[EID Preview] The Cultural Living Room at the DIA

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

The newly-renovated Cultural Living Room inside the Kresge Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts opens to the public this morning at 10 a.m. Food media members were invited to a sneak peek of the new cafe concept and menu on Thursday, when we also got a first look at Patrick Thompson's stunning modern-meets-traditional design. This project was funded through a grant from ArtSpace.

For more detail about the concept and design, check out this story I wrote this week for Model D.

The space is meant to be a cultural hangout - a place to hold meetings, read a book, study, or do some work. All seats have access to an electrical outlet and there is free WiFi. There is also a cafe that serves a nice selection of sandwiches, salads, and small plates. Exquisitely-sourced seasonal items include micro greens and other beautiful produce from the Chef's Garden in Huron, OH (used by chefs all over the Midwest), organic hormone-free chicken, a variety of charcuterie and farmstead cheeses, and house-made desserts. There are also several vegetarian and vegan selections available. They will serve coffee and teas from Starbucks as well as a selection of local beer and wine and will have happy hour on Fridays. Food and beverage service is provided by Sodexo.

But, a picture is worth a thousand words so I will spare you further lengthy descriptions and instead give you this first look inside!

Assorted vegetables from the Chef's Garden.

'Wich Came First? Herb pulled chicken salad, free range egg, shredded kale, tomato, tarragon mayonnaise.

Artichoke, radish, black olive aioli, flatbread. Part of the Tasty Triptych selection.

Italian pudding - bittersweet chocolate and olive oil custard with caramelized pine nuts and sea salt.

For more photos of this stunning space, check out the Flickr set here.

[Model D] The DIA's Cultural Living Room in the Kresge Court opens June 14

Sneak preview.

After being closed the last two months, the Kresge Court inside the Detroit Institute of the Arts is about to reopen this Friday at 10 a.m. as the Cultural Living Room.

The Cultural Living Room is a concept that came about through Bradford Frost, a fellow in Wayne State University's Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program and special assistant for community and economic development at the DIA who wrote the ArtPlace grant that secured the $268,500 in funding for this project.

Read more.

[Model D] June on Jefferson pops up this weekend at Jazzin' on Jefferson

Jazzin' on Jefferson started out as a very small community and placemaking event for the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood. Now in its 10th year, the festival has grown significantly and has become a signature annual event for the east riverfront community.

Last year Jazzin' on Jefferson hosted a couple of pop-up concepts as a test run to see how the retail stores might perform. The response was positive, so this year the Jefferson East Business Association (JEBA) and American Institute of Architects (AIA) Urban Priorities Committee have partnered up to work with local entrepreneurs and artists to create June on Jefferson, a month-long pop-up business series.

Read more.

[Model D] Just a Bit Eclectic sells vintage items, antiques and tea on Detroit's northwest side

Just a Bit Eclectic is a new store located at 19015 W. McNichols between Outer Drive and the Southfield freeway. The store is true to its name, selling a just-a-bit eclectic mix of vintage goods and antiques, and is also a tea room and café.

Owner Darlene Taylor jokes that she has been working on this store for "30 years or so." When she found herself about to retire, she decided it was time to open the retail store and café she had in her mind for decades.

Read more.

The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

Metal up your ass and in your mouth.

In case you missed it:
~So this grocery store opened. It was kind of a big deal. (It even has its own beer.) [EID]
~So this band played a big show on Belle Isle with a bunch of other bands and 50,000 people. It, too, was kind of a big deal, despite what your typical low-rent Detroit hipster would have you believe with their soul-sucking snark. (Actually that also applies to the point above, too.) Anyway, if you want to keep it all metal all the time, eat these. [Orion / EID]
~This week I went back to the future of food trucks, following up on a series I started two years ago in Metromode and Concentrate. [Metromode]

Another mission of Whole Foods Market Detroit -- nay, THE MOST IMPORTANT GROCERY STORE IN THE WORLD -- is to not just CARRY healthy products, but also teach people about them and how to cook with them. They have quite a bit of (free) programming geared around this too. [Freep]

And here's a short video from Crain's Detroit Business interviewing Whole Foods Market Community Liaison Amanda Musilli. [Crain's]

And more on Whole Foods Market Detroit from the The Wall Street Journal. [WSJ]

And this is what I meant by "demonstrable." [Freep]

Musical dining room chairs continue as Chef Daniel Campbell, formerly of Silver Pig Restaurant Group, steps in to replace Andy Hollyday of Michael Symon's Roast, who will leave to open his own restaurant. Also: ANDY HOLLYDAY IS OPENING HIS OWN RESTAURANT. If you've had your ear to the ground there have been rumors and whispers about this for awhile, and now it is confirmed. Hollyday's new joint will open in Midtown later this year. Stay tuned as there will be lots and lots more to come on this one. [Freep]

Turns out famous people love pizza - first Christina Hendricks professes her love for Supino in Esquire, then some dude from Breaking Bad and Low Winter Sun dines at Pizzeria Biga Royal Oak. STARS ARE JUST LIKE US! [Esquire / Detroit News]

Hard cider and a winery are coming to Blake's Cider Mill in Armada. It's like all my dreams are coming true. [Voice News]

The pop-up has passed, but I have a feeling this Local C team is one to watch. [EID FB]

"So, Amy, what do you do?" "Well, just this week I was honored by the White House as a Champion of Change for my work with Detroit SOUP. What do you do, Nicole?" "I post links to Facebook with snarky captions and have over 1,000 followers on Instagram." Thankfully I managed not to drool all over myself while chatting with Amy Kaherl during Creative Mornings Detroit last Friday. [Freep]

For my next public engagement, check out this Detroit Food Experience tour with The Detroit Bus Company on June 29. We'll hit Traffic Jam and Snug, have a picnic in Clark Park with tacos from the Los Unicos truck, then get a guided tour of the Corridor Sausage Co. production facility in Eastern Market Corporation! [Det Bus Co]

Detroit definitely had grocery stores on the brain this week. Produce in general, really. Farmers markets overall. [Freep / WSU / Freep]

Urban farming in Detroit: people did it before it was cool. [Freep]

Green Dot Stables celebrates one year of selling sliders by playing the ponies and offering up free beer and BBQ with however many hundreds of their closest friends. [Thrillist]

RIP Jerry from American Coney Island. [American Coney Island FB]

Dangerously Delicious Pies Baked in Detroit's Rodney Henry is a finalist on Next Food Network Star! Which I'm not sure if that's new news or old news but woooooooooo! [Food Network]

In honor up MLive's upcoming state-wide best burger challenge, AnnArbor.com (part of the MLive publication group) posted this slideshow of Washtenaw's wackiest burgers. Also, if you would like to partake of the challenge yourself or recreate it in your free time, here is their full burger-eating schedule for the week. [AnnArbor.com / MLive]

Avalon celebrated their sweet 16 this weekend with, naturally, sweets! [Avalon FB]

And the Rattlesnake celebrates 25 years. [Freep]

The next big thing in booze? Local small-batch spirits. It's already well underway. [MLive]

So, what did Michigan drinkers vote as the best cocktail bars in the state on Michigan Radio? These. [Michigan Radio]

Knight's Steakhouse will be coming to downtown Ann Arbor with their quality meats and cocktails. [AnnArbor.com]

Jolly Pumpkin Brewery makes Weekly Pint's list of the 20 best sours of summer for their La Roja Grand Reserve. [Weekly Pint]

You guys, social media! [Crain's]

[HOT LIST] Detroit's most metal meals

In honor of Metallica being in town this weekend (METALLICA RULZ), and the longhairs who have flocked into town to see them, we're taking a look at Detroit's most metal meals. What makes a meal metal? Well, first, meat. Meat is metal. MEATallica. Really anything that's hardcore is metal. So, like, anything super-spicey is metal (but only if it has a cool name). BBQ is metal, because it is meat, and because it is southern, and the south is super-metal. And anything else reminiscent of head-banging and hangovers and motorcycles and Black Tooth Grins and blood and sweat and METAL is fucking metal.

Straying from the usual top 5 format here because making your own rules (even on a website where you already make all the rules) is also fucking metal.

#1 Guns + Butter Feed 'Em All
Did you miss out on the pop-up at Ponyride? Fuck it, that crowd was totally not metal anyway. Guns + Butter (metal and metal) will be at Orion all weekend serving "Eggs + Bacon," not quite the same Eggs + Bacon Vol. 2 from the Ponyride pop-up you saw Instagramed a thousand times by everyone in Detroit last month for those of you who live in Detroit and follow all of its people on Instagram, but a mighty fine one just the same. This one is made with fried egg and bacon hollandaise. Not only is Guns + Butter the best thing about economics, but it is also one of the coolest (and therefore most metal) things happening in Detroit right now.

#2 Slows BAR BQ Corktown, Feed 'Em All
For two reasons. Actually three. The first: because co-owner Phil Cooley curated all the food for your face at Orion Music + More so he knows what's up. The second: because they have a dessert called the Chuck Norris, and it will kick you in the face. Third, and there's a reason I waited to put this one last -- the Triple Threat. Applewood bacon, pulled pork and ham make for a pork orgy, a porgy if you will, and and AND, it will be available at the Feed 'Em All food court at Orion on a stick. That's right. Take something awesome, then put it on a stick. This version has ham, confit bacon and smoked pork butt ... ON A STICK. Metal.

This very week's specials at Green Dot.

#3 Green Dot Stables Corktown
There's not much you can write on a menu that is more metal than calling something "mystery meat." Green Dot Stables is best known for their cheap gourmet sliders and their cheap craft beer, but one important thing to mention is their weekly mystery meat special ... which sometimes is pretty tame (sometimes it's not even meat at all), but other times is camel, or lamb's neck, or bull testicles. This week all you headbangers are in luck 'cuz the meat of the week is wild boar, and wild boar is fucking delicious, and also one of the most metal of the animals in the edible kingdom. Also metal is the $5 Buffalo Trace pours. That's more fancy metal, mind you - to be really metal it would have to be Jack, and only Jack - but is it un-metal to enjoy a good deal on a fine beverage? No it is not.

#4 Las Cazuelas Grill Southwest Detroit
First of all, eating gas station food is totally metal. Pick up some smokes and a torta to go while you gas up the hog? Metal. Las Cazuelas Grill, located inside a BP station, has a full menu of Mexican items including tacos, burritos, tortas and more. Plus, you know, there's a huge metal scene in Texas and in Mexico City, so the cuisine already lends itself well to the music (and vice versa). I mean, Robert Trujillo and Chino Moreno and both of Mexican descent. So, you know: metal.

Hillbilly bennie. From @eatitdetroit Instagram feed.

#5 Foran's Grand Trunk Pub Downtown
Because you need a good basecoat for all that face-melting metal later in your day, start with brunch at Foran's Grand Trunk Pub. I'll save you some time: order the Hillbilly Benedict. Sausage, poached egg and cheese on an English muffin smothered in homemade sausage gravy. Order that with some breakfast shots (taste like pancakes! made with whiskey!) to start you day off the metal way. Because breakfast shots are fucking metal.

#6 Union Street Saloon Midtown
"Saloon" sounds totally metal, but what's most metal about this place is a little something called rasta sauce. And it is HOT. Like HOLYUNHOLYPEPPER hot. Get it on straight-up wings, or order the Dragon Eggs: chicken breast stuffed with gorgonzola cheese, battered and tossed in rasta hot sauce. Dragons are totally metal.

#7 Paradillas Patagonia Southwest Detroit
Flank steak and not a whole lot of English, this place strays from the usual Mexican fare of Mexicantown in favor of Argentinean-style STEAK (and in South American-sized portions). Please enjoy your very metal mound of meat.

#8 Taqueria Mi Pueblo Southwest Detroit
For the more Mexican side of Southwest Detroit, hit up Mi Pueblo for all the offal you can eat. Beef is pretty metal to begin with, but beef head? SO METAL.

#9 Bucharest Grill Downtown
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the death by garlic shawarma at Bucharest Grill, one of Detroit's most famous sandwiches (if more on a local level than a national one). Their hot dogs are also mighty metal; try the 1920 Red Hot, a spicy old school hot dog served with grainy mustard.

#10 + 11 Lafayette + American Coney Island(s) Downtown
Why? Because you have to be fucking metal as hell to ingest this shit, especially at the ungodly hour most people go there.

[Metromode] Back to the Future of Food Trucks

When we first looked at mobile vending, Mark's Carts in Ann Arbor had only just opened and El Guapo, the popular taco and burrito truck based in Madison Heights, was at the end of a year-long challenge with the city of Detroit to get mobile vending laws changed to allow more to operate on the streets. (Their 60 trips to city hall is now the stuff of local legend.) As mobile vending momentum gained, Ferndale took a "come one, come all" approach, but not without some backlash from brick and mortar businesses that felt mobile vendors were at an unfair advantage.

Now here we are, almost two years later, and mobile vendors seem to have found a comfortable place in the marketplace. While no laws have changed allowing these businesses to operate freely on the streets, there is now a more comfortable set of rules governing their operation – where the health department didn't seem to know what to do with them initially, the difficulties that the early adopters once faced seem to have diminished and there's a general (if not yet entirely consistent) consensus as to what they need to do in order to legally operate.

Read more.