News
A taste of history in Antler
Alicia Wicklund
06/26/2012
Amidst the prairie about an hour northwest of Bottineau, and about a mile and a half south of the Canadian border, lies I Have No Idea Bar and Grill (aka The Cabin) – a place where people drive from all over to get a bite to eat in a smoke-free atmosphere. It’s not only known for its good food, but one could spend an entire evening looking at old pictures and memorabilia owner Mark Shoemaker has collected over the years which is displayed all over the log cabin style walls.
Shoemaker purchased the bar and grill in October of 2011 in Antler, N.D.; he later opened the kitchen this past March.
When he first walked through the door, he told himself, “Wow, this is unusual.”“I would typically prefer an older building with tall ceilings,” he said. “But this building was just unique for the area. I don’t think there is another building like this in North Dakota.”
When he first opened the kitchen in March, he said he lit the pilot light on the old grill and soon after about 20 people came filing through the door. It came to him as a shock since the town’s population is just over 20.
“We had just finished wrapping the kitchen up at about 4 p.m.,” he said. “It was crazy.”
Shoemaker also owns the Iron Horse Saloon and Restaurant in Willow City. He said the two menus are pretty comparable. In total, he has over 20 years of restaurant experience, including owning a saloon in Medora for 21 years.
As of now, he doesn’t serve lunches or have a happy hour. Yet, he is open seven days a week from 4 p.m. to 1 or 2 a.m.
He has one full-time cook and a few part-time and full-time staff.
THE FOOD:
According to Shoemaker, steaks are definitely a big number in North Dakota. He sometimes puts seasonings on them, and sometimes he doesn’t. Ribeyes and prime rib are served every day.
“The prime rib is grilled,” he said. “Before that it is seasoned with a rub, so the diner has a tender steak. But it’s basically just a high-end ribeye.”
One thing Shoemaker doesn’t do is specials, but he does add different items to the menu for special occasions.
Seafood is also big, including deep-fried shrimp in a light batter, blackened shrimp, lobster, walleye, salmon and king crab.
“Pasta goes over well too,” Shoemaker said.
The grill serves the basic fettuccini or tortellini, with choices of chicken or shrimp and alfredo or marinara sauce.
“I am working on marinating beef sirloin strips, almost like a stroganoff,” he said.
Appetizers, he explained, are the judge of a restaurant. The appetizer menu has anything from mini tacos, to shrimp scampi, to the sampler platter.
“Who knows what will be in the sampler,” he said. “It’s not like the traditional sampler platter where you get four or six of something. But there is always some sort of chicken.”
As for specialty drinks he has Ouzo, a Greek national drink.
“It’s like tequila. They are cousins and both from a root,” he said.
Shoemaker said he enjoys the rewarding feeling he gets from the restaurant side of serving people good food.
As for how he began cooking he said, “I basically just got thrown in one day. A co-worker wasn’t doing their job so I started throwing steaks on. And that was it.”
He added, “You can train cooks and you can train welders, but you really have to have some sort of passion to do it right…to think in those terms…cooking is a little bit like that. You have to know what you have done. You have to ask yourself, ‘Would you eat that?’”
Shoemaker is originally from Bantry, N.D. He decided to move back to the area to find civilization and his roots.