Harbor Springs — Harbor Springs is one of the nicest towns in Michigan for a host of reasons: the lake, the houses, the climate, the history, the people, and the fact that there are no national chains in town. That’s a big deal. It makes everything one-of-kind.
At the very back of Gurney’s Bottle Shop, past the cash register, the liquor, the wine, the pop, and the beer, is the sandwich counter. In a liquor store, it’s usually the hard stuff that packs the punch, but not here. Behind the high counter, worn smooth from thousands of hungry Northern hands, the sandwich artists of Gurney’s concoct some of the best sandwiches in the deep North.
These handheld meals, made beneath a modest fluorescent light in the back corner of the local small liquor store, demand our attention.
The menu is listed on a chalkboard hung on a paneled wall above a meat slicer and a small sink. Breads, meats, vegetables, and sauces. With the exception of tomatoes, Gurney’s has most of everything one would ever want waiting to be sandwiched between white, wheat, or rye.
It was near the end of the day, and as I waited at the counter, the girl making my sandwich informed me they were out of cucumbers and pickles. It didn’t matter. I asked for the works, including their famous deli sauce, and the result was late-lunch perfection. She stacked our three sandwiches in a tall tower resembling some kind of breaded Leaning Tower of Pisa, I grabbed a can of Coke and Squirt, a few bags of potato chips, and paid in cash—Gurney’s doesn’t accept credit cards—at the front.
We walked four minutes and landed at a picnic table at Lakefront Park. Overlooking the bay, we watched groups of sunfish sail back and forth as we enjoyed our sandwiches on the quiet green.
The sandwiches from Gurney’s are great. The ingredients are right: They don’t skimp when it comes to piling on the good stuff, the deli sauce has a nice kick, the bread is fresh, and the price is great. But that’s not the whole story. It’s not only the sandwich on the plate that makes Gurney’s great.
It’s also the vibe of the shop. It’s a sandwich counter in the back corner of a liquor store that only takes cash or check. Think about it. Yeah, that’s a vibe. It’s the opposite of Apple Pay, DoorDash, gray sleek interiors, and the generally monotonous world where every place kind of, weirdly, seems to be the same in a way that you can’t really put your finger on.
It’s unique that they don’t offer tomatoes. They just don’t have them, and that’s that. It’s a quirky thing, a weird thing, a funny thing, something that isn’t really anywhere else. It’s a Gurney’s thing.
It’s that they were out of cucumbers and pickles. Because of course they were out when I came in an hour before closing. It’s not one location of 75,000 found across the North American continent, all following a corporate policy that requires every single ingredient to be available any time of day.
Gurney’s is a small independent sandwich shop in a town in the deep North with a population of 1,274. Of course they were out of a couple things at the end of the day. There’s something so real about that. It’s refreshing.
Subway, Jimmy John’s, Potbelly, and every other national sandwich chain has their own custom paper they use to wrap their sandwiches. It’s the same everywhere in every shop, from Anchorage to Fort Lauderdale. Gurney’s doesn’t have their own custom paper or corporate policy mandating strict uniformity of packaging. They stack your sandwiches on the counter right where you ordered, wrapped in simple Saran wrap, the kind you have at home in the kitchen drawer next to the sink. It feels homey, or intimate, or maybe just normal. Really normal.
What makes Gurney’s just a little better than the rest of these wonderful Instagram-able places in Harbor Springs is its bare authenticity. It’s that getting a great sandwich in the back of a liquor store feels so good. It feels almost like something you’d find in a big city, not a perfect little town on the lake Up North. There isn’t even a sign on the front of the store or any allusion to the fact that there are sandwiches in the back.
An undercurrent in our modern ennui is an inescapable feeling that everything is kind of the same. Pre-packaged, commercialized, available on every app. It’s nice on paper but not really what we want at all. We all feel let down by a world of sameness.
And that’s why Gurney’s is special. It’s the opposite of that world. It’s not faceless kiosks that take your order. It’s a great sandwich that tastes homemade. It’s a local shop with real people. It’s a sandwich counter in the back of a liquor store, and it feels so real, so good, and so right.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @NecktieSalvage.
