[Model D] Chickpea in the D now serving fresh, healthy lunches downtown

Downtown workers and residents who often find themselves frustrated at the lack of healthy food options in the city have another place to go for lunch.

Chickpea in the D officially opened for business Sept. 10 at 2 John R, the tiny 60-square-foot space that was previously a hot dog stand and before that, the very same place where Good Girls Go to Paris Crepes got its successful start.

Read more.

[Model D] Detroit Vegan Soul celebrates grand opening in West Village this Saturday

Scrambled Tofu, Polenta Cheez Grits, Red skin potatoes, vegan sausage, and sprouted cinnamon raisin toast from Detroit Vegan Soul

2012 Hatch Detroit finalists Detroit Vegan Soul will celebrate a grand opening in its new space in West Village at 8029 Agnes St. this Saturday, Sept. 28.

After starting out with a vegan meal delivery and catering service, Kirtsen Ussery and Erika Boyd realized that there is a real demand for homemade vegan comfort food in Detroit. Both vegan themselves, they started veganizing their family recipes and found that people really loved it.

Read more.

[Real Detroit] You Don't Know Shit from Shinola

Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

The antiquated idiom "You don't know shit from Shinola" originated during WWII and referred to the American-made Shinola brand shoe polish (the implication being that a person is too stupid to know the difference between shoe polish and feces).

The original Shinola shoe polish is no longer made, but that doesn't mean the brand is dead. In 2012 the brand was resuscitated under new ownership. Tom Kartsotis, the formerly retired founder of Fossil (you know, that other watchmaker), established Shinola with the intention of bringing quality hand-crafted watch manufacturing back to America, and based it in Detroit – the heart of American manufacturing.

Read more.

[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] 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.

[NEWS BITES] The Lunch Room in Ann Arbor opening restaurant in Kerrytown

About a year and a half ago, food cart culture was a hot topic around these parts -- How do we circumvent the laws preventing them from operating and become more like other cities where the mobile model has proven successful? How is the mobile model preferable for some start-ups in terms of lower barrier to entry and potential to evolve into brick-and-mortar (and is the latter even a feasible end-goal)? And let's not forget all the brick-and-mortars who got a bad case of the It's-Not-Fairs.

Since then the furor has died down and while we still have nothing in greater metro Detroit the mimics the food cart culture of Portland or the roaming herds of food trucks in Austin, but we're at least used to the idea now, and some of these concepts have successfully been able to spin their mobile start-ups into bonafide brick-and-mortars.

Mark's Carts in Ann Arbor, more than anywhere else in metro Detroit, has acted as something of a mobile-to-permanent food business incubator. After a successful first season when Mark's Carts opened in 2011 (as well as, admittedly, a catering business that took off stronger and faster than the owners expected), eat catering and chef services was able to open their own small retail space where they serve hearty home-cooked foods for lunch and dinner carry-out, and also have the large kitchen space in back for their catering.

Now Mark's Carts has a brand new graduate to the brick-and-mortar program. The Lunch Room, a vegetarian and vegan restaurant, has announced they will now be opening their own restaurant in Kerrytown. And before Mark's Carts they originally started as a pop-up, so there's a feather in the cap for that food business trend too. The full press release is copied below; they hope to open in June.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This spring The Lunch Room will become the second business from Mark’s Carts to move to a permanent, year-round location (the first was eat, in the fall of 2011, to 1906 Packard). The award-winning vegan eatery will take over the space last occupied by Yamato restaurant at 403 N. Fifth Ave. on the west side of Kerrytown Market & Shops, nestled between Everyday Wines and Zingerman’s Events (formerly Eve’s). Projected to open in June, The Lunch Room will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Saturday and Sunday brunches. Proprietors Phillis Engelbert and Joel Panozzo are seeking to create an establishment that will be noteworthy for its hearty and delicious plant-based food; compelling, attractive interior and exterior design; and spirited ambience that includes live music. The Lunch Room is grateful to Trillium Real Estate for their assistance in securing such a prime downtown location.

“Kerrytown Market & Shops is thrilled to welcome The Lunch Room to our community,” stated Karen Farmer, Manager of Kerrytown Market & Shops. “We’ve patiently waited for the right fit, and feel we’ve got that with Joel and Phillis. Their wonderful food and positive energy will make them a great addition to our unique collection of local businesses.”

The restaurant will provide Ann Arbor with exciting new vegan fare and will greatly increase the city’s vegetarian cuisine offerings. The restaurant menu will feature new entrees such as veggie burgers, tacos, roasted root veggie pasties, tempeh reubens, and udon noodle seitan stirfry -- as well as many of the items that made the food cart famous. There will be rotating dinner specials including pizza; paella; mac & cheese; veggie sushi platter; panang curry; Cuban black beans & rice, and breaded seitan cutlets with rice, broccoli & gravy. Among the new breakfast and brunch offerings will be breakfast burritos, French toast, cauliflower-spinach frittata, potato pancakes with applesauce & sour cream, oatmeal-fruit-granola platter and more. A bakery display case will show off The Lunch Room’s cookies, pies and pastries. The restaurant will also sell fresh-squeezed fruit and vegetable juices, smoothies, coffee, root beer floats and Boston coolers, and coconut-milk ice-cream sundaes with hot fudge and other homemade toppings.

The Lunch Room promises to become a destination not only for its food, but also for its decor. Adam Smith and Lisa Suavé of Synecdoche (Si-NEK-duh-kee) “simultaneous understanding” are designing the space as a showcase for their dynamic modern architectural style that accentuates materials, space, and light. Holders of Master’s degrees in Architecture from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College, the pair were the 2011 winners of the Young Architects Forum of Atlanta for a temporary outdoor installation called Edge Condition. They will work in conjunction with Lunch Room co-owner and graphic designer Joel Panozzo and plant artist Andy Sell (aka Foraging Florist) to create a bright and beautiful space, incorporating  and blending elements of indoors and outdoors, to enhance the dining experience.

The Lunch Room got its start as a “pop-up” restaurant in the fall of 2010, when next-door neighbors and vegan foodies Engelbert and Panozzo began serving 5-course meals on their signature cafeteria trays to private parties of 40-60 people in retail locations throughout Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. In April 2011 The Lunch Room joined the inaugural group of food carts at Mark’s Carts, selling sandwiches, salads, entrees, soups and baked goods from a cute, wood-paneled food cart. During its two seasons as a food cart it gained a reputation for making nutritious, delicious food that happened to be vegan yet appealed to people of all eating persuasions. The Lunch Room became most famous for its BBQ tofu sliders, banh mi chay (Vietnamese baguette) sandwiches, loaded nachos, Saturday brunch plate, cookies and ice cream sandwiches, as well as for being a place where smiling proprietors greeted customers by name and created a community spirit.

The Lunch Room serves plant-based foods made from scratch from fresh, high-quality ingredients. It makes every effort to use products from local vendors and to use locally grown, seasonal vegetables and fruits. Many of its menu items are gluten-free and the proprietors make every effort to accommodate guests with any food allergy.

The Lunch Room food cart was recognized in annarbor.com in July 2011 for achieving profitability after just five weeks in business. That October The Lunch Room won an Awesome Award from Ypsilanti’s iSPY Magazine. In June 2012 The Lunch Room received another honor: Best Food Cart in Washtenaw County in Current Magazine’s Readers’ Choice competition. It was recently favorably reviewed in Current Magazine’s Vegetarian Odyssey.

[EID Feature] When you go to the Auto Show, Go Natural

The new atrium at Cobo Center. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

By now you've heard about the $300 million renovation project currently underway at Cobo Center. Part of the construction includes a three-story glass-walled atrium overlooking the Detroit River, which will make its debut (temporarily) during the 2013 North American International Auto Show when it opens to the public next Saturday, January 19.

Just a tad less buzzworthy, but something the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority is also very excited about, is their new concession stand Go Natural located on the main concourse, opening just in time for the Auto Show. Go Natural is the first step in a whole new direction for Centerplate, the Cobo Center's food service vendor. This grab-and-go cafe features a variety of prepared foods - soups, salads and sandwiches - all made with fresh, natural, locally-sourced ingredients. Organic produce, locally-raised free-range chickens, from-scratch soups and more are on the menu at Go Natural, which is all part of a larger initiative by Centerplate to not just catch up to the marketplace but "leapfrog" it, offering the kind of food not normally found in convention centers. Options at Go Natural include breakfast and lunch items, and are definitely hearty yet healthy.

In addition to the atrium, which will host private parties and VIP dinners, the new construction in Cobo will include a grand ballroom, additional meeting rooms, a brand-new food court and a new 8,000-square-foot kitchen with private tasting room. Catering will be entirely overseen by Centerplate's ACF Executive Chef Jamie Miller, whose biggest passion and primary objective is to use fresh, locally-sourced ingredients in his cooking.

I had the chance to preview Go Natural, as well as the Auto Show in mid-construction, this past Thursday. Check out the photos in the slideshow below. For the record, I had the buffalo chicken sandwich and tomato soup. The sandwich was made with huge chunks of high-quality chicken and more huge chunks of bleu cheese on ciabatta bread, the soup was loaded with fresh vegetables, and the ladies at the counter were lovely. As far as convention center "fast food" goes, this place seems pretty top-notch.

Go Natural at Cobo Center - Slideshow Creator

[Metromode] Dino's: Feeding Fans and School Kids Alike

Festive lights at Dino's in Ferndale.

Dino's Lounge is a Ferndale staple. Opened in September 2002, Dino's is the kind of place that has gained a loyal local following not for its gimmicky appeal or trendiness, but just for being a friendly neighborhood place offering good food and fun times, the kind of place that gained popularity not through vigorous advertising but by word of mouth. Owner Dean ("Dino") Bach is well-known as much for his involvement in the community as for his jovial sense of humor.

Dino's regularly hosts various fundraisers and community events, while Bach himself has been involved with the Michigan AIDS Coalition, Ferndale Youth Assistance, and currently serves on the boards of the Ferndale DDA and the Ace Academy Charter School in Highland Park, a strict discipline academy for incarcerated males ages 12-20.

His latest venture is something of an outgrowth of all of the work he has been doing through Dino's over the past decade. Bach recently purchased the old VFW Hall next to the Valentine distillery on Vester Street in Ferndale which he is converting to a large-scale three-shift catering kitchen and banquet facility through which they will cater healthy lunches for several area schools as well as expand their highly in-demand catering services. All of which came about by accident and circumstance.

Read more.