COOK- Melissa Rabas stood inside Mel’s Bistro on Monday, surrounded by Cook Chamber of Commerce representatives and supporters gathered to formally welcome her new restaurant to the community.
The ribbon cutting came nearly two months after Rabas opened the doors, but the idea behind the bistro reaches back much further.
“When I was in high school, my one goal was to build a coffee shop cafe,” Rabas said.
Mel’s Bistro is not quite the coffee shop she imagined as a teenager growing up in Suring, Wis., but it is close enough to bring that early dream full circle.
Rabas grew up in a household where both parents cooked and baked. Her parents favored a learn-by-doing approach, which did not always produce perfect results.
“I remember my first cake I baked was a box cake. You know how you have the oil and the water? I switched it around,” she laughed.
When the cake came out looking strange, her father quickly diagnosed the problem.
“My dad’s like, ‘It’s because you put in too much oil and not enough water,’” Rabas recalled. “Guess what? We still ate it, because back then you just ate what was there.”
Family connections brought Rabas to the Crane Lake area in 2012. She settled in Buyck and remained after discovering that both she and her children loved the area.
Learning by doing
More than 20 years working in restaurants and bars steadily expanded Rabas’ experience. Trails End Resort was where she truly learned to cook, although not entirely by choice.
“I didn’t want to,” she said. “I said, ‘I’m not doing that. I’d rather be the dessert person.’”
That changed when one of the cooks became ill. Rabas learned the deep fryer and other tasks before suddenly finding herself responsible for much more.
“She couldn’t work, and I got thrown in,” Rabas said. “I went through four loaves of bread that night and burnt them all. I tell you, I burnt them all, and we served over 100 people for dinner.”
She worked at Trails End for more than five years, gaining skills she carried into other restaurant jobs and eventually into a business of her own.
Built with tip money
During the winter of 2021, Rabas began building a food trailer she named Sugarlicious Cheesecakes & More while bartending at the Vermilion River Tavern.
“Through my tip money is how I built my truck,” she said. “I actually bought an old vintage camper, and I redesigned it and built my truck that way.”
Rabas set her sights on launching Sugarlicious in the summer of 2022, but her father questioned whether she could finish the conversion in time.
“‘You ain’t gonna have this ready,’” Rabas recalled. “And I said, ‘Watch me.’ You tell me I can’t, and I will. Don’t stop me, because it’s gonna happen.”
Rabas initially envisioned Sugarlicious as a dessert truck built around cupcakes and cheesecake. But she realized she would have to sell a lot of desserts to make the business work and began looking for a savory option she could offer with relatively low overhead.
“Who doesn’t like tacos?” she said. “Tacos and cheesecake? It’s a weird combination. But I’m gonna tell you what, everybody loves it.”
Creativity became the foundation of the menu. Rabas paired chicken street tacos with cowboy caviar, more commonly served as a chip dip, and developed several varieties of macaroni and cheese.
“I just took different flavors that I think would be really good together,” she said. “I just enjoy putting different things together and seeing what you get.”
A signature dessert
Cheesecake became the item most closely associated with Sugarlicious, although Rabas had never made one before a friend suggested it.
“My friend Patty said, ‘Well, I don’t like cupcakes. Can you make cheesecake?’” Rabas recalled. “I looked at her and said, ‘I don’t make cheesecake, Patty, but I’ll try it.’”
Rabas studied several recipes and assembled her own version by combining different ingredients and techniques.
“I’ll take a recipe, I’ll read it. I’ll take another one, I read it,” she said. “Then I’m like, ‘Well, if I take that ingredient and mix it with that ingredient and put this ingredient and do this and that,’ that’s how my cheesecake came.”
The first batch received enthusiastic reviews from Patty and others at the Vermilion River Tavern.
“They said, ‘It is good. Don’t change a thing,’” Rabas said. “I’ve had people who don’t like cheesecake try mine, and they said it’s phenomenal. If you can get somebody who doesn’t like cheesecake to like it, I think I did pretty good.”
Rabas also developed a whipped version that became the basis for the cheesecake bar at Mel’s Bistro, where customers can choose toppings and flavor combinations.
Ready for the next step
A permanent restaurant remained Rabas’ ultimate goal, but she resisted moving too quickly. When the Cook location became available several years ago, others encouraged her to consider it.
“I said, ‘I’m not ready,’” Rabas said. “I wanted to run the food truck. I wanted to get my name out there, and I wanted a good product that kept me going. Once I knew I had that, then we went to the next step.”
When the space became available again, Rabas was ready.
She carried several Sugarlicious favorites into Mel’s Bistro while expanding the menu with paninis, dirty sodas, and sandwiches that reflect her fondness for putting new twists on familiar food. Those include a prime rib sandwich, a Tuscan chicken sandwich inspired by a bruschetta pasta dish, and a Russian Reuben made with Russian dressing rather than Thousand Island. The cranberry turkey has emerged as the restaurant’s most popular sandwich, while customer demand quickly earned macaroni and cheese a favored spot on the menu.
“I don’t want to be the same old place that everybody else has,” Rabas said. “You can get a burger anywhere you go. So I put a little twist to it.”
Finding her footing
Rabas employs about seven people and credits them with helping the restaurant through its first two months.
“I have a great staff,” she said. “They’re all amazing. If it wasn’t for them, honestly, I don’t think I would be doing what I’m doing right now. They’re pretty much my backbone.”
The early weeks were not without anxiety.
“When I first opened the door here and tried to get things going, I had this pit in the bottom of my stomach that the rock was going to drop and I was going to lose employees or something bad was going to happen,” Rabas said. “But we’re two months in, and the pit in my stomach is gone.”
Mel’s Bistro is located at 221 S. Hwy. 53 in Cook. It is open from 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. Customers can view the menu and order online at www.mels-bistro.com. More information is available on the Mel’s Bistro & Sugarlicious Facebook page or by calling 218-410-9964.
For Rabas, the restaurant represents both the next step after Sugarlicious and the fulfillment of an idea she carried from Wisconsin to the North Country.
“This isn’t a coffee shop or anything, but we are a little cafe,” she said. “It brings a little bit of what I wanted to do from high school to now.”