Staymaker features local fare and Journeyman cocktails in Three Oaks

 

Three Oaks, Michigan, is always a favorite Michiana destination. With no shortage of local artisans, vintage treasures and genuine charm, Three Oaks is also home to Journeyman Distillery—a tribute to the homegrown, handcrafted, historic and reclaimed. Staymaker, the new full-service restaurant attached to Journeyman, is the latest addition to this family-owned enterprise.

True to the legacy of the historic Featherbone Factory, which houses the distillery and restaurant, Staymaker—an antiquated term for corset-maker—is a nod to the factory’s origins in corset production.

Owner Bill Welter and his wife, Johanna, together with Chef Luke Caenepeel, have developed a menu that is not only notable for its locally sourced ingredients but also unique in its incorporation of Journeyman spirits. For example, the Detroit-style pizzas—square, deep-dish, with delicious caramelized cheese edges—come with a choice of crusts that mimic Journeyman’s mash bills for their rye (60% rye, 40% wheat) or bourbon (70% corn, 25% wheat, 5% rye). These grains also go into their housemade pretzels and pastas (on the menu when I visited: rye cavatelli). Other Journeyman spirits likewise find their way onto Staymaker’s menu: mussels steamed in their apple cider liqueur—O.C.G. (Old Country Goodness)—house pickles and olives brined in their Bilberry Black Hearts Gin botanicals, and a compound butter made with their Silver Cross Whiskey topping the hanger steak.

 

The rest of the menu is full-to-bursting with other local and regional ingredients, some from just a little ways down the road (beef from Kaminski Farms and Middlebrook Farm, both in Three Oaks, for example). Produce comes from Green Spirit Farms in New Buffalo, Michigan; bison from Cook’s Bison Ranch in Wolcottville, Indiana; cheese from Reny Picot in Benton Harbor, Michigan; and a proprietary-blend coffee from Sparrow, a fair-trade, organic small-batch roaster out 
of Chicago.