up until May 18th, so stop in and check it out!

5 – With attendance! While we’ve got Smokehausers playing a lot music, there’s also plenty of us who like to make it out to as many shows as we can.It’s a long week but we’ve got several seasoned professionals who manage to make it out every night and even make it to work throughout the week!

1998 - Year One in Smoked Fish History

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Smoked fish has many histories – and ours officially began back in the 90’s.  To celebrate our 20-year anniversary, we have collected stories from all over Northern Waters Smokehaus for every year we’ve been in business. Our deli opened its doors in 2001 and basically hit the ground running. We’ve been selling smoked fish, meats, salumi, and sandwiches out of that little location for so long that some regulars call us an institution (thanks, y’all). However, our company was actually founded in 1998 on separate banks of Lake Superior almost single-handedly by co-owner Eric Goerdt.

Fresh from his experiences in Alaska and Hawaii, Eric had already begun to make his way into the Twin Ports community. He worked for the Coast Guard inspecting ships for safety and had started several key relationships through this work. As a petty officer, he wasn’t required to wear his uniform on inspections. Eric, ever the rebel, would run around ore boats in his civies, scampering from rivet to trivet, cracking jokes and making folks laugh. “The food on those ships is AMAZING,” said Eric when I asked him about those days. “They ate like farmers – piles of gravy, pork chops, pies: they didn’t have that much (pastime) activity, so food was a big deal.”

Eric consequently started selling the sailors smoked fish – a perfect fit for his burgeoning career. By the end of 1998, he had fine-tuned some recipes and had enough of a business plan to get to work, smoking salmon in small batches at a nondescript business center in Superior, WI. His limited equipment meant a lot of cleaning: he had to fully hose down the one cooler he used in between raw and cooked, so he was constantly busy. As he smoked and cleaned, drove and hustled fish at the ports, his local following grew. “I put the fish in a little cooler in the lobby,” he remembered, “with a bucket beside it for the honor system – it worked!” People from all over the Twin Ports began gobbling down the miraculous kippered fish. When the fish was cooling, he would head over to a tiny brew pub, Twin Ports Brewery, to socialize and drink microbrews (Eric knows as much about beer as anyone I’ve ever met, and even had some rough plans to run his own pub until he realized he might miss out on some elements of family life if he was at a bar until the wee hours). It was at TPB that he met even more people – people who would become close friends and customers. The adventure had begun!

5 things: Travel Channel Edition

The Travel Channel stopped by our Smokehaus this week and we had a blast hosting them! If you followed our live streams and Instagram stories, you already got to see all the glitz and glamour, but here's a quick recap.

5 things - Travel Channel Edition

#1 Sandwiches - The Travel Channel chose 3 sandwiches to play a starring role in the production. The doughy divas that made the cut are: The Silence of the Lambwich, the Italiensk and (of course) the Cajun Finn! We just can't contain the magic of the Finn!#2 Space - Have you seen our shop? IT’S TINY! But there’s even less room with a TV crew, lights and cameras. We made it through without any major injuries or breaking their equipment, so we’ll call it a win!#3 I’ll be waiting in my trailer - Smoking extrordinaire Nick Cleary and master sandwich architect Leif Hinkel put on their TV faces and gave the Travel Channel the inside scoop of what goes into our Cajun Finn. Both of them were pretty cool cucumbers with all the lights and cameras!#4 Customer Stars - Employees weren’t the only stars for the day. Many of our patrons stopped in and some were interviewed about what they love about our food. It was flattering to hear so many nice things 💗💗💗#5 NEWS NEWS NEWS - The Travel Channel weren’t the only ones who graced our little shop. WDIO and Fox 21 reported on the event. What a day! Keep following our journey and we'll keep you posted on when our episode will air this summer.

5 things: The Travel Channel comes next week!

Here’s “5 things” that happened at the Smokehaus this week.

#1 First things first! The Travel Channel comes next week!!!! EEEE! We have been planning and scheduling and cleaning and eating and planning and generally feeling excited as we wait for the Travel Channel to come visit us next week! Share in our big day by visiting us on Tuesday, April 10 between 11am and 2pm. They are stopping by to try your favorite sandwich, the most popular, The Cajun Finn! We hope to see you Tuesday for the filming and all the fun!

#2 This week we started selling Cottage Bacon in our deli. Ours is made from 100% Berkshire Pork, from the collar butt cut. Collar butt is the same cut of pork we use in our Porkettas and formerly our Coppa. The collar butt cut comes from the pig’s shoulder. This specific cut is very tender and has an awesome fat marble that is well known with the Berkshire breed. We pump and brine the collar butt the same we do our hams. They brine for roughly one week and take 7-9 hours in the smoker. Sliced to order by the pound and best served pan fried, just like bacon!

#3 Another new item to snag when you visit us this weekend is Blue Earth Brie Cheese. Blue Earth is a bright, grassy, buttery soft cheese made from 100% grass fed cow’s milk. Rich and smooth, Blue Earth reflects the fertile soils that dominate its namesake Blue Earth County. From the maker of the Camembert-style in our grab’n’go, Alemar Cheese Co. (Mankato, MN) continues to create award winning French-style cheese. Enjoy this brie with sweet fruits such as apples, berries, cherries, pears. Sweeten it up by drizzling honey over it. Pairs well with light to medium red wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. And is superb with cured meats, such as Cottage Ham, Ham, Salamini, or Saucisson sec!

#4 The van gets dressed up! Our delivery van got all dolled up this week with new van decals. We slapped on some Smokehaus stickers to the old girl so you can wave to us when we are delivering Smokehaus sandwiches, platters, fish, meats, grocery items (anything we sell!) all over town. Didn’t know we delivered? You are missing out!

#5 This first week of April also brought with it frigid temperatures and snow. Some may call this fun. Some may call it a brutal end to a brutal winter. Some may have shed a small tear, and others don’t even bat an eyelash. We live in an interesting weather place next to the giant Lake Superior. We really never know what kind of winter it will be, or how long. At any rate, we push onward and patiently await for that mercury to rise, so we can plunge into that lake!