[HOT LIST] FOOD! DETROIT! THE BEST YEAR EVER! (2013 Edition)

Whole Foods Midtown. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

Wow, 2013. This was quite the year as far as years go, amiright? While last year's "BEST YEAR EVER" recap was relatively easy to put together - everything that happened rather thoughtfully happened in easily-identifiable themes - this year was kind of schizoid. The echo chamber got even more echoey. There was more news with more people covering it, making it even more difficult to keep track of everything as it all started to sound like so much white noise.

In the end though, trends that have been developing for years now continued to grow and evolve. New places opened and old places closed, while others still rebranded. Some things got everyone talking, though what they said often came across as hive mind shoutiness. While some people will debate what the best new restaurants were, to me the interesting question to ask is, what were the biggest things that happened in food this year? Here's my answer.

#1 Whole Foods opened.
Fucking deal with it. This was huge. This was huge for so many reasons. And this validated the "Detroit Renaissance" narrative in so many ways. This of course didn't stop people from whining about it and whining about how people were praising it and whining about people who were whining about praising it because that's just what you people do, but the fact that a grocery store opening incited so much "dialogue" and took over the Internet for interminable weeks (…months, YEARS) is all the proof I need that this was hands-down the biggest story of the year.

#2 Eastern Market got one bajillion dollars for its much-touted Shed 5 renovation.
I'm pretty sure it's going to be a 5-star luxury all-inclusive resort now? Or something? So the Shed 5 renovation has been in the works for some years and there has been a steady stream of foundation money flowing in to fund this or that part of it. Suffice it to say, by the time it's done it is going to be A.MAHZ.ING. Among its many features will be a pimp-ass community commercial kitchen, a 200-seat patio, an 18-hole golf course*, I can't even keep track of it all.

#3 Eastern Market is just fucking awesome.
The end. I mean, just, the fucking end. I keep nutting over this because here's the thing you may or may not realize: for all the buzz that Midtown and Corktown get, Eastern Market is the one district in Detroit that has the potential to be Detroit's definitive tourism draw, a singularly unique experience that travelers cannot easily replicate elsewhere, a place that is entirely walkable with a host of options for dining, drinking, shopping, exploring. High profile/much-buzzed-about restaurants, local artisan shops, local food vendors, scores of hand-made and ethnic items from soaps to spices, art galleries and artists studios (dozens! or at least a single dozen which is still a lot!), makerspaces, old-timey letterpress studios (TWO of them!), easy access to the Dequindre Cut greenway which will be further expanding and connecting to other city greenways, and and and SHED 5!!!! and so much more. Midtown is great, the DIA is pretty, it is completely feasible to walk from, say, Rodin to the Bronx in the middle of the night in the middle of winter (/sarcasm), Corktown is nice with its 12 bars along a mile-long stretch of Michigan Avenue and all the barren lots in between, yepyepyep all great. But Eastern Market is where its at. Next year Detroit City Distillery, Dave Mancini's Supino extension, and the restaurant currently known as Frontera all open, which will just further underscore this point.

The Stand. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

#4 A bunch of new places opened.
Here is a not-all-all-comprehensive but still meatier than most list of new places that opened in 2013 smattered all throughout greater metro Detroit. If I didn't include something, it is for no particular reason other than it didn't pop into my head. I'm not saying these are the "best" of 2013 because I just don't think that kind of designation is relevant in this market, for reasons.

51 North - a brewery/meadery/winery in Lake Orion
Aventura - a massive wine bar/tapas restaurant/lounge complex in A2 owned by the proprietor of Sava
Bagger Dave's - the one in Greektown, listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
Beignets - food truck based in Hamtramck
Bigalora Ann Arbor - the third location of the casual Italian restaurant and pizzeria formerly known as Pizzeria Biga
Bistro Joe's - a fancy restaurant in the upper mezzanine of a grocery store in Birmingham, which works better than you might think
Brizola - fancy restaurant inside Greektown Casino
Buffalo Wild Wings - the one in Greektown, listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
Cafe ML - Bill Roberts' latest in a Bloomfield
Carnaval Mexican - a casual take-out Mexican place, listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
CAYA Smokehouse - upscale BBQ in Wolverine Lake
The Cheesecake Factory - listed only because it was apparently such a big deal (a line around the BLOCK, people - and it's 12 Oaks Mall so it's a big damn block)
Chelsea Alehouse - brewery in Chelsea, where Michigan's first-ever (now defunct) microbrewery opened in the '80s
Craft Work - newly opened in Detroit's West Village since I first put this post together, this is the latest from Hugh Yaro, co-owner of Ronin and Commonwealth
Detroit Institute of Bagels - Detroit's only bagel shop
Detroit Vegan Soul - Detroit's only vegan restaurant
Falling Down Beer Co. - brewpub in Warren known for elevated gastropub fare
Fenton Fire Hall - a historic renovation project in downtown Fenton from the folks that brought you Vinsetta Garage and Union Woodshop
Firebird Tavern - beautifully renovated space in Greektown from the owners of Pulse known for a craft beer and solid bar food
Grace of India - one of Detroit's only Indian places, a casual take-out place listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
Great Lakes Culinary Center - not really a restaurant but a big, beautiful events space, rentable commercial kitchen, and demonstration center in Southfield
Griffin Claw - new brewery and distillery in Birmingham from the folks at Big Rock
The Grindhouse - Corridor Sausage Co's food truck
Huerto - upscale Mexican in a Bloomfield
Isalita - upscale Mexican in A2
Jefferson House - ambitious contemporary American menu inside the Crowne Plaza Detroit
La Feria - Spanish tapas in design-forward space in Midtown
La Palma - a fast and casual Lebanese take-out and dine-in place in Midtown listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
Luxe - second location in a Pointe
Macabee's - generic American menu, listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
Marais - upscale French cuisine in a Pointe
Market North End - I'm actually not even sure. Birmingham I think?
Meeting House - contemporary American in Rochester
Melt - gelato, coffee and candy in Midtown, listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
MEX - upscale Mexican in a Bloomfield
Midtown Grille - generic American menu, listed here because it's in Detroit and everything in Detroit is relevant
Monk Beer Bar - the Belgianier little brother of Belgish Bastone in downtown Royal Oak, located in the space that was previously Cafe Habana
Moo Cluck Moo - burger and milkshake joint that made headlines for un-fast-food ingredients and paying employees $15/hour in Dearborn Heights; second location also opened in Canton
Old German - in the basement of the Grizz in A2
Ottava Via - contemporary Italian restaurant and pizzeria in Corktown from the Mercury Burger Bar people
Patagonia Parilladas - an Argentine steakhouse in Southwest
Public House - sliders, milkshakes, fried foods and cocktails in Ferndale from the people behind Imperial
Red Crown - historic renovation, craft cocktails, house-smoked BBQ and upscale Southern food in a Pointe
Republica - a surprisingly fun little spot in Berkley with emphasis on Michigan craft beer
(revolver) - a pop-up that stays popped up in Hamtramck
Rock City Eatery - Eastern European meets American cuisine with contemporary spin in a rocked-out space in Hamtramck
Schramm's Mead - a lovely tasting room with excellent small plates in Ferndale
SkyBar and Lounge - the menu and drink list fail to impress, but the 33rd-floor view of downtown Detroit does not
Smoke Street - BBQ in downtown Milford in the old Five Lakes Grill/Cinco Lagos space
The Stand - Chef Paul Grosz's latest in Birmingham (and it's phenomenal)
Trattoria Pizzeria Da Luigi - possibly just called "Da Luigi" now, this is Italian food and wood-fired pizza in downtown Royal Oak from the former owner of Sangria
Thomas Magee's Sporting House and Whiskey Bar - handsome new bar in EASTERN MARKET
Two James Spirits  - gorgeous tasting room in Corktown
Vellum - a (not sure what to say here) restaurant in Ann Arbor

#5 EVERYONE came here, again.
Only this time the locals weren't quite so tickled with it. (It was only a matter of time.) Eddie Huang set a new bar of Detroit-backlash-baiting by first Saying All the Right Things then pissing on a lamp post in the middle of a street. And then there was that whole Bourdain thing.

#6 More shit to open next year.
OHMYGOD IT'S LIKE IT JUST WON'T STOP!!!!!! On deck for next year: Dave Mancini's new place next to Supino, Andy Hollyday's new place in Midtown called Selden Street, Top of the Pontch inside the Crowne Plaza, two new Bucharest Grills (one is a production spot), a second Russell Street Deli (it's called something else, idk), Detroit City Distillery in Eastern Market, the restaurant currently known as Frontera (it will be called something else by the time it opens), a permanent space for Guns + Butter (but oh, will the magic still be there if it's no longer limited and exclusive?), Craft Work in West Village (kind of sort of open already but not really?), another new spot in Ferndale from the folks at Imperial, that BBQ place on 9 Mile that's supposed to be opening in the old AJ's space, Whiskey Disco and something else new at the old Oslo, Kuhnhenn's second location and major production space, Atwater Brewery's new brewpub in a Pointe as well as their MASSIVE NEW PRODUCTION SPACE IN CORKTOWN ACROSS FROM MUDGIE'S which they've been very cagey about announcing and still no one from the Atwater camp has gone on the record about it, Maurice Williams' new spots The Addison and Restaurant 55, Atlas Global Bistro maybe possibly reopening downtown, Alley Wine in Midtown, that douchey-sounding new place in Royal Oak replacing Sangria (but the chef is awesome!), Michael Symon's B Spot Burgers (several locations in the works), Batch Brewing in Corktown, Rubbed in Corktown, Gold Cash Gold in Corktown (not only is this actually still happening, but I'm told they also have a chef), a Chez Chloe food truck, those two restaurants on the ground floor of the Broderick ("Still happening," I'm told), those two restaurants inside the GAR building ("Still happening," is rumored), Cafe con Leche's second location in New Center, and I'm sure many more I missed.

Cultural Living Room. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

#7 Re-boots continued to be hot. 
They were hot in 2011. Hotter still in 2012. And in 2013 they were…well, probably equally as hot as in 2012, but still pretty hot.

Bella Piatti - Bella Piatti in Birmingham got a new owner and a whole new old world Italian menu to go with it.
Bigalora - Pizzeria Biga had to re-name itself Bigalora in order to go forward with trademarking so they can continue opening more and more locations, but worry not, this didn't affect the restaurants at all (aside from some expected menu tweaking that comes with streamlining a new concept).
Cultural Living Room - The Kresge Court inside the DIA got a whole new look and concept, making it a great place to stop for lunch, for meetings, for reading, or whatever.
Craft - Cinq became Commune and Commune became Craft, but it's still in the basement of Bastone, now with a retro '70s look.
Lock + Key - the PDR at Oxford Inn got a new look and concept thanks to a TV show that does such things.
Forest Grill - Forest Grill is going after the "casual dining" dollars by ditching the white tablecloths and introducing a burger menu.
Red Crown - Red Crown in Grosse Pointe Park is now under new ownership and management, making it effectively a new restaurant.
Rodin - Rodin recently lost their opening chef and is undergoing a slight change in concept; the new menu is thematically similar but with all new items less geared towards sit-down fine dining and more geared towards chilling at the bar.
Tallulah - Tallulah in Birmingham is now under new ownership and management, making it effectively a new restaurant. For those of you keeping score, yes, it would appear former proprietor of Bella Piatti, Red Crown, and Tallulah Mindy Lopus has entirely left the restaurant biz, but not the food and beverage biz - her next project is Detroit Wine School.
Torino - Looks like Torino's ongoing identity crisis finally paid off with a new chef and a very buzzy tasting menu that changes weekly.
Treat Dreams - Treat Dreams in Ferndale significantly expanded their space this year, and have also expanded their offerings to include coffee and donuts in the morning - and their Wicked Donuts are already being met with rave reviews.

PS, will Opus One ever reopen? I do not know but it has now been closed for over a year now.

#8 Pop-ups popped harder.
Last year I said pop-ups would eat themselves. They didn't. Instead, they popped harder.
Guns + Butter emerged as the real star, getting featured on That Bourdain Show and then going international with events in L.A., Singapore and Dubai. A brick and mortar location is in the works for 2014. (revolver) is basically a permanent restaurant pop-up, featuring new chefs every weekend with pre-sold prix fixe dinners with two seating times nightly. MotorCity Wine and St. Cece's Pub embraced the pop-up mania and started hosting popular weekly events featuring different guest "pop-ups," in effect acting as restaurant incubators. And unlikely spaces like Shinola and Salt + Cedar hosted pop-up dinners, as well as random arts spaces and not-yet-open restaurants. More economic growth corp-organized pop-ups in Jefferson Chalmers and the Avenue of Fashion demonstrated the model's potential for long-term economic development in targeted neighborhoods. We also saw a few pop-ups go permanent, including Always Brewing Detroit and Coffee and (_____) (though Coffee and (_____) will temporarily close Jan. 6 until sometime this spring as they secure their Certificate of Occupancy to go full-fledged permanent).

La Feria. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

#9 Hatch alum rocked this year.
Rock City Eatery, Detroit Institute of Bagels, Detroit Vegan Soul, La Feria, and Anthology Coffee all opened permanent locations this year. Next year we should see HenriettaHaus Coffee Roasters and Batch Brewing open in their permanent homes. Which just goes to show, everyone "wins" in this competition, even if it's not the $50,000 grand prize.

#10 Caffeine fiends won the most. 
Good or at least serviceable, there are more places to get a decent cup of coffee now than ever before in Detroit. There's Anthology Coffee and Detroit Institute of Bagels in Corktown, Always Brewing Detroit in Grandmont Rosedale, Coffee and (____) in Jefferson Chalmers, the Roasting Plant and Urban Bean Company downtown, the completely renovated Stella Good Coffee in New Center, multiple new Great Lakes Coffee outlets throughout metro Detroit (including, most recently, Ford Field), plus a second retail location for Avalon still in theory happening (next year?). Also, tea started to strike your fancy, with local tea companies Joseph Wesley and Eli Tea Company available at some of these independent cafes and generally gaining "steam." (lol)

Rock City Eatery. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

#11 Good food, good design.
For the third year in a row, your eyeballs didn't have to suffer for the sake of your tastebuds. Restaurateurs continued to show a strong cognizance of the importance of aesthetics, with thoughtfully-designed spaces that continued to emphasize reclaimed materials and flourishes from local artisans. Check out Fenton Fire Hall, La Feria, MEX, Ottava Via, Public House, Red Crown, Rock City Eatery, The Stand, Stella Good Coffee, Two James Spirits, and Urban Bean Co. Even pop-ups showed a high-minded level of design, working in collaboration with the AIA Detroit on beautiful, if temporary, spaces.

Two James Distillery. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

#12 Booze. Always booze. 
This was a BIG year for booze news. Craft beer continued its soaring growth and in metro Detroit we saw plenty of new places open, including Griffin Claw, Falling Down, and 51 North, with Batch Brewing, a second location for Kuhnhenn, and second and third locations for Atwater in the works for 2014. Artisan spirits made a flying leap into popular consciousness as increasingly more breweries started distilling, established distillers like Valentine and New Holland increased their product lines with nationally-recognized products, and the first licensed distillery in the city of Detroit since Prohibition - Two James - opened. Next year Griffin Claw will be in full-bore distilling mode with a separate cocktail bar attached to the brewery, and Detroit City Distillery will open in Eastern Market.

Craft ciders also grew, though they haven't quite yet popped in the mainstream the same way beer and spirits have. Many area cider mills are now making their own hard ciders, and Virtue Cider's Sidra de Nava is bringing national attention to Michigan's craft cider scene.

Use of cans continues to grow as a popular packaging method, and next year even giants like Bell's and Founders are jumping on. Griffin Claw, Right Brain, and Rochester Mills also released their products to the retail market this year, and they're only available in cans. Even Vander Mill ciders are distributed in cans. Because replacing bottling lines and creating packaging systems can be prohibitively expensive, a lot of this canning growth can be attributed to Michigan Mobile Canning, which has helped a lot of these products get to the retail market.

And then there was mead. I wrote a LOT about mead this year (the collected knowledge dump is here), and from all of this I can tell you one thing with certainty: meads are going to explode in coming years, and Michigan, specifically metro Detroit, more specifically Ferndale, will be at the heart of it. Merds from all over the world will flock here to visit the birthplace of B. Nektar and Schramm's. To briefly sum up, B. Nektar is now available in about half of the states in the country and has a brand-new brewing license to continue to expand their product offerings. Schramm's Mead is now open, making one of the top meads in the country from the guy who wrote the book on it. Once Kuhnhenn's production facility in Clinton Township is up and running they're going to be pumping out mead in crazy quantities. And you really might as well learn to be down with the meadness because it's not going away.

Also in news, Greenbush, Odd Side Ales, Right Brain, Rochester Mills, and Griffin Claw all started distributing this year. And new to the Michigan market was Oskar Blues, the Bruery, Green Flash, and Evil Twin.

Coors Light Sky Deck.

#13 And some other crap.
Grocery stores got fancier and will likely continue to do so. Rooftop patios became a thing - see the Coors Light Sky Deck and the stop/start of whatever it was called on the roof of the Music Hall. Urban beach bars also became a thing thanks to Danny Gillyberts and his Quirky Quicken Kaskading Kiddie Pool and Beach Bar. In general, patios just got better. Sports picked up the "local" mantle, with Comerica Park, Ford Field, the Joe Louis Arena, and the Palace all putting newfound emphasis on local foods and local craft beer (though Ford Field does it best). And while we certainly saw a bit of a slow-down in street food (our net gain of food trucks this year was, like, two), metro Detroiters spoke loud and clear that they want to keep the street in their street food when the ill-conceived Food Truck Cafe closed after just two months in business. (A sub shop is set to open in its place.)

*I'm kidding about that. Or am I????

[EID Feature] Voigt's Soda House is open in the Livernois Community Storefront through the end of the year

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

2013 Hatch Detroit semifinalists Voigt's Soda House has popped up inside the Livernois Community Storefront on the Avenue of Fashion now through the end of the year.

Though they didn't make it to the final four in the Hatch competition, owners Sarah Pavelko and Billy Shuman have been working on this concept for over two years now and continue to move forward in their efforts to open a soda and sandwich shop. They won first place in the TechTown Retail Bootcamp Showcase in November, which got them one month inside the Livernois Community Storefront rent-free through December.

After this pop-up ends, Voigt's will continue doing catering and special events. They are taking their time finding a permanent retail location, waiting for the right opportunity for their combination soup and sandwich spot, coffee shop, and old-fashioned soda parlor. Ideally they would like to be located in Capitol Park.

The pop-up coffee and soda shop is open Wednesdays through Sundays through the end of the month. (Click here for hours.) They are serving homemade soups and creative sandwiches along with their own trail mix, sweets from Treats by Angelique, and Better Made and McClure's chips. They also have a full espresso bar, but the real highlight here is their old-fashioned soda fountain drinks, for which the place is named.

They make all their own syrups from fresh, seasonal ingredients and their own homegrown herbs, then mix them with carbonated water and other items like vanilla ice cream and Angostura bitters. Seasonal syrup flavors include lavender lemon, cran-orange pomegranate, vanilla, Russian Tea (black tea, orange, cardamon), Hot Toddy (jasmine tea, lemon, honey), and Sinterklaus (cranberry shrub with cider vinegar). You can also purchase their syrups to take home and use in your own sodas, cocktails, or give as gifts. Order for pickup in-store; delivery is available for orders over $50. Syrups must be refrigerated and have a self life of 1-2 months.

Before voting started for the Hatch Detroit semifinalists, I interviewed Sarah about the concept behind Voigt's for Model D. Here is the Voigt's excerpt from that story about all 10 semifinalists:

Voigt's Soda House is a modern twist on the classic soda shop, featuring sodas and cocktails with homemade artisanal syrups made from seasonal ingredients and local herbs. With a particular mindfulness towards Detroit nostalgia – taking a trip downtown to Hudson's or visiting Stroh's and stopping for sodas and ice cream at their soda counters – Voigt's will have particular local appeal while also feeding the growing demand for locally-sourced homemade artisan products. Soda flavors will include things like peach Thai basil, cherry lime phosphate, and celery lime gin tonic. They will serve cocktails, food, and even "Detroit Coolers." (Vernor's is a Detroit product, after all.)

Voigt's was created by Sarah Pavelko and her husband Billy Shuman in their kitchen in Detroit's North End. Pavelko needed a way to use all of the herbs growing in her garden and started experimenting with syrups and cocktails. After considering more traditional concepts like a bar or coffee shop, they decided the soda shop concept was more unique. Named after Voigt Brewing Co., once the largest brewery in Michigan before Prohibition, the name pays homage to Detroit's history and one of the original urban planner families that helped shape the city we know now.

Co-owner Billy Shuman making a soda. 

Voigt's does not have a location but they are considering their home neighborhood of the North End, where they have lived for the last 10 years and where they hope to partner with neighborhood nonprofits to offer job training for local youth. With the money from Hatch, they would be able to purchase a liquor license and operate as a full cocktail bar. [NOTE: as they did not win the Hatch competition, this is no longer part of their business plan.] Otherwise Voigt's will open as a breakfast and lunch spot serving homemade sodas. Long-term they are looking to produce Voigt's own sodas and offer delivery of "adult care packages" filled with all the fixings for specialty cocktails (in lieu of flowers or fruit baskets for special occasions).

[Model D] Detroit Institute of Bagels now open in Corktown

After a long (yet worthwhile) wait, Detroit Institute of Bagels is finally open in Corktown, putting an end to Detroit's days as a bagel desert and bringing with it some much-needed breakfast bagel sandwiches, bagels and lox, and free Wi-Fi in a beautifully designed historic building on Michigan Avenue.

Read more. 

[NEWS BITES] Detroit Institute of Bagels opens this Thursday! (YES, Thanksgiving Day!)

We have waited. Oh, how we have waited. We have waited ever so patiently. We have waited since the building at 1236 Michigan Avenue looked like this:

And have watched it slowly but surely transform to this:

And now, after all that waiting, the time has come: Detroit, LET THERE BE BAGELS!

What are your plans this Thanksgiving Day? Are you going to head over to Woodward and watch the newly extended and expanded America's Thanksgiving Day Parade? Are you going to head over to Ford Field for the Lions game? Well, here is yet another reason to give thanks this Thursday: now you can start your day with a some hot toasted bagel action thanks to Detroit Institute of Bagels, which will be officially opening their doors to the public on Thanksgiving Day!

We have watched this for nearly three years now ("we" including both you, dear readers, and the royal we, as in EID personally) as DIB has evolved from just another spirited startup in a home kitchen in Corktown to a full-fledged bagel bakery and cafe located right on Corktown's main business drag on the fast-growing eastern end where Brooklyn Street Local opened last year, MotorCity Wine opened earlier this year, Rubbed will open soon, as well as a second Bucharest Grill location. We have watched them compete in the first-ever Hatch Detroit contest, and lose more gracefully than anyone has ever lost. We watched them raise a modest $10,000 via crowdfunding and move forward with their plans to open the best-designed bagel shop in the world. We have eagerly watched their progress on TwitGramstaBook, and now, after all that time - and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears out of owner Ben Newman, no doubt, while we've all just been all like, "WHY AREN'T YOU OPEN YET ALREADY NOW OPEN OPEN OPEN" - Detroit shall be a bagel desert no more!

That needs more exclamation points.

Detroit shall be a bagel desert no more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reading back on my first interview with owner and bagel maker Ben is almost like traveling back in time. It was spring 2011 - in those moments just as Detroit: The Renaissance was really starting to hit - and my, things were very, very different then, even just a short two and a half years ago. I mean, I wrote, "Not only are the greater downtown districts of Detroit sorely lacking in decent coffee shops…" AND IT WAS TRUE! It was so, so true back then. Now you can't swing a hipster without hitting a cafe of high design and varying levels of coffee quality. The whole idea of the local artisan food producer was still so new (so new!), and pop-ups were barely a glimmer in anyone's eye (except for Hugh's). 

A lot of people open restaurants. (And bakeries and cafes and whatnot.) Not a lot of people fight this hard for this long to make it happen. Ben's bagel dreams are finally becoming reality, and Detroit will never be bagel-less again. AS GOD IS HIS WITNESS, WE'LL NEVER BE HUNGRY FOR BAGELS AGAIN! 

[Model D] Coffee and (___) goes from pop-up to permanent in Jefferson Chalmers

We sure do love our pop-ups in Detroit. And beyond just the novelty of having an experience in a space that you wouldn't otherwise be able to have (a Guns + Butter dinner at Shinola perhaps, or an independent toy store on Woodward just in time for the holidays), pop-ups serve an important purpose: they vet new businesses for long-term sustainability, allow aspiring entrepreneurs to test out different neighborhoods, and activate spaces that would otherwise remain vacant. And sometimes – more and more often now – they lead to permanent businesses opening.

Read more. 

[NEWS BITES] Wicked Donuts launching November 16 at Treat Dreams

On November 16, Treat Dreams will launch Wicked Donuts inside their recently expanded storefront.

The store will open at 7 a.m. daily and will serve coffee and espresso drinks from Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company, plus their house-made "Wicked Donuts" made fresh daily. They will have at least 12 different flavors available daily which will be rotated weekly. Some initial flavors include Pumpkin Bourbon Gingersnap, Coconut Lemon Curd, Peanut Butter Cup, Maple Bacon Long Johns and Creme Brulee Long Johns.

Shortly thereafter they will also roll out some pastries with the Treat Dreams "twist" to them. About a week before launch they are going to give out "prototype" donuts to their Facebook followers each day and ask them for feedback.

[Fox News] The return of café culture and the retaliation against coffee squatters

LAMILL Coffee Boutique, Los Angeles. 

This is the original version of a story that ran in Fox News with the much more dramatic headline, "Cafes declare war on Wi-Fi squatters." You can read the published version here. 

In the '90s (remember them? weren't they nice?), it was not uncommon to see hordes of teenagers and college students at your local Friends-style second-wave coffeehouse chain-smoking cigarettes and sucking down $1 cups of coffee. They would spend hours on end doing this, every single day. And they weren't sitting in silence staring mindlessly at their iPhones uploading "selfies" (now in the Oxford Dictionary!) on Instagram. They talked. To each other. As in, engaged in meaningful dialogue with other humans.

But a lot has changed in the last two decades. Now, we're all wired. Endlessly wired. Phillip K. Dick post-apocalyptic-cyberpunk-novel wired. We have our laptops and our smartphones and our iPads and we are on them ALL THE TIME checking Facebook and Twitter and Instagram or on Snapchat or playing Candy Crush. (Some people even do work.) Bars and restaurants are regularly filled with people blatantly ignoring each other, so much so that "phone-stacking" is a thing that now exists.

And cafes, the standard-bearers of quality social interaction amongst strangers and thinkers and activists and eager young adults since 14^th century Turkey, are now full of "coffee squatters" – those who set up shop with their laptops and spend interminable hours gobbling up the café's bandwidth and available seating, making it so that other customers can't find a place to sit and negatively impacting the shop's business, all so they can do important things like update their Facebook status and download new albums from iTunes.

It wasn't always like this. Cafés offering free Wi-Fi did so with the best of intentions, trying to provide their customers with an additional value in the hopes of bringing more business. It started innocently enough – college students researching essays; business people checking emails (bear in mind, smartphones with email access are still a relatively new thing on the timeline of human existence). But the service is now being broadly abused, and café owners are fighting back.

In San Francisco, Luigi Di Ruocco, owner of Coffee Bar, recently made headlines after restricting access to laptop users during peak times and creating "laptop-free" seating so customers simply trying to have lunch will have somewhere to sit. Fellow café owners all over the country have chosen to place time limits on Wi-Fi use, require an access code to the wireless network (available only with purchase), cover their electrical outlets, or eliminate Wi-Fi altogether. Ben Popken of NBC News writes, "While the measures may seem a bit gruff for coffee shops that have long promoted themselves as a friendly and counter-cultural alternative to the mainstream coffee joints, they're an economic necessity. Coffee shops rely on a high volume of low-price items. Stores can't afford to provide temporary real estate to people looking for a remote office for which they only pay $1.85 in daily rent."

Forbes also warns of the financial threat of squatting. "A coffee shop will never make enough money to pay the bills from coffee sales alone," says Peter Baskerville in answer to the question, "What's the secret to a successful coffee shop?" He instructs café owners to worry less about offering things like Wi-Fi and more about increasing turnover and takeaways. "Takeaway customers pay the same price as the sit-down customer, but without any of the occupancy costs, and you will serve ten of them by the time your sit down customer has finished sipping on their first cup of coffee as they enjoy a chat with their friends on Facebook using your free Wi-Fi."

Jane Shihadeh previously owned Shoe's Cup and Cork in Leesburg, Virginia, a café by day and full fine dining restaurant and wine bar by night. "It's difficult to generate profit from coffee sales alone," she says. "Ultimately it's more about your average check in general. You really need people coming in to eat." She wanted to balance the restaurant with a relaxed coffeehouse vibe, and offered free Wi-Fi to encourage that. "What we found was that there were lots of people that would come in – if you were lucky they would maybe order a large coffee but sometimes they would just demand water – and would sit there for hours." She found that these customers were also the most demanding, and some would even use her café to solicit business from her other customers, engaging them in conversation about their web design needs. Eventually she sold the café (it is now operating under new ownership) and opened a much more straightforward Wi-Fi-free sandwich shop, Philly Rabe's.

In the hipsterific Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake, LAMILL Coffee Boutique, referred to by USA Today as "the white-tablecloth restaurant of coffee shops," has a two-hour time limit on their wireless access because, as manager Dave Alfaro states, "It frees up space. We don't want people sitting there all day long while we have people who want to come in, get a coffee and eat their food." The Boutique also serves a thoughtful selection of wine, beer, and sake, as well as a full breakfast, lunch and dinner menu. Coffee squatters aren't just taking up space and bandwidth (Alfaro has noticed many use the café's free Wi-Fi for large file downloads) from other would-be squatters looking to do the same, but are actually turning away other customers who have nowhere to sit. At Abraco in New York, which also serves a selection of house-made small plates and baked goods, it's standing-room-only – ensuring squatting isn't an issue.

Coffee shops that don't serve food or have only a limited menu of pastries available, like Verve in Santa Cruz, seem to fare better than those that are also restaurants. Ashley Epia, shift lead at the 41^st Avenue location, says the Wi-Fi network is password-protected but the password is given out freely and there is no time limit for usage. The café has a small selection of pastries and does not offer table service. She says that "squatting" isn't really a problem and that people cycle out pretty well. But Verve is also a roaster with a strong wholesale business to support its cafés. Additionally, cafés like this that rely almost predominantly on coffee sales tend to be significantly smaller, thus offering significantly less seating – perhaps making the squatter a bit more self-conscious about taking up one of only a handful of seats.

But the hostility towards "squatters" isn't just about people taking up seats – though the lost revenue for businesses that rely on dine-in food sales is definitely a primary concern. For many it's also about the atmosphere they wish to create. New York's Café Grumpy doesn't offer Wi-Fi or allow laptops in four of their five locations. "For us, yes, it's a space issue, but it's also about the atmosphere it creates," says Café Grumpy owner Caroline Bell. Though the cafés only serve their own house-made pastries and don't face the same challenges as full sit-down restaurants, Bell wanted to create an atmosphere that was "more inviting," allowing for actual conversation to occur rather than the pitter-patter of laptop typing being the dominant sound. "It's less about turnover and more about the experience. People appreciate it." 

Walking into a café and seeing table after table of laptop zombies, faces bathed in blue from the glow of their screens, is a much different experience than walking into a café buzzing with excited conversation, whether it be about politics or the latest episode of Breaking Bad. In recent decades coffeehouses have evolved as much as technology. The ubiquity of smartphones has made the original intent of free Wi-Fi (as an additional service for customers to use sparingly as needed) obsolete, and third-wave coffeehouses are increasingly mindful of encouraging a sense of community – that centuries-old café culture in which cafés served as primary community gathering places.

While you could easily make a case that the squatters of decades past – the Beat writers of 1950s San Francisco, the postmodern philosophers of 1960s Paris, the goth and grunge kids of 1990s America – probably weren't producing high ticket averages, they were producing the kind of human interaction missing from the modern laptop mafia (and let's not get started on "co-working," i.e., ignoring each other in groups while taking up multiple seats). In an age of endless connectivity, sometimes people just want to feel connected; the retaliation against coffee squatting is just one manifestation of a growing social movement.

[Model D] Coffee, gelato and sweet shop Melt next up in Midtown

Of the many (and there are indeed many) new restaurants and retailers opening in Midtown this year, it appears that Melt is going to be the next one to open.

Melt is a coffee, gelato, and sweet shop located at 4150 Cass (at Willis). Owner Aaron Haithcock has wanted to open a candy shop since he was a kid, but decided to diversify his concept to include coffee and gelato to support a steadier clientele base, a model he saw work while employed at a candy store in Chicago that also sold cakes and ice cream.

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[Model D] Always Brewing Detroit to open permanently in Grandmont Rosedale

When Amanda Brewington was a freshman at Michigan State University, she didn't know anyone else on campus. So she started hanging out at a local coffee shop that had an open mic on Thursdays. This coffeehouse was where she met most of her college friends, many of whom she is still close with.

This was the impetus behind her desire to open a coffeehouse in Detroit.

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[Model D] Anthology Coffee finds a permanent home at Ponyride

Anthology Coffee's new space (still under construction.)

2011 Hatch Detroit semi-finalist Anthology Coffee is continuing to build its brand and work on a permanent café in Corktown – happy news, as just a couple of months ago it seemed like they were going to cease all operations.

In 2012 Anthology signed a lease at 2051 Rosa Parks (an office building in Corktown). After some initial efforts were made towards build-out, progress stalled for months and Anthology owner Josh Longsdorf made the decision to leave. At the same time, Anthology also fell short on an Indiegogo campaign that was meant to purchase new equipment; Longsdorf had to use that money to pay off coffee contracts he had purchased in anticipation of being fully open at 2051 months early.

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[EID Preview] Stella Good Coffee and Good Design

All photos from Stella Good Coffee.

It could easily be said that the best-designed public spaces in Detroit right now are the new breed of coffeehouses that keep popping up. From the citrus-soaked modernism of Urban Bean Co. that looks like it could have been plucked straight out of the pages of Dwell (in fact, and this surely is no coincidence, issues of Dwell are displayed on a magazine rack – "displayed" really being the best word to describe it), to the west coast aesthetic of Astro Coffee (which looks like pretty much every uber-trendy coffeehouse in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and L.A. but with a distinctly Detroit flair) and the modern rustic design of Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co. in Midtown, coffee houses are no longer the shabby chic student flopping grounds of the '90s but the aesthetically-appealing refuge of the design-obsessed MacBook set. As the coffee has gone from thoughtless drip to compulsively mindful pour-over, so too have the spaces been made over. Stella Good Coffee inside the Fisher Building is the latest example.

Stella Good Coffee, previously known as Stella International Café, closed last fall and is reopening today after going through a redesign that could easily qualify for a segment on Extreme Makeover: Coffeehouse Edition. Kevin Borsay and Shawn Santo, founders and owners of Pure Detroit, the Rowland Café, and both Stella Cafés (there is another location inside the Guardian Building), oversaw all of the work themselves, along with James Willer of Reclaim Detroit, which works with a number of local Detroit nonprofits to deconstruct old, abandoned homes and repurpose the materials for new projects – both a sort of philosophical and literal honoring of Detroit's past while looking forward to the future. (Willer also did some work at Great Lakes.)

This café has been open since 2007, at a time when Detroit's coffee scene was a bit … well, sad. ("Underserved" is a nicer way of saying it.) Certainly long before Detroit became the new Seattle. But in the last several years the coffee culture has been ramped up significantly, and to stay in the game, Stella had to step it up. Borsay explains that the old Stella "didn't have the look and feel we wanted," and that a redesign was always part of the plan. Finally, the time was right.

After a complete gut down to the bare walls and floor, the new Stella is about as completely different as it could possibly be while still retaining the same name (and even that is only partial). Gorgeous century-old wood comprises the completely rebuilt counter, tables and ledges. The floor is the original floor from 1928, buried under layers of concrete. "I saw a picture of that historic floor and wondered if it was still under there," says Borsay. He chopped through all the layers on top of it and "sure enough, it was there." Part of the renovation work included grinding down to the original floor and polishing it up, but the manual labor was worth it: "Albert Kahn had a hand in this floor."

Through Reclaim Detroit, Willer helped Borsay and Santo source materials and, since he is also an architect, worked with them on the new design and the construction. "Without him we couldn't have done it." The wood came from 2644 Cadillac Boulevard on Detroit's east side. The house was disassembled brick by brick and, instead of throwing it in a landfill, remilled it and sold it to Stella.

Willer explains that the wood from these historic old Detroit homes came from native Michigan forests. Michigan now only has about 5% of its original native forests left, which is all protected land. The only place you can get this original native lumber is from these old houses. Additionally, at the time these homes were built – the early 1900s – they used mostly old growth timber that was already 50+ years old. So the wood you see inside the new Stella Good Coffee is at least 150 years old. This Douglas fir is a completely different material than what you could buy commercially, almost an exotic species that is available for a relatively low cost locally (through businesses like Reclaim Detroit, who had to establish their own mill and train people to work it because no other mills could work with these old materials).

Borsay says, "This is a good balance of maintaining the look of the building while also bringing a more modern look. This is beyond just an amenity to the building and a place to get coffee, but about a larger mission: creating vibrant, active Place 3 locations in the city." "Place 3" refers to the places where people socialize, with Place 1 being home, Place 2 being work, and Place 3 being everything else. "For us it's these really cool café environments where people meet and socialize. The more you have in the city, the more vibrant it becomes. That's our mission: to create these sorts of environments to make the city more vibrant. Rowland Café was our first foray into that."

The historic wood and floor are complemented by design elements that include custom-fabricated lampshades from Detroit Wallpaper Company featuring designs by local artists that will rotate regularly. "Instead of having art on the walls, we will have this shades done by different local artists." The happy yellow cloud design currently on display was done by local painter and musician Davin Brainard, an artist whose most recognizable work is probably the "Cloud Bridge" overpass in SW Detroit (though you've undoubtedly also seen his concert posters). The neon "Drink Good Coffee" sign on the back tile wall was fabricated by Spectrum Neon Sign Company, a Detroit business that has been around for over 30 years. "We're trying to use as many Detroit companies as we can," Borsay says.

And that includes the items that they'll serve. They'll have a selection of soups from Russell Street Deli, baked good from Avalon Breads and Traffic Jam, plus a selection of high-quality juices and yogurts in the cooler. This year, to celebrate their seventh year, they are introducing a celebratory espresso called Stella Sonic, as well as some new craft micro lot, micro-roasted coffees which will rotate seasonally.

The new space also has more seating inside (with lots of additional seating in the Fisher lobby) and also offers free WiFi. But a new look also means a whole new identity: Stella International Café, so named because when they first opened they served all illy coffee from Italy and Panini sandwiches and had more of an "international" flavor, is now Stella Good Coffee. Over the years they have migrated more towards local producers and now serve their own coffees (roasted by Detroit's century-old Cadillac Coffee Company, with some additional micro blends from Populace Coffee in Bay City). They want this new iteration to be less grab-and-go and more about the coffee itself, reflected in the new name – and so they will serve only pour-over coffee made to order, certainly a much slower process but one much more in keeping with their own philosophies of slow food and slow design (which they joked about being the process by which the new design happened, only to find out it is an actual thing).

"In my architecture background, everything has to be about speed and is pre-planned," Willer says. "Compared to this where it was more an exploration of both our personalities and engaging local artists in the community. It was a slow evolution of the design." Borsay adds, "It took us awhile because we were building it all ourselves … [but with slow design] the quality at the end is actually better. It was almost like clay art; we were molding it as we [went] along."

Another new "slow" product they are excited to offer is their loose-leaf teas sourced directly from China.

But a new name also means a new logo, and this is something the math nerds, not just the design nerds, will enjoy: the new logo incorporates the Moravian star, also known as the Great Stellated (get it?) Rhombicuboctahedron (a complicated geometric form that is meant to represent a three-dimensional image and thus is asymmetrical when drawn flat).

The Stella location inside the Guardian Building will also undergo a similar renovation and rebranding in the coming months, though they won't be closing it as they did the Fisher Building location.

Stella Good Café is celebrating a soft opening starting today, with a grand opening coming later this spring when their lobby chairs arrive.

[Model D] Urban Bean Co. set to re-open in Capitol Park next week

Detroiters will have another spot to grab a coffee and snack this week. Urban Bean Co. will open next Monday, April 15 at the corner of Griswold and Grand River.

For those of you who remember the old Urban Bean Co. that was located at the corner of Griswold and Grand River up until 2008, yes, this is the same one, and in the same location. With the redevelopment of Capitol Park now underway, its re-opening is also a comeback story. Co-owner Josh Greenwood has had the space since 2000 and operated the first incarnation of Urban Bean Co. for eight years.

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