The Restaurant
The Jockey Club at the Grand Stand is part of the Grand Hotel family of restaurants but stands separately on Cadotte Avenue, halfway up the hill from Main Street toward Grand Hotel itself. The room is built around a central stone fireplace, with cozy leather booths along two walls, an open kitchen at the back where the wood-fire grill anchors the line, and a wide outdoor patio that overlooks the first hole of The Jewel golf course — a Jerry Matthews-designed 18-hole course laid across the island's slopes. The Jockey Club is open from May 1 through October 24 and runs lunch from 11 AM to 4 PM and dinner from 5 PM to 10 PM every day of the season.
The cooking is the most direct on the island: a wood-fired open kitchen turning out filet mignon, dry-aged ribeye, planked Lake Superior whitefish, wood-grilled responsibly sourced poultry and shellfish, and the room's signature Jockey Club Wedge — a quarter-head iceberg with smoked bacon, blue cheese, and the kitchen's house-cultured buttermilk dressing. Lunch leans toward serious sandwiches, soups, and salads — a French dip, a wedge, a salmon BLT — and dinner is the wood-fire grill at its full ambition. The wine list mirrors the rest of the Grand Hotel programme: conservative, well-chosen, fairly priced for the resort context.
Service is the warmest of the Grand Hotel restaurants — less ceremonial than the Main Dining Room, more grown-up than the casual island taverns. The patio is the most-requested seating in summer and books out three weeks ahead for weekend evenings. Large parties are handled cleanly: the room can absorb a party of fourteen across two adjoining booths, and the kitchen can run a set-menu format for groups of ten and above with a week of notice. For a golf-day team dinner or a serious birthday that doesn't need an orchestra, this is the Mackinac default.
Why This Is Mackinac Island’s Team Dinner Pick
The Jockey Club is the Mackinac Island team-dinner default because the room is built for groups: the long booths absorb six to fourteen guests, the wood-fire grill produces a menu that everyone in the party can find a plate on, the kitchen handles set-menu pricing for groups with a week's notice. The patio over the first hole turns a corporate golf weekend into a more memorable evening than a hotel ballroom would manage. And the price stays a tier below Grand Hotel's Main Dining Room, which makes it the practical answer for a large party where every dollar is being looked at by accounting.
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