Two Harbors, MN

January 13, 2004

Finding Good Pie Is a Piece of Cake on North Shore

Taken from the Minneapolis Tribune, 9/7/1981, Volume CXV, Number 117, Section S, Author: Patrick Keane Marx

Ask anybody who has toured Lake Superior's North shore to recount their favorite spots and they're apt to tick off Gooseberry Falls, Split Rock lighthouse, the towering Palisade Head rock cliffs and any view that shows the awesome beauty of the lake itself.

Many will pause, however, and add Betty's Pies to their list of unforgettables.

Betty's Pies?

"If you're on the North Shore you have to stop in," said Harland Nasvik, a Minnetonka photographer who savored a huge piece of pie last week at Betty's.

It's a regional claim that Betty's has the best pie in the world. This year tourists from Germany, Spain, Mexico, Japan and every state in the union tasted Betty's pie.

Betty is not the brainchild of a corporate giant. She is Betty Lessard, 56, a lifelong resident of northeastern Minnesota, who is in her kitchen six days a week at 5 a.m. from April into October making pies, doughnuts, breads and other tasty pastries.

(... Continued from History Page...) Her place, two miles north of Two Harbors where the Stewert River meets the lake, has no heaters and no indoor toilet. It is strictly seasonal. So the pie season officially ended last Sunday.

Lessard celebrated her 25th year in business this summer and she says it was the busiest yet. By her count over the years she has made 60,560 pies, 389,900 loaves of bread.

She made more than 5,000 pies this summer alone- all by hand.

"I make them from scratch. I stir them by hand and I put them in the oven and take them out myself." said Lessard, whose right arm is marked with dozens of tiny burn scars from reaching into the oven for pies.

By 11a.m. when she opens, Lessard will have made 24 loaves of rye bread (for sandwiches) and about 60 pies. The most she's made on a single day was 74. They all sold.

"Strawberry is the favorite, then lemon angel, chocolate layer and banana cream," Lessard said.

She sells them by the piece starting at a dollar and some cents. It'll cost you $10 to take a whole one home.

Lessard does not take kindly to the insinuation that she overcharges for take-home pie. For every pie someone takes home, she argues, about 10 people will be deprived of a piece. And so, she reasons, those who take a pie home should pay the added price.

And plenty of people do. A man from the Twin Cities last week ordered seven to take home. An elderly couple from Duluth came up for pie last week as they have every week for several years. When they left they carried out three specially made batches of cookies.

The business started 25 years ago as Andy's Smoked FIsh Shack, a tiny 8-by-8 wood-frame shed that Lessard and her late husband, Lloyd, took over. The name was changed to Betty's Cafe.

(Lessard's father, ALex Christenson, a pioneer fish dealer in Duluth, had owned the property since 1909 and leased it to another man, who quit the business in 1956.)

"My father wanted to keep me in the fish business," LEssard said, "and this looked like it was the only way."

"We bought a little grill because I didn't want to sit and wait for fish customers and so I wouldn't get bored."

"I'd make doughnuts at home and bring them up. Then we bought a three-burner heating plate to heat water, which we carried by hand from an outdoor pump."

Still she had time on her hands so she began baking pies- strawberry pies.

"I became known for pies about 15 years ago when the guys on the way to work at Silver Bay (Reserve Mining Co.) stopped off for coffee and pie," Lessard said.

Word spread- she has never advertised- and tourists started coming in. More than half her customers are from the Twin Cities.

Last year Lessard changed the name of the business from Betty's Cafe to Betty's Pies and it fostered a surge of new business. She said many people had heard about Betty's pies, but drove past Betty's Cafe looking for apie shop. Many of them finally found it when the name change was posted on her sign.

It's still small, with a kitchen 32-by-15 feet, and will seat about 38 customers in a comfortable and cozy setting- nothing fancy here.

Business is brisk even on dismal, rainy days whether it be early spring or late fall. That is among the reasons Betty's Pies keeps a seasonal schedule.