The Pines Café had been running successfully for about 20 years and underwent a complete renovation in August 2019. Then the wife of the upstairs tenant poured lighter fluid on her husband’s bed and set the place on fire.  Fortunately, no one was hurt and she was sentenced to 11-50 years in prison.  The owners Susan Craumann and Janice Miskovich chose to not shutter the place and instead to rebuild.  A year later, in August 2020 it re-opened.  That’s why you feel the disconnect when the cute front of the place doesn’t match the clean, almost sterile interior.  On the main street of the old town, it is a good-sized place with booths along one wall opposite a long counter and tables in the middle.  They serve breakfast and lunch till 3 every day and have tried to decorate the place with woodsy bric-a-brac.  There are windows to the street and the lighting is turned up.  The only music is what bleeds into the room from the kitchen radio.  Service is friendly and efficient, portions are generous and the food is good.  They take no credit cards, have only a Facebook page, and no website.  It’s worth stopping by.

Set-up

Food

We tried a couple of their sandwiches with coffee – cups are already on the table.  All sandwiches come with a choice of pasta salad, a cup of soup or fries – and they have 2 kinds of those.  The Club House is a triple-decker piled high with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato and mayo.  We got regular fries with it.  The cool sandwich was on nicely toasted bread with thickly sliced turkey.  It was a good balance of ingredients and mayo.  A very satisfactory rendition.  The fries had adequate potato flavor but were a frozen variety.  They did get fried to a lovely crispy texture, though.

The Country Club Melt is a triple combo of turkey, ham and bacon with melted Swiss and Cheddar served on grilled Texas toast.  We got the coated waffle fries with it.  This was more an open-face sandwich to be approached with a knife and fork, not your hands.  The excellent grilled bread was filled with tons of moist meat and gooey cheese.  Really good.  The waffle fries were a frozen variety also but I liked them as they had a good crisp and still some potato flavor.  Their crispness lasted throughout the sandwich consumption.