Since opening Stillwater Grill and Pizza in Nipigon on Dec. 27, 2022, owner Denis Becker has been keeping pretty busy.
“It honestly hasn’t felt like we’ve been open here for almost a year,” Becker said. “It just feels like we’ve only been going at it for a couple of months.
“I’m still surprised with how busy we still are. We get hit with people coming in at lunch time and then for dinner it’s just crazy. It amazes me how many people are going out every day to eat.”
Becker — who used to run Becker’s Restaurant and Lounge in Nipigon — also owns the Stillwater Tent & Trailer Park on Highway 11/17, which is where the restaurant is located.
“People were going up to me nonstop asking me, when are you going to be reopening a restaurant,” Becker said.
“We knew there was still some interest there from previous customers and we’ve seen a lot of people come back, along with some new people.”
Becker says that the pizzas have been the biggest hit at the restaurant — the chicken alfredo, alfredo Philly cheese steak, and buffalo chicken have proved to be the most popular with customers — with the burgers coming in close behind.
“We don’t put anything in them,” Becker added. “There’s no fillers or anything that’s regurgitated as I call it.
“Everything we do here we try to make as much as we can in the kitchen.”
The majority of the Stillwater Grill and Pizza’s patrons are in Nipigon, but Becker says that they’ve had people come in from Thunder Bay, Longlac and Marathon.
“We also get people that are going down the highway and go ‘hey, there’s a restaurant,” Becker added.
“That works out kind of good for us when you are coming from the west, as we are the first place you see when you are coming from Thunder Bay, but if you are coming from the east, we’re kind of at the end and it’s like ‘oh we didn’t know about that place.’
“I have signs for the campground set up on the highway coming from the east, now I just have to add some details about the restaurant to it so that more people know about it.”
In addition to getting the restaurant’s name out there more to those who are passing through, Becker says Stillwater Grill and Pizza plans to keep doing what they’ve been doing as they enter year two of operation.
"I guess we’re going okay so far for people to keep coming in every day,” Becker added.
“We just hosted an ATV run here a couple of weeks ago and that brought in a lot of people that hadn’t heard about us before. The majority of them have gone on to Facebook and recommended our place to their friends, so that was great to get our name out there.”
Stillwater Grill & Pizza is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday and is closed on Sunday and Monday.
More information on the restaurant can be found on Facebook.
