[NEWS BITES] Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co. expands into Lake Orion; more

All this news of expansions and growing empires in recent months ... it's like, what recession two years ago, you know?

All snarking aside (it happens occasionally), it's really quite amazing when you step back and look at what a difference two years have made, not just to the city but to greater metro Detroit as a whole. From a seemingly endless stream of bankruptcies and closures to new restaurants opening on a weekly basis and restaurateurs both seasoned and new to the game building empires, and businesses increasing their hours just to keep up with demand. But enough waxing poetic; here's news:

Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company's Institute for Advanced Drinking (IFAD, or #ifad for those of you who speak in hashtags) opened in Midtown in June, was featured in Food + Wine Magazine in September, opened a second outlet in Bloomfield Hills earlier this month, and is now working on a third location in Lake Orion. Is partner/face of IFAD James Cadariu on a roll? Yes, I think that's pretty safe to say.

Incidentally, no I do not work for them since a couple of people have asked and presumably more have wondered. I just think they're super-swell.

That being said, the O-IFAD ("original IFAD," that is) is now open on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

And in other increased hours news, Local Kitchen + Bar, Rick Halberg's insta-hit in Ferndale that opened in August, is now open for lunch as of this week.

[NEWS BITES] O'Toole's gets in the craft beer game, plus new brunches and businesses

Since Facebook is now burying posts unless you pay for them, I want to make sure nothing important gets missed (or also gets buried in the Week We Ate). Here are some of the most important of the important things you need to know, tasty little news bites for your gray matter.

O'Toole's is getting into the craft beer game with the intention of being, and I quote from a third party, "the best craft beer bar in Royal Oak." The O'Toole's in Waterford always did well with their Michigan craft handles and O'Toole's founder Keith Wadle, who still owns the Royal Oak location but has since sold off his share of the Waterford restaurant and bar, has taken a serious interest in bringing that culture to his Royal Oak spot. They're redoing the bar with a new look and a brand-new start-of-the-art tap system. They just added 20 tap handles and will soon be adding 20 more, and if you think it's going to be all Sam Adams and Oberon, think again: they're getting brews like Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA and Odd Side Ales Citra Pale Ale (Imperial Beverage is treating them well and will continue to do so).

After a more than two-year delay, Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe in Midtown will open for business this Saturday with a wide selection of artisan items from local producers.

Tomorrow during the Villages Fall Festival, new permanent businesses will be announced that will be opening soon in the burgeoning neighborhood. Stay tuned.

Brunch! And stuff!
In the past two weeks there has been MUCH brunch activity. (It *is* the most important meal of the week.) To wit:

*Green Dot Stables is now open Sundays noon to 6 p.m. (or whenever whatever game is done but the kitchen is nixed at six) serving items like breakfast sliders and Vermont poutine. What is Vermont poutine, you ask? Hell if I know but I WANT IT.

*Pizzeria Biga in Royal Oak will soon be serving brunch both Saturdays and Sundays.

*Local Kitchen + Bar in Ferndale is now serving brunch both Saturdays and Sundays.

*The Sugar House in Corktown is now open at noon on Saturdays and Sundays and serving a special "Eye Opener" menu that includes bagels from Detroit Institute of Bagels.

*Crispelli's Pizzeria and Bakery in Berkley now serves a daily breakfast and will start serving weekend brunch this weekend (with breakfast pizzas!).

*Tashmoo Biergarten in West Village will host a post-Beer Fest Brewer's Brunch this Sunday featuring  biscuits and gravy from Corridor Sausage and many more brunch-tastic items that make me want to test my own limits and see just how many brunches I can consume this Sunday. This will also be their last day of the season.

*Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co.'s Midtown coffeehouse and bar is now serving vegan breakfast sandwiches from vegan pop-up and catering company Chartreuse, and will host a full-blown brunch with them on November 10.

Plus in extra Great Lakes Coffee news, they are now open on Mondays until 11 p.m.

The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

One! One restaurant. Two! Two restaurants.

The "Castle Building" will have not one but TWO new restaurants inside. [Curbed Detroit]

Corktown: one of the 50 most stylish neighborhoods IN THE WORLD. The WORLD. [Complex]

It's Greek Week in metro Detroit! KouZina Street Food opened in Royal Oak, and Santorini Estiatorio in Greektown (the remodeled Mosaic) isn't far behind. [Crain's / EID FB]

Jon Carlson and Greg Lobdell are the BEST. [Freep]

People are the WORST. [Detroit News]

When I first moved to Lafayette Park there was a cafe in the strip mall on Lafayette called Paris Cafe. It was merely okay, but at least convenient. A few months later it closed. Now, 5 years later, FINALLY, someone else is opening a coffee shop (if only temporarily), and YAAAY it's Jordi from Cafe Con Leche! Meet Cafe con Leche de Este, a pop-up coffee shop in the LP opening 11/4. [CCLDE FB]

Is it possible for a business model to be "viral?" If so, such is the concept of a pop-up. The Villages are being a thing and using pop-ups to show it. [Curbed Detroit]

The Caucus Club will serve their last lunch next Wednesday, October 24. Guys, did you "get" my string of Barbra Streisand references in the post that first mentioned their closing? It's really important that you realize how clever that was. [CC FB / EID]

Michigan once again had some big winners at the Great American Beer Festival: Kuhnhenn Brewing Co., Bastone and Redwood Lodge all took home medals. (Kuhnhenn and Bastone both seem to be GABF favorites.) Which is awesome! Except that none of these guys distribute (except Kuhnhenn in VERY limited quantities), so you actually have to go to the brewery. Which is awesome is you live near-ish Warren, Royal Oak or Flint. And not if you don't. [GABF]

And here is the line-up for next weekend's Fall Beer Festival. Start planning. [MBG blog]

Which also means Detroit Beer Week is now upon us. [EID]

And for those "out west," Bill's Beer Garden in Ann Arbor is now open. [BBG FB]

More beer news from the Ace Deuce: World of Beer, a Florida-based craft beer chain, will be opening in Ann Arbor. But don't get too excited: A2 is not without its share of stellar craft beer bars and there's no promising this chain will focus prominently on Michigan crafts, which is what the locals will demand most. (I see a lot of Sam Adams in their future.) Plus, IT'S A SPORTS BAR. *shudder* [AnnArbor.com]

And even more from Ann Arbor: dude behind Mani Osteria still opening a Mexican joint, still doesn't have a name for it. Mario Batali loves it already. [Concentrate]

The Freep does a game day round-up of places that have opened in A2 in the last two years and includes Lena. I also wrote about Lena. So there. [Freep / EID]

Between Lena, as-yet-unnamed Mexican Mani Osteria, and 2012 Hatch Detroit winner La Feria, it would seem the Latin invasion is upon us once again. Here is a pre-preview of La Feria. [Model D]

The Sugar House is now open at noon on Saturdays and Sundays with a special "Eye Opener" menu. [SH FB]

And Local Kitchen + Bar is now serving brunch on Saturdays AND Sundays. [Local FB]

Market Studio Kitchen + Detroit Emergent Future Lab are the latest concepts taking shape in Eastern Market that support and promote our local food system through community engagement and hands-on education for both youth and adults. [HuffPo]

Nationally distributed PBS show "Start-Up" is based here in metro Detroit, produced by Parliament Studios in Clawson, and has already profiled some favorite local start-ups like Astro Coffee and McClure's Pickles. [HuffPo]

City Wings is cleaner than some hospitals. Meet the guy behind it. [UIX]

Welll ... we want to be known as "design-savvy." Soooooooo... [Detroit News]

Why yes, in fact I am incredibly selfless. [Metromode]

Got money? Feel like giving it away? Here are three current Kickstarter campaigns for you to do just that:
~Belle Isle to 8 Mile. An "insider's guide" to Detroit with some 750 listings (a few authored by yours truly!).
~Chartreuse. A raw vegan organic local food business looking to expand.
~The Brinery. Trying to buy and preserve 12,000 pounds of locally-grown cabbage using lacto-fermentation: "40 barrels in 40 nights."

Eat It GR
So there's been a lot happening in Grand Rapids lately which I haven't been posting because some people get sand in their vaginas if I take one out of my 10+ posts per day to discuss something that isn't happening within 15 miles of the Royal Oak epicenter, so here is a collection of news bits from Beer City USA:

~The Grand Rapids Public Museum's "Thank you, BEER!" exhibit opened this weekend and will remain through December 30, exploring the importance of beer throughout human history. Or, as they say, "Celebrating beer, brewing and the meaning of life." [GR Museum]

~During the course of organizing the above exhibit, museum curators (with the help of several Grand Rapids craft breweries and private collectors in the community) combed through their own collections of local brewing history, a history that started 15-20 feet below the current city streets. This is a great article on the city's long brewing history. Also, the historic Grand Rapids Brewing Co. will re-open next month (from the folks behind HopCat). [MLive]

~Here are some coordinating events that go along with the exhibit. [MLive]

~And here is more more about Founders' commemorative "Furniture City Stock Ale" brewed specifically for this exhibit, only available in west Michigan, and with all profits being donated to the Grand Rapids Public Museum. [Founders]

~And here is a video with 16 breweries celebrating Grand Rapids as Beer City USA. [Whiskey Neat]

~For whatever random reason, Trillium Haven was getting a lot of love (at least on Facebook) this week from various persons-about-town. Founders is doing a "Beer and Butchery" five-course dinner there next Sunday and Monday and the GR CVB also made this great video. [Founders / GR CVB]

~UPDATE: In the 20 minutes since I posted this something else happened. This Tuesday the "Grand Pumpkin," a Beer City USA collaboration brew between 11 Grand Rapids breweries, will be released. (Each brewery has their own version, all different recipes with the same base ingredient: pumpkin.) [MLive]

The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

Steak!!!

Sounds like the New York Times is getting ready to run its annual "Detroit on the rise" story! A photographer was at Great Lakes Coffee Co. on Monday "shooting the place up" (not in the way that can sometimes mean for Detroit; the good way). Maybe this time they'll lay off the Phil Cooley fellating. [GLCC FB/Twitter]

Tired of the Great Steakhouse Boom of 2012 yet? Of course not because despite the fact that a million new steakhouses are opening no one really cares that much and why? It is no longer the Clinton-era '90s and we've all moved on. (To upscale comfort food!) That being said, Prime29 in West Bloomfield has a female executive chef and given the rarity of that (rare? get it?) in metro Detroit, this one is worth caring about. [Crain's]

Speaking of steakhouses, Matt Prentice will open Detroit Prime, a "value-driven" steakhouse, on August 31 with long-term plans to grow the concept as a chain. With Matt Prentice at the forefront of Detroit restaurant news it really is the Clinton-era '90s again, apparently. [Freep / Matt Prentice FB]

Speaking of upscale comfort food, Local Kitchen + Bar in Ferndale finally opens this week. [Local FB]

Prentice or Dickson, Dickson or Prentice ... who will win in this epic restaurateur slap-fight rush to open the greatest number of restaurants in the fastest amount of time? (And how many of these places will even still be open two years from now?) Gastronomy opens next week. [Freep]

Hantzlandia continues to entertain. Not as much as Prentice v. Dickson though. [Crain's / Curbed Detroit]

New Belgium Brewing hits Michigan shelves on August 27 and if THAT weren't exciting enough, New Belgium and Michigan's own Brewery Vivant have teamed up for a collaboration brew named "Escoffier" (paying homage Georges Auguste Escoffier, considered by some to be the greatest chef who ever lived), a high-gravity Belgian amber ale aged with wild yeast. Yup ... it's a sour. FTW. Escoffier will be available in September. [MLive]

If you say it enough times it becomes true. [Curbed Detroit / Fox News]

No, but really. [Business Week]

OH MY GOD YOU MEAN THERE'S STILL CRIME IN DETROIT AND THE ARTISTS/HIPSTERS/10-YEAR-OLDS WHO WORK FOR QUICKEN HAVEN'T SAVED IT????? Ohhhhhh, wait, it's just the part of Detroit we don't talk about when we talk about Detroit's renaissance. *whew* [Metro Times]

Michigan: the great boozing state. Food + Wine loves The Mitten Bar: A Michigan Ideology in Ludington (which they spelled really, really wrong), while The Street is all about Short's in Bellaire. [Food + Wine / The Street]

FALL BEER FEST: now two days of fun, still in Eastern Market, and no longer the same weekend as Theatre Bizarre. There is no one happier about all of this than me. No one. [Michigan Brewers Guild FB / EID FB]

Phil Cooley (et.al.) takes his Midas touch to Gold Cash Gold in Corktown a year(erso) from now.  [MLive]

This wins the Internet possibly forever. [Eater National]

Food trucks: still a thing. [Eastern Market Corp. FB]

Detroit: one big parking lot. And also OH MY GOD YOU MEAN THERE'S STILL CRIME IN DETROIT? [Crain's]

[EID Preview] Local Kitchen + Bar

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

As much as chef-partner Rick Halberg tries to underplay the cuisine at Local Kitchen + Bar as "everyday food," avoiding the word "comfort" since upscale comfort food is all the culinary rage right now (particularly in this region), Local is quintessentially American, and there's no shame in that game.

Local celebrates Americana in a way that is appropriately fashionable for Ferndale. Partners Rick Halberg and Brian Siegel are both long-time area restaurateurs, and while Local has been on the lips of food bloggers hungry for bloggy buzz for some time now, they’ve taken the time to do things right. (Which is another way of saying it’s taken a lot longer than initially planned/announced, but that’s hardly news in the restaurant industry. See also: Astro, Sugar House, Green Dot, etc.)

Rick has been out of the restaurant industry for six years now and has been "dying to get back in." "We wanted to do a neighborhood place to eat that was really for the community," he explains. "We found this space and it seemed to fit perfectly with our partnership," referring to Local's relationship with event planning company Star Trax, which will be responsible for much of the booking in the sizable event space upstairs (where Via Nove used to throw techno parties, only this time it will be more like weddings, showers, bar/batmitzvahs, etc.).

The concept for Local is "to do a restaurant that is for everyone ... everybody's doing comfort food; we're trying to shy away from that package. It's really just about everyday food prepared extraordinarily well. We really want to focus on the community." The word "local" of course signifies a commitment to the use of locally-sourced ingredients and local suppliers (as much as possible) including Michigan beers and wines, working with local artisan food producers like Corridor Sausage, sourcing from Michigan farms, and even having their own share in the Ferndale community farm. "We want to do [this] the best way we can and offer product[s] that [are] accessible to as many people as possible."

The event space upstairs.

So what might "everyday foods" with a local emphasis look like? Chicken-fried chicken. Mac and cheese. Burgers. A pig platter with various different pork presentations. "Super fresh" fish. Hearty salads. And just about everything made from scratch in their kitchen, including honest-to-goodness American desserts like seasonal pies, cobblers, Devil's Food Cake, and other "bake sale items" (like brownies and Rice Krispies treats) that will be on display in their vintage rotating dessert display. Oh, and POUTINE. The focus is all on "super fresh, super clean" food, and not fancy presentations.

As a long-time chef and restaurateur himself, Local marks a return to form for Rick. A graduate of the CIA back in the '70s (when "it was just getting cool to be a chef"), Rick jokes he was "on the cutting edge of cool for one moment in my life." He had earlier endeavors in West Bloomfield and Birmingham, but his crowning achievement thus far was Emily's in Northville, which offered extremely high-end dining that at one point held the highest Zagat food rating in the United States (a 28 on a scale of 30, a ranking Emily's shared with only a few other restaurants in the country).

Diners remember the Emily's name and are excited to see the new concept emerge. As for Rick, while he will still be working as a chef in his restaurant (a chef's table in the kitchen with seating for 8-10 guests will be personally attended to by Rick himself), he has built up an impressive team of culinary talent including sous chefs Ricky McCormick, formerly of Cafe Muse, and Nick Schultz, who will be weekend moonlighting with Brew Jus. "It's really exciting to me to have the opportunity to influence another group of young cooks and chefs," Rick says. "It's kind of a nice reward for me to be able to do that." And he adds, "I'm very focused on quality and service. We're not going to slip at all here."

Diners can look forward to weekly specials, a late-night menu, a bar menu, craft cocktails, craft sodas and more. But one thing that might steal the thunder from the food is the fabulous indoor/outdoor patio with a towering wood-burning fireplace as the centerpiece. "We'll really have a 12-month feel to the patio," Rick notes, half of which will be closed off in the winter months so guests can still cozy up around the fireplace for cocktailing and dining.

The space, designed by none other than Ron Rea (a longtime friend of Rick's and Brian's), has a cozy Americana feel to it: wicker furniture on the indoor/outdoor patio, vintage pieces Rick has collected over time (including an antique hutch from an estate sale), an old park bench, stools that look like they came straight from a high school chem lab. The palette is soft and suits the stylish-yet-homey motif, like something you might find in the pages of Country Living. Where the trendy upscale comfort foot joints are universally gunning for urban-rustic, Local brings with it a certain bit of southern gentility, classic country without being corny. "Brian and I both had a very specific image in mind," Rick says. "We wanted it to be super-casual, not over-designed in any way. We wanted to have a lot of integrity in the feeling of this place. Ron's great like that."

The building itself used to be a gas station “a zillion years ago.” Part of the design aesthetic was to strip it down to some of the more iconic design elements, like the original wooden beams in the ceiling and the original brickwork. A communal table built of reclaimed wood will separate the bar from the dining room space. "Our space will be truly iconic for the neighborhood," Rick states. "Our food and service will be excellent, and our commitment to hospitality will be second to none."

Local opens later this month.

 

[Oakland County Prosper] A Feast for the Eyes

Torino Espresso + Bar. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

There has been a flurry of restaurant opening activity in Oakland County lately. Ferndale has seen One-Eyed Betty’s and John D Bistro both open within the last two months, with Woodward Imperial (which will serve California-style gourmet tacos) and Local Kitchen and Bar (serving contemporary American and upscale comfort food) opening soon. The Roberts Restaurant Group – which operates Streetside Seafood in Birmingham, Town Tavern in Royal Oak, and Beverly Hills Grill in Beverly Hills – recently opened Roadside B&G in Bloomfield Hills in the former Brandy’s location, and are currently working on their next concept, Bar ML in Birmingham. Craft beer lovers have a new mecca at Clubhouse BFD, which just opened in February in Rochester Hills. And there are about a dozen other upscale, big-budget concepts currently in the works in Birmingham and Royal Oak which just goes to show the restaurant industry is on an unprecedented upswing in 2012.

One thing all of these places seem to have in common is a whole new focus on interior design. Previously it seemed that design aesthetic in restaurants and bars was never anything more than an afterthought; if the bar itself was interesting (glossy polished wood perhaps, or industrial chic metal and concrete) the rest sort of fell by the wayside; the emphasis was all on the menu, the wine list and the staffing – the rest would just get covered in tablecloths anyway.

Read more.