- Milkweed Inn is run by Lane Regan, former owner and chef behind Elizabeth, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago
- The getaway is located within the Hiawatha National Forest
- Chef Lane's menus incorporate foraged and locally-sourced ingredients
Deep in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, there’s an off-the-grid bed and breakfast called the Milkweed Inn. It’s not the kind of place you stumble upon.
The Milkweed Inn is run by Michelin-starred chef Iliana (Lane) Regan. Regan ran Elizabeth, a fine dining restaurant in Chicago, before moving to the UP. They said the Milkweed Inn has been a dream years in the making.
“I've wanted to do this for such a long time, probably even before I started my restaurant,” they said. “I think that Elizabeth was the stepping stone to get to this, which is what I really wanted to do.”
Regan has built a reputation on hyper-local and foraged ingredients. That vision has landed them on “Best Chef” lists and earned Michelin recognition. Today, the same creativity shapes weekends at Milkweed, where up to 12 guests are hosted across a couple of cabin rooms, an Airstream camper, and two large tents.
“Here, it's perfect. I get to use all the little things that I'm foraging and gathering and all my little tinctures and such,” Regan said. “Trying to forage for 30 people a night, five days a week is way different than 12 people on one weekend.”
Unplug and connect
To reach the restaurant from the lower peninsula, it’s a short flight to Marquette, then a winding drive deep into the Hiawatha National Forest. Guests usually get picked up at a meet-up spot and caravan in. There’s no GPS and no cell signal, just lots of old logging roads.
“People are out here unplugging,” Regan said. “They're usually making really nice connections with each other.”
The location is remote, but not lonely, Regan said.
“A lot of people ask, ‘oh my gosh, aren't you lonely out there?’ And I'm actually never alone,” they said. “We always have residents. There's always friends over. So yeah, there's no time for loneliness.”
On a typical summer or fall Friday night, guests arrive around 6 p.m. and enjoy a multi-course, family-style dinner. The property is right on the Sturgeon River, so guests can hear otters as they enjoy fireside s’mores after dinner.
Saturdays unfold like a tasting menu: Pastries and coffee in the morning, a savory brunch at 11, lunch at 2:30, cocktails at 5:30, and a 13-course dinner by evening. They cap off the weekend with a Sunday brunch.
Michigan’s wild kitchen
The restaurant uses ingredients foraged from the area around it: blackberries, Queen Anne's lace, milkweed, apples, elder flowers, chanterelles and bolete mushrooms. One of Regan’s favorite late-summer finds is lobster mushrooms, which smell and have a similar color to cooked lobsters.
Regan said they learned how to forage from their dad, although they aren’t a mycologist.
“We just stuck to very familiar mushrooms and berries. My grandfather's farm was really fruitful,” they said. “But over the years, I've taught myself a lot, just because I love it, and I love reading about it and researching. But I wouldn't say that I'm a master forager.”
They also grow garden vegetables at the inn. Meals often include local wild protein, such as duck, deer, or Lake Superior whitefish.
Continuing to grow
Regan likes the simplicity of having one restaurant.
“I had tried to scale up and do multiple restaurants,” they said. “And the way that I have run things, it was too hard on me. There was too much to do. And I had too many hats.”
The Milkweed Inn is still plenty of work, but feels different.
“I can really get back into the part that I love, which is the food part,” they said. “I lost a lot of that with Elizabeth because I was so busy actually running the restaurant.”
There’s a lot more Regan wants to do at the Milkweed Inn, like adding hiking trails and housing horses alongside the resident pigs and dogs. And they’re currently fundraising to buy equipment so they can operate in the winter and host events.
Regan said they miss the diversity of food that was more accessible living in the city. But moving to the forest has cemented how they approach food.
“If anything, just being here has distilled the way that I already was thinking and seeing the food,” they said.
