Whitetail Cafe

This little greasy spoon restaurant is located in the center of town. It serves both locals and tourists alike.
The Whitetail Café is only open for breakfast and lunch. It gets crowded on the weekends during the AM hours so you may have to wait a little while for a table to become free.
The inside is nothing fancy and may be best described as a throwback to years of yore. There’s no gourmet cooking here. But the food is filling, servers are friendly, and prices are reasonable.
My companions come here often and like the skillet omelette. So that’s what I ordered and it was terrific. The staff serves the omelette with all its ingredients (even hash browns) on a sizzling hot metal skillet. It’s kinda cool (er, I mean hot).
If you visit, say hi to the stuffed deer head mounted on the wall. He puts the whitetail in Whitetail Café!

Wow, place was packed and the 5 of us had our breakfast in 10 minutes. The Farmer Skillet was excellent. This is my new breakfast spot in East Tawas.

Love this homey, small town café. Very down to earth and cute. Food great, staff extra friendly and the collection of salt and pepper shakers very cute. A must for breakfast!

The place is cute. The staff was very nice. However, the egg white and cheese omelette I ordered had all unmelted cheese in it. The bacon that came with it was very dry an over cooked. The pancakes my mom ordered were good and she enjoyed the sausage and toast that came with it.

Best place for breakfast in town. Went with 4 people and all of us ordered omelettes which were very good. Loaded with cheese, bacon, whatever you want. Rye toast was excellent. Potatoes are an extra charge which is my only complaint. They charge 6.75 for an omelette and can’t throw in a side of potatoes??? Wait staff was friendly.

I absolutely LOVE the Whitetail Café. Every time I come to Tawas, I try and go there for breakfast. Their coffee is wonderful and service is excellent! A cute, cheap, place for great food.

Whitetail in has been around for as long as I can remember. Although I am not sure if it was around when I was younger.
Whitetail is small. So small in that I think maybe there are 10 – 15 booths. Don’t let the size fool you. It packs a lot of punch in the tiny place. They are only open from 9am to 2pm. It’s a dive and should be featured on Diners Drive-​In and Dives. (aka Triple D.) The wait it short, the wait staff is super friendly and constantly on the go. The food is home-​cooked amazing goodness.
Best part, it’s one of the cheapest places to eat in town.

Not a bad breakfast option for a small town. Old-​school diner vibe, with great service. The biscuit was awesome, but the sausage gravy was just so-​so, making for a mediocre biscuits & gravy experience. However, the praline pancakes (Sunday special) were outstanding! They even had real butter, which is a must. If only they used pure maple syrup, I’d have been obligated to tack on another star. I’d go back if/​when I find myself «up nort» on a Sunday morning.

Kids and I loved this place for breakfast! Service was great. Small diner style. They seem to do a good business. They take credit cards, which we found not all places do in town. This place was a recommendation from a stranger in town who overheard us talking. It’s the 2^nd block down from the pier. A bit of a hidden gem.
The food? Awesome! The smell of the «grilled» cinnamon rolls was so good. They taste even better. You’ve got to try these. The breakfast skillets were amazing. I couldn’t finish mine. Layers of hot breakfast food. Several to coose from. Prices are fair! The pancakes smell, look and taste gourmet. We all said we’d definitely go back!

Best breakfast in town while in Tawas, MI. The service is always nice, and I like how you can see them cooking the meals. Every season/​holiday they have different salt and pepper shakers on each table which are always cute. It’s at a perfect location right on Newman street and my boyfriend and I love coming here!

The service is so hit or miss here that it makes it almost not worth it. The food is usually good but they should allow others to take food orders. Three people on the floor, one only does drinks, one just adds up tickets… effectively leaving one to wait tables. I usually try not to change my star rating based on service, but I just can’t help it in this case.
Food is good if you can stand to watch the inefficiency.

In E. Tawas and looking for a delicious breakfast? Then this is the place for you! Good food, good service !

Whitetail Café is a cozy down home diner sort of place with good food, reasonable prices, as well as friendly and attentive service. I went here for breakfast on a Sunday morning, and the place was full. We had to wait a few minutes to get a table, but there were interesting local artifacts and kid art to look at, so the wait was painless. I didn’t notice until later in the meal, but each table has its own unique set of salt and pepper shakers… cute touch. As for the food, I had the Farmer’s Skillet which contains egg, ham, hash browns, onions, mushrooms and melted cheese (probably cheddar jack). The skillet tasted very good, and the portion was rather large. I was very satisfied, but my one complaint is that they use canned mushrooms. My companion had an omelet stuffed with corned beef and swiss cheese. The omelet was also quite good. My companion and I shared a half order of biscuits and gravy (which was really just one biscuit). I found that to be pretty average. I’ve had much better biscuits and much better gravy, but I love biscuits and gravy, so my craving was satisfied. All in all, this place is worth the trip.

Best breakfast in town! We always stop here when upnorth. The biscuits and gravy are amazing, as are the skillets — my son says that their breakfast skillet sets the bar for all others. Great service, too!

The first time we tried to eat here the line was out the door. We happened to find ourselves nearby the next day and stopped in for a great breakfast! For 3 of us it was around $ 20. The staff is friendly and the service was excellent. I would definitely recommend it!

Sweet potato fries were excellent. They had some sort of crack sugar sprinkled on them that made the irresistible. Any sandwich on their rye bread would be excellent.

My husband and I visit Tawas a few times a year. His family has a compound of vacation cottages in nearby Au Gres, and Tawas always provides a nice little respite from family vacation life on long weekend trips. We’ve passed Whitetail probably 30 times in the last 3 years. It’s so unassuming it doesn’t even look like a restaurant from the outside! So imagine how surprised we were when we sat down for an early lunch there and were treated to gourmet diner food! In normal diners, things are on the greasy side. Delicious, but greasy. Whitetail somehow manages to serve diner food made fresh and from scratch, but without taking on the stuffiness of gourmet fare. We each had what should have been a simple meal that ended up being memorable because of those little homemade touches. The only downside is that the booths are pretty restrictive. The largest group you could go there with would be 4 people, and I could see them being extremely crowded with long waits at breakfast time.

I still got a wonderful breakfast but was sooo disappointed to find they no longer have the venison on the menu. I had been looking forward to coming back here for four years, just for that. (Pardon me while I go wipe the tears away.)
The meal I did get was very good so I’m not knocking them, and I still enjoyed the ambiance of the place, in spite of the strange looks my lavender hair elicited, but it will never be set out from all others by this distinction.
I was told the venison was getting too hard to get and too expensive, which is a shame. Like being told you couldn’t get a steak in Texas, or crabcakes in Baltimore. Rules. Grrrr.

Quaint little café that reminded me of a coney menu with pretty much everything on it. We stopped in for breakfast and were happy and full when we left. People were nice and the prices are resonalble. We will do breakfast again next time.

Had lunch today at the Whitetail Café. I had the Whitetail salad. It had bacon, grilled chicken boiled eggs, lots of cheese, blue cheese crumbles, dried berries and a fantastic homemade blue cheese dressing all for $ 7.35. It was wonderful! The people were very friendly.