Muldoon's Pasties, Munising Michigan: A Miner's Lunch That Outlasted the Mines

Hi, I'm Ino.

We had just left Kitch-iti-Kipi — that impossible emerald spring in the middle of the forest — and were driving east along M-28 toward Munising. The Upper Peninsula has a way of making you feel like you've wandered somewhere genuinely remote. The trees press close on both sides of the road. Small towns appear briefly and then disappear. There are no chains, no familiar logos, no strip malls.

And then, on the side of the highway, a large yellow sign.

Muldoons Pasties. Fresh Daily.

I didn't know what a pasty was. I pulled over anyway.

The sign that stops you before you even know what a pasty is — Muldoon's on M-28, Munising.

First Things First — How Do You Say It?

Before anything else, the pronunciation. It's PASS-tee — not "paste-y." This matters more than you'd think. Tourists arriving from outside the Upper Peninsula have been mispronouncing it for decades, walking into shops and accidentally saying something that raises eyebrows. The word rhymes with "nasty," not "tasty" — which is somewhat ironic, because the food itself is the opposite of nasty.

Now that we've got that out of the way — what actually is a pasty?

A pasty is a hand-held meat and vegetable pie, baked without a pan. The dough is rolled flat, the filling is piled onto one half, and the other half is folded over and crimped shut along the edge — creating a thick, D-shaped pocket of pastry. The filling is dense. The crust is sturdy. The whole thing is designed to be eaten with your hands, without cutlery, without a plate if necessary. It is, by every measure, a working person's food — and that's exactly where it comes from.

The Miners Who Brought It Here

The pasty's story in Michigan begins in Cornwall, England — the rocky southwestern peninsula where tin mining had been a way of life for centuries. When Cornwall's mines began to decline in the mid-1800s, Cornish miners emigrated across the Atlantic in search of work. Many ended up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where vast deposits of copper and iron ore were being discovered and the mines needed experienced hands.

They brought their food with them.

The pasty was the perfect mine lunch. A miner's wife would prepare one in the morning, wrap it in a cloth, and tuck it into her husband's pocket. The thick crust retained heat for up to eight to ten hours — meaning the pasty was still warm when the miner finally stopped to eat, deep underground, hours into his shift. No fork needed. No plate. You held the crimped edge, ate the filling end first, and when you were done, you had a built-in handle that had been touched by dirty hands all day.

That handle, it turns out, served another purpose entirely. The copper mines of the UP contained traces of arsenic. Miners, unable to wash their hands underground, would eat the filling of the pasty and deliberately discard the crust they'd been gripping — avoiding the arsenic residue on their fingers. Some traditions say the discarded crust was left as an offering to the knockers — the mischievous mine goblins of Cornish folklore, said to cause collapses and accidents if not appeased. Whether the miners truly believed in knockers or simply wanted a good excuse not to eat arsenic-dusted pastry is a matter historians leave open.

By 1864, a larger wave of Finnish immigrants had arrived in the UP to work the same mines. They picked up the pasty tradition from the Cornish and made it their own — sometimes swapping the traditional rutabaga for carrots, a substitution that remains mildly controversial in the UP to this day. Italian and other immigrant groups followed, each adapting the recipe to their own tastes. What united all of them: potatoes, onions, and a sturdy crust.

When the Mackinac Bridge opened in 1957 and connected the Upper and Lower Peninsulas for the first time, tourists flooded north — and discovered the pasty. Restaurant versions multiplied. In 1968, Governor George Romney declared May 24 as statewide Michigan Pasty Day. The pasty had gone from a miner's pocket lunch to a regional symbol, the unofficial food of the UP.

The Shop

Muldoon's sits on M-28 West at the edge of Munising — a small harbor city on the southern shore of Lake Superior, best known as the gateway to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The shop opened in 1998 and has changed owners since, but the yellow sign has stayed. Out front, a painted Bigfoot cutout stands guard near the entrance — a nod to the UP's enduring fondness for its own local mythology.

The entrance to Muldoon's — modest, unhurried, and exactly what a roadside pasty shop in the UP should look like.

The building is small and unpretentious — a low wooden structure with a front porch, an OPEN sign in the door window, and a Gifts sign hanging to one side. Walking in, the smell arrives before anything else: warm pastry, buttery crust, something savory baking somewhere in the back. The interior is compact and lived-in, with knotty pine walls and the kind of decor that accumulates naturally over decades rather than being chosen from a catalog. Framed photos, local knickknacks, a Bigfoot Crossing sign on the wall.

In 2022, Muldoon's made TripAdvisor's Top 25 Quick Bites in America list. For a one-room pasty shop on a highway in the UP, that's a significant distinction.

The Menu

The menu is written in chalk on a large blackboard behind the counter, and it doesn't try to be more than it is. Everything is made fresh daily on-site. The options are straightforward: Traditional (ground beef, potatoes, onions, carrots, and rutabaga), Chicken (diced chicken with the same vegetables), Veggie (broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, onions, and carrots), and Apple Pie Pasty for dessert. There's also a Real Deal combo — pasty, gravy, coleslaw, and a drink.

Each pasty weighs approximately one pound and is sold hot, cold, or frozen. The price is modest — in the single digits for a pasty on its own, around thirteen dollars for the full combo.

The chalk menu at Muldoon's — made fresh daily, every option exactly what a pasty shop should offer.

Tip: The Real Deal combo (pasty + gravy + coleslaw + drink) is the most efficient way to order on a first visit. It covers all the bases and lets you experience the pasty the way it's meant to be eaten — with gravy alongside to keep every bite moist and deeply flavored.

The Pasty — What It Actually Looks Like

The Traditional beef pasty arrives on a paper plate, and the first thing you notice is the size. It's larger than expected — a dense, domed mound of golden-brown crust, hand-crimped around the edges, sitting solidly on the plate. It doesn't look delicate. It looks like something built to last a twelve-hour shift underground.

The crust is the color of a well-baked pie — golden at the dome, a shade deeper at the crimped edge. The surface has an irregular, hand-worked texture: slightly uneven, slightly rustic, with small variations in thickness where the dough was folded and pressed by hand. It holds its shape completely. Pick it up, and it feels substantial — not heavy exactly, but dense, in the way that only something genuinely packed with filling can feel.

The traditional beef pasty at Muldoon's — one pound, hand-crimped, built to last.

Inside the Crust

Cut it open — or pull it apart — and the filling fills the cross-section completely. There is no empty space. Ground beef, diced potatoes, onions, carrots, and rutabaga, packed tightly from edge to edge. The vegetables hold their shape; you can distinguish each one by texture. The potato is soft and slightly crumbly. The carrot offers a mild resistance. The beef runs through everything in a way that keeps each bite coherent rather than falling apart.

A word on rutabaga, for anyone unfamiliar: it's a root vegetable, a cross between a turnip and a cabbage, with a slightly sweet and earthy flavor. Raw, it's firm and pale yellow. Cooked inside a pasty, it softens and takes on the flavors around it while contributing a subtle sweetness that balances the savory meat. It is not optional. Some UP locals will tell you quite firmly that a pasty without rutabaga is not a real pasty — and though the Finnish tradition sometimes substitutes carrots, the Cornish original always had rutabaga, and Muldoon's keeps it in.

Cut open — beef, potato, carrot, and rutabaga packed from edge to edge with no empty space.

The flavor on its own is mild and honest. Lightly seasoned, with the natural sweetness of the vegetables coming through alongside the savory beef. It is not aggressive, not spiced, not sauced. It tastes like something that was made to sustain you, not to excite you — and there's a particular kind of satisfaction in that. The food does exactly what it says it will do.

With the beef gravy poured over or alongside, everything changes a little. The gravy is thick, brown, and deeply savory, and it solves the one potential issue with the pasty — that the crust, eaten plain, can feel a little dry toward the end. A generous ladle of gravy keeps every bite from the first to the last equally good. Most people who've eaten a pasty before will tell you: the gravy is not optional.

Tip: Order the gravy. The pasty is fine without it, but with it, every bite from first to last stays moist and deeply flavored. It costs almost nothing extra and makes a significant difference.

Ino's Practical Tips for Visiting Muldoon's

Getting there
Muldoon's is located at 1246 M-28 West in Munising — right on the highway heading into town, easy to spot from the road. Munising is the main gateway city for Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, so if you're visiting the UP's most famous natural attraction, Muldoon's is essentially on the way in or out. The drive from Kitch-iti-Kipi in Manistique is about 50 miles east along M-28 — a natural stop to combine both in a single day.

Hours and season
Muldoon's is open daily from 10 am to 8 pm during the season. Crucially: they are a seasonal operation, typically open from late spring through late October. In 2025, the last day of the season was October 21. If you're visiting the UP outside of summer, confirm they're open before making the drive.

Tip: The parking area is large and accommodating — camper vans, trailers, and RVs have no trouble pulling in. There are also outdoor picnic tables where you can eat on-site, which is the right way to do it after a morning in the woods.

One pasty is enough — probably
A full pound of dense filling in a thick pastry crust is more food than it looks. Most people find one pasty genuinely filling, especially with gravy and coleslaw alongside. If you're visiting with a partner and want to try different varieties, order one each of two different types and share both.

Take some home frozen
Muldoon's sells frozen uncooked pasties to take away. If you have access to an oven or air fryer at your accommodation — or if you're heading home — buying a few frozen is a practical and genuinely good idea. Bake from frozen at around 350°F for 45 to 50 minutes and the result is close to what you'd get fresh from the shop.

Tip: If you're buying frozen pasties to travel with, keep them in a cooler. They hold well for a long drive and make an excellent meal back at camp or in the hotel room the following evening.

Don't miss the fudge
Muldoon's makes their own "Grand Island Fudge" on-site, named after the island visible from the Munising shoreline. It comes in multiple flavors and is worth picking up alongside your pasty. Several reviewers consider the fudge a separate highlight from the pasties themselves.

Wrapping Up

A pasty is not a glamorous food. It doesn't photograph dramatically. It doesn't arrive with a sauce artfully drizzled around the plate or a garnish on top. It arrives on a paper plate, looking exactly like what it is: a thick pastry pocket filled with meat and vegetables, made the same way it was made 150 years ago for men who needed to eat underground without getting arsenic on their lunch.

That history is part of what makes eating one feel like something more than just a meal. The UP without the pasty would be a different place — the food is genuinely woven into the region's identity in a way that's hard to manufacture and impossible to fake. Muldoon's isn't the only pasty shop in the Upper Peninsula, and whether it's the objectively best is a conversation UP locals will have indefinitely. But it's consistent, it's well-made, the crust is excellent, and it's right on the highway at the entrance to one of Michigan's most spectacular stretches of coastline.

If you're passing through Munising on your way to Pictured Rocks — or coming from Kitch-iti-Kipi to the west — the yellow sign will find you. Pull over. Order the Traditional. Get the gravy. Eat it outside at one of the picnic tables while the Lake Superior air comes through the trees. If you're making the full drive up from Traverse City, Farm Club makes a worthy first stop before heading north into the UP

That's the UP doing exactly what it does best.

And if you're still building your Michigan road trip itinerary, the story of climbing a sand dune that looks manageable from the bottom and is absolutely not is waiting for you at Sleeping Bear Dunes.