We not only had dinner there, but we stayed there for several days. We were up in Petoskey, Michigan on a business trip, actually my Bride was on a business trip and I just went along, thankfully I did not have to attend any of the board meetings, as I am sure that I would have been lost.  I didn’t look for any Petoskey stones, and if I had, it would have been much easier to go into any of a number of shops that sell them.  Petoskey had a long history of fur trapping and trading, lumber and limestone and is now a year-round destination for all the charms of the state.  The Civil War historian Bruce Catton is from there.  The actor Hal Smith also hails from there, and through the wonders of perpetual reruns, most of you would know him as the inebriated and self-jailing Otis from the Andy Griffith show.  The Perry Hotel was built in 1899 during the infancy of tourism for the entire region. And was one of some twenty luxury hotels that were built to capitalize on the new-found reputation of tourism.  The Perry Hotel was really the luxury hotel and the only one that is still in existence.  While some of the rooms have views of the water, the real luxury of the hotel was that it was built of brick, unlike most of the other hotels, and it was considered fire proof, and it survived.  The hotel has been added on and reconfigured to adapt to the modern tourist and it is a very enjoyable place to stay, and one that is not a cookie-cutter type of operation.

One night we had dinner at the hotel with all the other board members, families, and people that work as support.  As crazy as everything is, in the hospitality industry, we had to select our entrée choices maybe two months earlier.  There was a nice appetizer table set up, on one side of the room, I went in and noshed on a few items, but I was busy schmoozing with the group, as it was the first physical meeting in almost two years.  When it was finally time to sit down for dinner, it went pretty smoothly, except for the one fellow that just wanted a plain salad with Italian dressing, which they actually were able to get for him (my Bride may stop taking me out).  My Bride had an entrée of Whitefish and a Filet along with vegetables and a potato.  I had the entrée of Chicken in a Morel Sauce and a Filet with the same sides.  Everyone was told that because of the size of the group, that all of the Filets would be served Medium-Rare to Medium, which was fine for me, and I have to say that everyone enjoyed the entrées.

For the libations, the liquor selection was excellent, and so was the beers, including a nice collection of craft beers.  The wine selection was not in the same league, but we survived, as I am not the Liquor Raconteur, though I have been known to imbibe.  They had several different wines from Long Lake of California, which is under the umbrella of Bronco Wine Company.  Bronco Wine Company originally begins with the Franzia Family that started in the wine industry in 1893.  Two brothers and a cousin from the Franzia families began Bronco Wine Company in 1973.  Today they are the largest privately held US vineyard holder with vertical integration and they cover a wide variety of price points and they are especially popular to the food service industry.  I ran into a brick wall to find anything about Long Lake wines.  We started the evening with Long Lake Chardonnay California 2018 and it was a nice basic wine with nothing objectionable about it.  It was easy drinking and it tasted like a California Chardonnay with no pedigree.  When we sat down for dinner, we had the Long Lake Merlot California 2015 and this was a nice wine and I even went back for seconds, as it offered some true notes of Merlot, to make me happy.  I would not go looking for this wine, but I would get the Merlot, over the Chardonnay in a heart-beat.  After dinner, my Bride went off with some of her traditional friends of these meetings and they went and played Euchre in the library of the hotel, and I went online, until she came back.