Sweet Water Cafe celebrating 21 years of business

A Marquette restaurant is celebrating over two decades of providing customers with natural, minimal processed foods.

The Sweet Water Cafe is housed in the former 10 o’clock Charlie’s dance-hall building, and has kept some of the original booths.  But, it is far from a dance hall and bar these days.

It now serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner items that feature wholesome ingredients.

“When we started this, I don’t think there was a trend in natural foods, it just seemed ‘Well what is good food?’  Everyone has their own idea of what good food is.  To us, we like the idea of using whole ingredients and preserving the art of cooking, because then you really honor what the food is.  So, we went about it that way and it seems like other people agree with us,” Sweet Water Cafe co-owner Ursula Stuck said.

Another factor that has kept Sweet Water Cafe in business for so long is its proximity to NMU and the downtown, and also the people who have continued to support the operation.

“Our group of regular customers is loyal and has been that way for twenty-one years,” Sweet Water Cafe manager Grace Tillison said.  “We have a fair amount of NMU professors and other people in the community that come here and keep coming here.”

“I think one of the reasons we’ve survived twenty-one years is a lot of great people have come in both to eat and to work here over the twenty-one years so I want to say thank you for even giving us this opportunity,” Stuck said.  “And also to all the great people who came and worked here to help us be who we are.”

And, while there has been some mainstays on the menu for the past two decades, Stuck says it is always evolving.  The most popular item is the potatoes, because they are hand-cut and grilled to perfection.