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Why Bowdie’s Saugatuck made the SteakMap list

Saugatuck is a Lake Michigan resort town of about a thousand year-round residents, and a serious chophouse is not what you expect to find there. This is the smallest town with a steakhouse of this standard anywhere on our Michigan list.

It carries the same board as the Grand Rapids and Lansing rooms, which matters in a resort market — summer towns are where restaurants usually cut corners, on the reasoning that visitors will not be back.

Cuts for a long dinner

The board is built for exactly the kind of evening a lake town produces. The 40oz porterhouse at two and a half pounds and the 36oz hand-cut tomahawk are both shared plates rather than challenges, and the tomahawk carries what their menu accurately calls a huge spinalis cap — the outer crescent of the ribeye, and the best-eating muscle on the animal.

The 26oz bone-in Cowboy Ribeye has its bone frenched for the look as much as the flavor, which in a room with a view is a reasonable thing to care about.

The smaller cuts

The flagship 10oz barrel-cut tenderloin is aged, mild and buttery, cut from the thick center of the tenderloin so it cooks evenly. A 14oz bone-in filet gives you the same tenderness with more flavor from the bone, and the 18oz Kansas City strip is aged and finely marbled — the balanced middle of any steakhouse menu.

Every cut on the menu gets a paragraph explaining what it is, which makes this a genuinely good place to try something you have not ordered before.

Prices

Bowdie’s does not publish prices online, so SteakMap has no verified figures for the Saugatuck room. Expect resort-town pricing in season, and note that this is a room worth booking ahead in summer.

Bowdie’s also runs rooms in Grand Rapids and Lansing. Read the guide to the best steakhouses in Michigan.