A lakeside gastropub since 1998
Twenty-seven years, one family, the same shoreline. The McCraes have been pouring Canadian craft, firing the hearth, and setting a place for the town since the day the doors opened.
Our story
In 1998, our family opened a small pub on the shoreline of the Coppermine with twelve seats, a single draught line, and a woodstove that never quite warmed the room. We didn't know it then, but we were building the dining room the town would call its own.
Today, the team has grown to thirty-eight people — four Red Seal chefs, a Cicerone-certified beer director, two pastry cooks, and a floor staff who remember your name by the third visit. The draught wall holds twenty-four lines and rotates quarterly. The hearth, installed in 2019, reaches four hundred and eighty degrees and turns a pizza in ninety seconds.
But the rules haven't changed. Source what we can from within a hundred and fifty kilometres. Pour what we'd drink at home. Treat every guest the way we'd treat a friend who'd driven up the lake road for dinner. Twenty-seven years on, the McCrae family still owns the pub, still walks the floor most nights, and still closes only on Christmas Day.
Read the full story of the pub →Four reasons to drive up
Four distinct features turn a meal at the Coppermine into the reason for the drive. Each one has its own room, its own team, and its own quiet obsession with doing it well.
01
The largest selection of Canadian craft between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, verified by Beer Canada's 2023 regional audit. Rotated quarterly by our Cicerone-certified beer director — always five Ontario breweries, always a handful of new releases, always something on nitrogen.
See this week's board →
02
Installed in 2019, our wood-fired stone hearth reaches temperatures most pizzerias only read about. Ninety seconds from dough to plate, a blistered cornicione, and a smoke that tastes like the boreal forest a kilometre up the road. The pizza menu is built around farms within a hundred and fifty kilometres — seventy-one percent of every plate, audited by Foodland Ontario in 2022.
Meet the chefs →
03
Sixty covered seats, infrared heaters, blankets in a basket by the door, and a shoreline view that has kept photographers busy since 1998. When the lake ices over in January, the patio stays open. When the loons come back in May, the patio stays open. It is the only covered, heated outdoor dining room on the Coppermine waterfront, and it has been ours since the second summer.
04
Our in-house talent buyer has programmed the stage since 2010 — Northern Ontario songwriters first, with the occasional touring act booked through friends. No cover charge, no minimum, no noise that drowns the table next to yours. Tuesday through Saturday, the music starts at eight and ends before last call.
Featured in
“A roadside pub that has somehow, over a quarter century, become the gravitational centre of the Northern Ontario craft-beer circuit. Twenty-four lines, a wood-fired hearth, and a shoreline view that makes you forget how far you drove to get here.”
Northern Ontario Travel · Top 10 Roadside Pubs, 2024
Also cited in Amber Augustine's Where to Drink Craft Beer in Canada (2021).
By the numbers
4.7★
Average Google rating across 2,180+ reviews
1,400+
Private events hosted since 2008
71%
Menu ingredients sourced within 150 km — Foodland Ontario audit, 2022
364
Days open each year — closed only on Christmas Day
Make a plan
Reservations are recommended for the dining room and the patio, especially Friday and Saturday. For private events, corporate retreats, and celebrations of every size, our events team replies within one business day.
Prefer to talk it through? Call the pub at +1 (705) 555-0142 or write to [email protected].
