Idle Isle | Sweet Town Cafe | Brigham City, UT

Bygone Charm on Main Street

Every time we visit Idle Isle in Brigham City, we delight in its very existence. It is a piece of culinary history that opened for business in 1921. Back then, this sort of sweet town cafe might be found on Main Street in most towns and cities. In the twenty-first century, its charm is a rarity. Merely walking in the door will lower your blood pressure. Carpeting keeps sound at a pleasant hush. Fans spin slowly from the high ceiling. Only the occasional whir of the milk shake machine or the hum of an electric lemon squeezer (for lemonade) rises above the chatter of the good citizens who eat here.

Choice Seats

You can have a lovely burger and a malt at the marble and onyx soda fountain. Regulars congregate in a slightly more boisterous back room with oilcloth-covered tables. Travelers who want to see the town’s comings and goings seek seats in one of the polished wood booths up front. At each table, you will find a little ramekin of Idle Isle apricot marmalade. Spoon it onto the fleecy rolls that come alongside dinner. Blue-plate fundamentals include a meal of tender pot roast with lumpy mashed potatoes shaped like a volcano crater to hold gravy. Or choose from among such daily specials as Tuesday corned beef and cabbage, Thursday meat loaf, Friday rainbow trout, and Saturday turkey dinner.

Idleberry Pie and Baked Custard Pudding

Serving sizes are temperate, so you will have room for Idleberry pie. A resonating purple blend of blue, black, and boysenberries, it earns a Roadfood blue ribbon. Or choose baked custard pudding, which is simply the tenderest food imaginable. “I’m sorry,” says our waitress Cariann when she places a jiggly bowl of pudding before us. “The pudding might still be a little warm. They just took it from the oven.” An apology is hardly necessary: Balmy, smooth, golden-sweet, this is sweet town cafe food fit for the gods of comfort.

We featured Idle Isle in one of our first Roadfood columns back in 1997. It hasn’t changed since then!