Bix Engels: Let's Eat!

We have a lot of chef talent in town, but even though they can work wonders and give us very good seafood here in Ann Arbor*, a trip to Nova Scotia is a reminder—no fish tastes as good as it does right from the sea.

When I’m traveling, I’ll often chose a dish and try it in various restaurants to get an idea of how different cooks express it. This time it was seafood chowder. I travelled up and down the “Bluenose Coast,” from Halifax to Shelburne, sampling seafood chowder, which, rather than concentrating on a single type of seafood (as in, say, clam chowder), combines a mix of fish and shellfish. Each of the chowders I tried was house-made and had its own personality. Some reflected the varied cultural heritage of the region. At White Point Lodge, a classic rustic resort dating back to the 1920s, they conjure Nova Scotia’s ties to France with an Acadian-style chowder that uses fennel and smoky bacon in the stock.  I had a big bowl for lunch in the old-fashioned dining room, looking out a bank of windows at the pounding surf.

Umi Sushi’s owner, Mike Kim, spent a year learning the trade at Saline’s Biwako, where I enjoyed monstrous, occasionally weird, and generally delicious sushi rolls on several visits last year. So I was very eager to try Kim’s own venture in Plymouth Green Crossings. Although it’s not by any stretch a swish restaurant, it is an attractive one, with good lighting, well-spaced tables, and a handsome sushi bar as the focal point of the dining room. We were greeted by an enthusiastic young woman, who quickly showed us to a table and within seconds delivered a cup of hot tea. Over the course of several visits I found much to like about Umi Sushi. The one problem was that the food often crossed the line from subtle to blah.

A few phone calls and some quick searches on the reservation site Open Table point to Logan, the Chop House, and Bella Ciao as the most popular destinations in Ann Arbor’s first restaurant week. Bella Ciao, the sentimental favorite that will close at the end of the week, is totally booked. It looks like a very few tables may still be available early and late at the Chop House. Logan is booked (call in case they’ve had cancellations), but they do have a few seats at the bar and at their sidewalk tables available for walk-ins at lunch and dinner. The promotion runs through Friday, June 19. Menus of participating restaurants are  online.

We managed to snag a late dinner reservation at Logan early in the week and it was wild, as in madly busy, with every seat in the house and on the sidewalk filled at nine o’clock and people without reservations still waiting at nine-thirty, hoping for one of those bar or sidewalk spots. Service was slightly slower than usual, but, all in all, wait-staff and kitchen managed remarkably well. Our waiter told us at ten o’clock he hadn’t stopped running since they opened at five.

This is a terrific deal, a prix fixe three-course meal for $25, with two or three choices for each course. At Logan, as always, the meal began with an additional amuse bouche, on this particular evening, a spicy-sour soup made with rich duck stock. We followed this with a gorgeous starter of airy tempura-battered stalks of asparagus and then a second course of five neatly rolled potato gnocchi tossed with a green olive tapenade and topped with toasted pine nuts. For my main, I had sliced lamb with a mix of artichoke hearts and fennel; my husband chose the pork tenderloin with a creamy potato gratin and poached pears on the side. Logan’s signature small, amazingly light biscuits accompanied the main course. For an extra $12, we went with the wine pairing, a well thought out selection of three glasses, one to accompany each course. Dessert was extra, but we splurged.

Looking around the crowded room, I’d bet it included a lot of people familiar with Logan who wanted to take advantage of a bargain. But there were also a lot more young people than usual. If this is about bringing in a new generation of diners, it appeared to work.

Following up on our May 29 post about Brandon Johns leaving Vinology, Ann Arbor Observer business reporter Sally Mitani just passed along a newsletter note from the owners of Bella Ciao, excerpted below:

“After 22 years, Jim and Kathy Macdonald are selling Bella Ciao.

The Macdonalds are grateful to the Ann Arbor community for the decades of support. The business is being sold to a group of entrepreneurs led by Brandon Johns, former executive chef at the Chop House and Vinology.

The new restaurant, Grange Kitchen & Bar, will embrace farm-to-table dining and feature seasonal menus inspired by the fresh flavors of local farms and farmer’s markets.”

Bella Ciao’s last dinner service will be June 20.

Hundreds of people lined up for twenty-five-cent ice cream cones, hot dogs, and milk shakes at the Washtenaw Dairy’s to celebrate the Ann Arbor landmark’s seventy-five years in business. In the space of four hours, they sold some 4,500 milkshakes.

Chef Brandon Johns is no longer cooking at Vinology. Johns has been gone from the North Main Street restaurant for a week, said his wife, Sara Johns, whom I called because she has had a hand in public relations for Vinology. Brandon Johns had been at Vinology for one year. Before that, he had led the kitchen at the Mainstreet Ventures’ Chop House for six years.

Vinology owner Kristin Jonna declined to discuss the split, but said they are looking forward to working with their new chef, Robert Courser. Courser comes to Vinology from Chen Chow Brasserie in Birmingham. Courser has already had some impact on Main St. dining, having designed the menu for the Black Pearl, which opened last summer (the Black Pearl and Chen Chow are both projects of designer John Janviriya, who was also initially involved in Mélange). Courser will be Vinology’s fourth chef in three years.

Reviews for Brandon Johns’s cooking, including one by me in the Observer last year, were generally enthusiastic. Writing in the April 2009 issue of Detroit Hour, Christopher Cook called Vinology “the most improved restaurant in Ann Arbor,” continuing that the improvement had come in “large measure because of the direction of newcomer chef Brandon Johns, who came in as a partner and investor last summer.”

Mrs. Johns said the chef remains committed to local farmers and local food sourcing and hopes to be continuing in this vein elsewhere soon. Chef Johns has often been seen diligently poking through the greens at the Ann Arbor farmers’ market, and he skillfully brought the products of local food artisans and growers like Four Corners Creamery, Calder Dairy, Ernst Farm, Kapnick Orchards, Prochaska Farms, Snow’s Sugarbush maple syrup, and Tantre Farm to the table.

Kristin Jonna underlined Vinology’s intention to stay with local sources, noting that the new chef’s father is an owner of Eat Local Eat Natural, the Scio Township company that provides area restaurants with Michigan products. Jonna says they will gradually launch new menus over the next few weeks. She describes chef Courser’s style as very creative and very fun, with an emphasis on world flavors and wine pairings. 

I’d heard so much buzz about Beezy’s that I was surprised to find so little flash to this Ypsi cafe. But maybe that’s the point—Bee Mayhew has created something simple and real, with a lot of heart. Beezy’s namesake creator is a thirty-one-year-old with a ferocious strength of will, a finely tuned business plan, and an angel investor—one of her favorite customers when she worked at Petoskey’s Roast and Toast cafe, who, she says, “turned out to be a gazillionaire.”

Launched last November, with an aim of providing “simple, honest food,” and with dedicated service from an offbeat, friendly crew, Beezy’s attracted an instant, well-deserved following.
Mayhew’s communitarian cafe is housed in a graceful 1865 brick Italianate building next to a storefront Pentecostal music school, across from a strip joint, a couple of doors down from the Dreamland Theater, and not far from the local-food advocates at Growing Hope. Clearly, there are a lot of different constituencies in the neighborhood, but it feels like most of them could find happiness here, at least in the form of a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

It’s a handsome space, but not in a glossy-magazine kind of way that makes people feel insufficiently cool. Mayhew painted some of the plaster walls a sunny yellow accented with eggplant and steely blue trim but left unpainted the brick wall that runs the length of the dining room. She added floors of recovered ash wood—from trees felled by the emerald ash borer—and exposed the original tin ceiling.

Much of the sandwich making takes place behind the counter in the main room, which intensifies the social spin. It makes a difference when you can interact with the person preparing your food, when she asks you afterwards as you pour more coffee from the self-serve bar, “You had the breakfast burrito, right? Was it OK?”
It was way more than OK—delicious, in fact.

The burrito is one of the ten or so breakfast plates on the chalkboard menu, the rest of which is devoted to sandwiches, soups, and salads. Canada-born, Mayhew grew up all over before settling in Michigan, putting down roots in Petoskey before replanting herself in Ypsilanti. With the zeal of one who picked the place she wants to live, Mayhew is an enthusiastic locovore, but not doctrinaire or elitist. The businesswoman in her considers price and quality as well as geography: she’s the first restaurateur I’ve talked to who proudly points to Gordon Food Service as a supplier: “They’re a huge Michigan company with good prices and a lot of great products from here.”

This practical approach helps her keep prices reasonable, but she also shops much closer to home: the tortilla in that $5.95 breakfast burrito comes from nearby Dos Hermanos Market. Mayhew stuffs it with local eggs and wonderfully robust Dos Hermanos chorizo, adds a tangy grated cheddar, and rolls it tightly. A scattering of home fries with a deep shiny cast delivers exotic flavors like cumin and paprika and a pepper blend from Alden’s Mill House in Antrim County.

I liked the breakfast plate, too, a blue-collar start to the day, with eggs, potatoes, crisp apple-wood–smoked bacon, and toast. In a way that makes the place feel like Mom’s kitchen, if you want the eggs any way other than scrambled, you’re out of luck. That’s not to say Mayhew isn’t flexible—she whipped up a good-looking custom vegan tofu burrito topped with sautéed veggies for the table next to ours—it’s just that she has a lot to cook on one four-burner stove.
Every day Mayhew makes two soups, one with meat and one vegetarian. Her chicken soup is exuberant, laced with lots of tarragon and plenty of carrots, celery, and chunks of breast meat. Since the soups are self serve and held in a steam pot, the broth-based soups may be a better choice than the cream soups. The cream of asparagus I tasted had gone a little too thick by late afternoon, but though it lost points on consistency, it still had excellent flavor. On another visit, the mulligatawny really didn’t taste like any mulligatawny I’ve ever had, but it was nevertheless a good concoction, with dark- and light-meat chicken and vegetables in a zippy broth.

For about $7, you can pair a big bowl of soup with any half sandwich or small salad. “Small” is relative—a small “Beezy’s Salad” was plentiful, a deep bowl of mixed greens, thinly sliced red onions, homemade croutons, slices of roast chicken, a scoop of egg salad, lots of crumbled bacon, and just the right amount of ranch dressing.

Mayhew bakes fifteen to twenty-five loaves of bread daily—sourdough, rye, cracked wheat, and veggie—and the sandwich slices are hand-hewn, thick, and uneven. The fillings make liberal use of fresh herbs. I found myself going back for the egg salad on soft cracked wheat, the bread providing a fine platform for a retro mustardy mix reminiscent of deviled eggs. The “Chicksilanti” is delicious, with clean-tasting roasted chicken and lots of celery, mayo, and fresh herbs. It’s “topless”—that is, open-faced—in a nod to Deja Vu across the street.

Mayhew bakes a few sweets from scratch or almost scratch—scones, lemon bars, and cinnamon buns—none of which I tried. She gets brownies and cupcakes from Erin Kelley’s tarte bakery, and coffee cake from Tim Edinger of Old World Bakery. I did sample Beezy’s coffees, which are very good; Mayhew uses Intelligensia coffee beans, roasted in Chicago.

Beezy’s predecessor in this space, the Oasis Cafe, a project of Belleville’s Power Centre Church International, aimed to provide affordable warm meals and a friendly gathering space. For whatever reason, that model didn’t work, but it seems like Beezy’s has taken on a similar role. It’s one of those places, like Zingerman’s (of which Mayhew is an alumna), that can lift a neighborhood. It is already an integral part of the social fabric and even contributes to the neighborhood agricultural scene. Mayhew sends her scraps to be composted to the Growing Hope hoop house a few blocks away. Growing Hope sends back veggies like spinach and cilantro grown right down the street. You may not know all these back stories when you eat at Beezy’s, but their sum shines through in the dining experience.

Beezy’s

20 N. Washington Ypsilanti

734-485–9625
beezyscafe.com
Mon.–Sat. 7 a.m.–7 p.m. Closed Sun.
Breakfast baked goods $1–$1.85, hot entrees $2.50–$6.25, soup $3.25, salads $2.75–$6.95, sandwiches $4.95–$6.95

Fully accessible to disabled.

This review was originally published in the Ann Arbor Observer, May 2009.