Paradise Bay Coffee Shop, Inc.

Beaver Island sits in the middle of Lake Michigan, a ferry ride from the mainland, and Paradise Bay Coffee is the place locals and bike-route riders point you to when you ask where to eat breakfast. The owners are owner-operators in the literal sense. They recognize repeat visitors, greet them by name, and run a yard out back with outdoor games and a swing for kids who can't sit still through a meal.

The waffles come with real maple syrup, not the corn-syrup-and-caramel-color stuff. The raisin cinnamon toast has its own small following. People order the chai tea latte more often than the coffee, which tells you something about the chai. The whitefish sandwich is the obvious lake-island move and worth ordering once. Most breakfast traffic goes to the breakfast sandwich, and the kitchen turns out enough of them on summer mornings to be called the best breakfast on the island by people who live there year-round and have eaten at every other option.

There is a real flaw, and it's worth knowing before you sit down: the service is slow. Not a-little-slow, but thirty-minutes-with-nobody-ahead-of-you slow. The crew runs five people deep and still gets backed up, and there's a surcharge tacked onto to-go orders, which can sting if you're trying to grab and go on the way to the ferry. The kitchen isn't built for speed. Plan for a sit-down. Order the chai, get the waffles, and let the swing entertain whichever kid is with you while the food makes its way out.

This is a country-ride coffee shop. Bike loops on the island finish here as often as they start here, and the rhythm of the place fits that traffic. If you're rolling through on a tight schedule, eat somewhere else. If you've got an hour and a kid and a bicycle and the patience the island encourages anyway, you've found it.