Cafe's food makes the morning good Foods simple but delicious

Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006

Do truck drivers really know great food — and where to find it?

Believe us: Meg Sackett does.

A lifelong resident of Eau Claire, Sackett spent 14 happy years going over the road in her own semitrailer truck, "a big, gorgeous, black, long-nosed Freightliner with a reefer" (a refrigeration unit). Though often running 3,200 miles a week, she almost never ate in restaurants or truck stops. She didn't have to.

Having learned scratch cooking and baking from her mother, whom Sackett calls "a wonderful cook," she installed a tiny kitchen in her truck cab. Even in the middle of nowhere or close to it, hundreds of miles from home, she could boil and mash potatoes, toast her handmade bread and heat the soups and meat dishes she'd prepared and frozen at home before setting out.

She told us: "I was always proud to have my own food."

When her mother's health began to require her constant presence back home, Sackett left the road, sold her beloved Freightliner and almost immediately opened the Good Morning Cafe.

Sackett's experience working solo and cooking in cramped spaces comes in handy here. Her cafe has just seven small tables and a kitchen only a little bigger and better equipped than the one in her truck. And Sackett does it all: She's the owner, orderer, shopper, cook, greeter, server, cashier, pot washer and cleanup crew (one reason why every surface is spotless.)

After some experimenting, Sackett settled on a modest menu that she can prepare alone in this small place. Except for sandwich bread, a few condiments and the hash browns, which she buys pre-grated, she makes everything from scratch.

At breakfast there are two choices: the special of fresh-scrambled, pillowy eggs, decent bacon and expertly toasted bread, $2.50; or a breakfast burrito: eggs, bacon, Cheddar and soft hash browns folded into a warmed flour tortilla, $3.25. Add ketchup, mild tomato salsa or Tabasco.

While breakfast is enjoyable here, lunch is extraordinary. Nearly every dish reveals Sackett's astonishing knack for making simple food delicious.

Lunch plates cost $5.97 plus tax. There's always either a hot beef or hot turkey sandwich — and both on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Monday adds chicken à la king; Tuesday a soup and another sandwich; Wednesday taco salad; Thursday a chicken dinner; and Friday meatloaf with a mashed potato casserole. Egg salad sandwiches (with Miracle Whip) and chili con carne are available every day.

When deciding what to order, remember this: Sackett is a master of slow-cooked meat and gravy. The hot beef and hot turkey sandwiches are better than classic: full-flavored bottom-round beef roast or turkey breast, tender and perfectly trimmed; delicate handmade mashed potatoes; good white bread; and tasty, translucent gravies of wondrous thinness that make foods glisten.

The turkey gravy is a fragile yellow; the beef gravy has the color and clarity of amber.

Once, after finishing a hot beef, Jeff had some extra gravy left in a soufflé cup. We confess: we sipped and savored it like fine soup.

For her superb chicken à la king, Sackett bakes chicken breasts on the bone for flavor before trimming and dicing them into a beautifully clear chicken gravy flecked with deep-red pimento bits. Gravy and meat come poured over mashed potatoes and two handmade crusty-soft biscuits.

It seems impossible, but Thursday's chicken is even more succulent than the hot beef and turkey sandwiches or the chicken à la king. Meg slow-bakes skin-on chicken breasts in tightly covered pans with just a little liquid; we bet you'll yield to the temptation to nibble on the bones. She serves the breasts with mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, a fine handmade dinner roll and a scoop of moist bread dressing lively with sage and celery.

Sackett also makes classic Wisconsin versions of chili con carne and "barbecue" sand- wiches, which we Michiganders call "Sloppy Joes." We enjoyed sampling both — they are well made — but here, as elsewhere in Wisconsin, we found them too sweet to inspire devotion.

We had a similar reaction to the meatloaf. Although soft, lean and good, it comes doused with a sweet sauce. Order the sauce on the side so you can appreciate the meat and its accompanying rich casserole of mashed potatoes, onions, cream cheese and butter.

If you opt for Tuesday's soup and sandwich, ask if Sackett can replace your bread with one of her outstanding fresh-baked hamburger-style buns. With their crisp bottoms, lacy crumb and lovely domed tops in variegated brown, they elevate any sandwich.

The Good Morning Cafe is a happy, informal, neighborly place. Sackett will learn your first name on your first visit and likely recall it on your second. Whenever we eat here, we're drawn into pleasant conversations with the other customers, mostly about when we'll be eating here next and what to order when we do.

Main Course, the Leader-Telegram's restaurant review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month. Diners' Notebook, a sampling of favorite restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday of the month.