The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

The Old Fenton Fire Hall.

 Please let someone open another upscale BBQ restaurant, please please PLEASE let someone open another upscale BBQ restaurant, pleeeeease please please ... praised be to pork, our prayers have been answered! Behold: another upscale BBQ restaurant. (This time in Chelsea.) [Concentrate]

ROYAL OAK IS GETTING A NEW SPORTS BAR. In related news, there are some fruits that simply hang too low. [Royal Oak Patch]

"Beaver slap" is a baking term. In unrelated news, VAGINA. [Chicago Tribune / Wonkette]

The owner of Ann Arbor's ethnically-approximated Mani Osteria plans on opening an ethnically-approximated Mexican restaurant next door which will serve Mexican-style "street food." One is forced to asked, at what point do we stop calling food decidedly NOT served on the street "street food"? [Concentrate]

Lots of expansion news as, it turns out, people like to drink. (Here. Here. Also here. And here.) [Beer Pulse / Midwest Wine Press / Concentrate / Metromode]

Curbed Detroit had coffee on the brain this week, specifically in Midtown. The Bottom Line Coffeehouse has been pulling an Astro but let's hope it doesn't pull a [insert name of any number of failed restaurant/market projects that got as far as putting up signage but never actually opened their doors]. And a reminder once again that landlords in Detroit often fancy themselves lords of their own fiefdoms. [Curbed Detroit]

After the Fenton DDA nixed plans to work with Michigan Brewing Company on building out the Fenton Fire Hall, Arbor Brewing Co. and the owners of Union Woodshop et. al. faced off for the space. The Fenton DDA has announced the winner and grand champeeen to be Curt Catallo and Ann Stevenson, whose most-recent success with the historic preservation and adaptive reuse project Vinsetta  Garage (and before that Union Woodshop) has demonstrated their "recipe for success" isn't just a clever pun. [Fenton Patch]

In the final chapter of the Michigan Brewing Company saga of gross mismanagement culminating in the auctioning off of the brand's assets, the Celis brand was bought back by the Celis family and will return home to Texas and MillerCoors pulled an Anheuser-Busch by acquiring the MBC label. [Lansing State Journal / EID FB]

If Frank Sinatra were alive today, he might sing about beer and sliders going together like a horse and carriage instead. Brew Jus opens inside (....errrrrrr in the general vicinity of pending further health department finagling) the Rust Belt Market. [The Oakland Press]

This time Jolly Pumpkin wins. Hard. Well, aside from the heinous packaging. [EID FB]

This will ruin everything. [USA Today Travel]

Further proof that only lobotomized Baby Boomer housewives buy Mitch Albom's snakeoil schtick. [Deadspin]

[Metromode] Bohemian Rhapsody: Metro Detroit's Coffee Chemists

My latest article on Detroit's fast-maturing coffee scene appeared June 23 in Metromode. Here's a taste (or is it a sip?) -- Nicole

If 'Ethiopian Harrar' is an integral part of your early morning ritual, then you already know about Chazzano Coffee in Ferndale. And you also know that when first roasted this particular coffee has notes of juicy blueberry which after a week will evolve to luscious dark chocolate.

''I've created monsters!' jokes Frank Lanzkron-Tamarazo, owner and roaster at Chazzano Coffee. 'They want coffee that's been roasted the same day [so it still has all its flavor profiles]; they'll ask me, "What are you roasting now?" I want people to be crazy about coffee like that and I train the staff to be crazy about coffee like that.'

'In Metro Detroit, the seedlings of a whole new kind of culinary culture have begun to grow.

'Or, more accurately, the beans..."

Read the rest of the article here.

Thistle Coffeehouse: Coffee Culture and Community in Midtown

Nicole Rupersburg

I first heard about Thistle Coffeehouse from Pastor Brenda Jarvis (of Riverside Community Church) and her son Kevin at a large group dinner at the Whitney in October 2009. What they told me sounded too good to be true: a third-wave coffeehouse offering free WiFi, free printing, late-night hours, student art showcases, in DETROIT. I immediately went home and wrote my then-editor at Model D, telling her how exciting it is and how we just have to cover it. This was early on in my business coverage days and I wasn't quite yet aware of the general journalism rules of thumb, which include not covering a business that has no lease, no equipment and no business license, just an enthusiastic idea and some business cards. She let me down easy, saying, "It sounds like heaven. If it ever opens."

Sometimes the truth hurts. Truth is, a lot of people have a lot of ideas. Making them a reality is something different entirely.

A year and a half later, I get a Facebook message from Kevin: "Thistle Coffeehouse now open!"

I'll be damned.

Er. Maybe I should re-phrase that...