Restaurants Serve Twin Ports During Unprecedented Thanksgiving Day

DULUTH, Minn.– This Thanksgiving, people in the Twin Ports replaced their fine china with aluminum foil pans.

Old family recipes took a year off for meals prepared by restaurants hoping to help people enjoy the day.

Located at the Sheraton in downtown Duluth, Restaurant 301 was busy preparing 70 boxed up meals for groups of anywhere from 4-8 people. Containers were full of Thanksgiving classics like turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and of course pumpkin pie.

“It triggers certain memories for them and hopefully they’re great memories. And you want people to still have that moment,” said Kevin Ilenda, who’s the Executive Chef for Restaurant 301.

Meals could be picked up inside with different pick up times to control the amount of people inside.

Normally, on Thanksgiving, the restaurant serves a limited menu for the holiday, mostly for those staying at the Sheraton. But this year, they were serving meals for people all around the area.

“It changes things where you’re used to packaging up and serving on a single plate. Now you’re packaging up one turkey, one gravy, one fixings there,” said Ilenda. “So you’re using more things that way and it takes a little more finesse to bag things up that way.”

The Blackwoods Restaurant in Proctor was also helping families put a meal on the table Thursday.

“You know, usually our restaurant is full. But given the way of what’s happening now, we had to get creative,” said Jax Eisenmann, Sales Director at Blackwoods.

The restaurant put together to-go meals for the first time ever. They featured a whole turkey and all the Thanksgiving Day fixings. Staff put the food right inside vehicles for contactless pick up.

Management at Blackwoods said they’ve spent all week preparing 160 dinners to fill the stomachs of over 600 people.

But Blackwoods isn’t just helping people have a thanksgiving dinner this year. The week’s worth of prep and serving has put 50 of their employees back to work during a time when hours are low due to the current COVID-19 restrictions.

“Guests were really wanting something that normally would dine in our restaurant so we created this event,” said Eisenmann. “And it would help to staff our team so we have servers that haven’t been working so by doing this we could put people back to work today.”

Jack Nikko and Alli Brittin ordered a meal to-go for their families this year when they realized a big gathering wasn’t going to happen with the high number of cases.

Outside of stuffing, spending time with family is their favorite part of the day. But while it might not be the same, they’re glad they can make the most of Thanksgiving Day and help out local businesses in the process.

“It’s nice to support local businesses. And it saves us the work of having to cook it ourselves,” laughed Britten.

“I think it means everything, especially being from a small town. Small businesses support us so we support them back,” said Nikko.

“We’re all in this together,” said Brittin.