SACO — Whenever I find a restaurant where lunch is less than $10, I feel lucky.

So I should have known from the name that Lucky Loggers in Saco was my kind of place. It’s an unpretentious old-school family restaurant with breakfast all-day and comfort food like meatloaf sandwiches, tuna melts and turkey with gravy.

When I arrived at Lucky Loggers, before noon, I saw how extensive the breakfast menu was and decided I had to try something from it. For $7.75, I got the corned beef hash with two eggs over easy, home fries and toast.

Then I looked for something that would last until the next day and picked a cold meatloaf sandwich for $6.50, with chips. So for what I might pay for one lunch at some southern Maine eateries, I got two.

The eggs were done perfectly, just firm enough but not rubbery on the whites, and the yolks were nice and runny. The hash was pressed into a sort of thick pancake, which I thought odd at first. It had very thinly minced corned beef and tiny diced potatoes, and I thought it tasted great. Not at all greasy, like some corned beef hash. Instead of toast, I got an English muffin, buttered and grilled to a golden brown.

The meatloaf sandwich had several thin slices of meatloaf with lettuce on very thin white bread. Nothing fancy, but tasty.

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Luck Loggers in Saco decorated just before Christmas, with a logger mural in the background. Photo by Ray Routhier

The place is located in a retail plaza not far from downtown. It actually has a logging history, according to its website. The shopping mall, built in the 1960s, sits on what was once a drying yard for a Deering Lumber Co. sawmill. One wall is covered with a mural of loggers on a river drive, and there are logging tools hung in various spots. The place is right next door to a Renys, the Maine-based general merchandise stores that carry everything from work clothes to canned meats.

The breakfast menu also has omelets, including a “meat lovers” with bacon, ham, sausage and cheese, and a veggie omelet with mushrooms, green peppers, onions, salsa and cheese. The “lumberjack” omelet is basically a combination of the two above. Most omelets are $7.99 for a small and $8.99 for a large and include home fries and toast, or three pancakes.

Some of the other breakfast specialties include silver dollar pancakes, pancakes with various fruit compotes, French toast, crepes, Belgian waffles, eggs Benedict and pigs in a blanket, aka sausages rolled in pancakes.

A cold meatloaf sandwich to go, at Lucky Loggers in Saco.  Photo by Ray Routhier

For kids and seniors, there is a menu of smaller portions, like the mini breakfast, which includes one pancake, one egg and two slices of bacon or two sausage links for $4.99.

Besides breakfast, there are sandwiches, burgers, melts, hot dogs and such. There are are hot turkey and hot meatloaf sandwiches, with gravy. Dinner-type entrees include ground chuck steak, or what I think restaurants used to called Salisbury steak in my childhood, basically a steak-shaped hamburger patty. There are also chicken tenders, beef liver, meatloaf, spaghetti and meat sauce, and chicken and veal parmesan.

And if you’re looking for old-school comfort food for dessert, your luck continues. The menu include pies a la mode, crepes a la mode with fruit, strawberry shortcake, Grape Nut custard and waffle sundaes.


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