by I. Douglas McLaren, M.D.
In a recent poll of 316 urban areas in the U.S., Ann Arbor ranked 29th in restaurant activity, and 13th in restaurant growth. Here's a hopefully tasty 94/95 update on some of the eateries around town, listed in alphabetical order.
Amadeus Cafe & Patisserie (122 E. Washington St.) is always a pleasure. This hearty Eastern European fare has maintained its high standards since it opened back in 1988. All the vegetables are chopped by hand and the menu has a deliciously Polish flavor. The pastry case displays the products of restauranteurs Pavel Strozynski and Krystyna Aniolczyk's impeccable recipes. Now that Amadeus has a liquor license, you can order wine or beer as well as some of the richest coffee in town blend of dark-roasted Colombian and flavored coffees, just the thing for washing down rich pastry.
A visit to The ArtCafe (211 E. Washington St.) is fairly unique. There's something romantic--some would say foolish--about trying to open a combination restaurant and art gallery, especially in Ann Arbor where both markets are so competitive. The art is Ann Arbor commercial, but of fine quality: fractals, cartoons, paintings and mixed media, textiles, wood, jewelry, and the obligatory Hopi flute player, Kokopeli. The menu has small, rotisserie-centered, plus partially self-serve, breakfast and lunch offerings.
Turkish delights ....When e-mail, voice mail, and people you meet all recommend the same place, it's time to take a look at Ayse's Courtyard Cafe (1703 Plymouth Rd.). Ayse's has a slot in the glassed-in rear corridor in the upper level of the Courtyard Shops at Plymouth Road and Murfin. The diminutive Ayse (EYE-shuh) Uras is hostess, server, cook, and busser, never seeming rushed or at a loss. Geographically and gustatorily, Turkey is situated between Eastern Europe, Greece and the Middle East. Its cuisine shares ingredients and preparations with its neighbors, but is lighter and fresher overall.
Bandito's serves California-style Mexican food out of the storefront at 216 S. Fourth Ave., between Washington and Liberty streets. The dining area consists of a dozen tables that fill up for the lunch rush. It's a favorite hideout for local computer jocks and picks up some of the blue-collar business from Sottini's across the street. Take-out business is brisk.
Now officially rechristened The Original Cottage Inn, the pizza parlor on William is in the final phases of a half-million dollar renovation. Friends Nick Michos and George Petropoulos bought the Cottage Inn back in 1962. Remodeling started last spring with an outdoor mural of green ivy giving it a southern European feel, rather like Palio a few blocks away on Main near William. A big, second floor front window has been installed to brighten the new upstairs dining area. Space has now doubled from 150 to 300, including a separate banquet room for parties of between 40 and 120 people. As many as 1,000 people will probably be served on a busy Friday or Saturday. The viney, winey theme is carried throughout the restaurant. Food innovations include create your own pasta, a new rotisserie for chicken, and a new wood-burning, brick oven for specialty pizza with thin, crispy crusts and trendy toppings like goat cheese and roasted garlic. Coming soon, the entrance will open into a bright and sunny coffee shop/waiting area contiguous with the main dining room.
Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon (930 Eisenhower [Colonnade]) is a 60-some store chain out of North Carolina. The formula is one-part Ponderosa, two-parts Chili's, and a dash of Gunsmoke. Plenty of gimmicks make for a memorable dining experience: buckets of peanuts and shells everywhere, servers line dancing and crooning along to heartbreak country ballads, and leftovers are wrapped in foil in the shape of a steer head. Expect a short wait during the week and a long one at the weekend.
Maude's (314 S. Fourth Ave., opened 1977) recently underwent its first major face-lift in years: new interior, new menu, new chef, new logo. The main dining room has been totally redone with high-backed booths for six, conspicuous Italian lighting, and it's a nonsmoking room now.
Metzger's German Restaurant (203 E. Washington) is Ann Arbor's oldest restaurant providing customers with value and consistency for 65 years. The decor in the east dining room is beer steins and cuckoo clocks. The food is much the same, year after year. The clientele is mostly fifties-and-up folks who don't need menus because they were probably raised on the stuff. The newer west room is a subdued biergarten and smoking section, with a more private room for parties towards the back.
Mongolian Barbeque - or Genghis Khan meets the Old Country Buffet. You, the customer, assemble the ingredients of your meal. MB has primed the recipe pump with a few tried-and-true concoctions but most folks blow by the buffet laggards, squinting through the sneeze guards at the troughs of meat and veggies, and grab huge dollops of Cuisinart fodder in a mad dash for the grill. The circular grill is the nerve center of the operation: a six-foot-diameter slab of stainless steel resembling a giant CD, heated by 36 gas jets to a temperature higher than most short-order cooks would tolerate.
The odyssey of the Moveable Feast (326 W. Liberty St.) started 16 years ago when a group of women began making high-quality, high-brow products with home kitchen care and offering them to those in the know. Nowadays a top-drawer catering operation, restaurant, factory bake-house, and retail network make up the modern incarnation of the Feast. With headquarters and the full-scale restaurant operation on West Liberty, the Feast recently expanded its original Kerrytown take-out location to serve lunch-and they've been selling out! Dinner is easy during the week, but reservations only on weekends. Prices are steep by Ann Arbor standards, but very reasonable for dining.
Robby's at the Icehouse (102 S. First St.) changed its decor and its menu back in the summer of '93. Robby's started out as one of those 1980's tres dark restaurants where spotlights illuminated your plate but all else was blackness. Now ambient light reveals colorful new banners swaged across the ceiling. The effect makes the main dining room seem more welcoming, not so highbrow as it used to be. The clientele is broader than before-there are more blue jeans and more dolled up young folks out on expensive dates.
A Taste of Italy (808 S. State St.) is on the triangle but not of it. It's a wonderful restaurant that has had its ups and downs. Founder Jerry Borelli Sr. died suddenly in March '94, only a few months after opening the restaurant he'd planned ever since moving here from Philadelphia two years earlier. It's still a family affair though with his wife Ritas' marvelous cooking and the adult Borelli children and in-laws all helping out. The 33-seat sit-down dining enjoys ample traffic even during the slow summer months. The Italianate faux marble, Roman Architecture, and garden frescoes are from Ann Arbor's own Painter Sisters.
Sports bars started appearing around the same time as satellite dishes moved from rocket science to Popular Science, supplanting the TV set behind the bar at the local watering hole. Ann Arbor has several sporting bars but Tripper's (3965 S.State St.) is decidedly different. Fraser's Pub, Banfield's Bar and Grill and CUBS' AC seem more like bars with sports than sport venues themselves. Even if their patrons are too busy watching TV to notice you, these places are still neighborhood hangouts. Not Tripper's. It's too big, too loud, and too much. There are seven dining rooms and 36 TV screens displaying sporting events from around the globe. From any seat, you can see at least four of them. During those busy weeks when baseball, basketball, and hockey collide, you can watch them all at once.
Changes: The Old German (1928-1995) on Washington Street closed in March this year after serving townsfolk for 67 years. After almost 50 years of working seven-day weeks, the restaurant's owner, Bud Metzger, decided to close the business and retire. The site is being taken over by the Grizzly Peak Brew Pub. Nick Easton's new Antiques Marketplace on First Street near Liberty, is a sunny corner filled with Victorian tables and wire chairs, where coffee, tea, and pastries can be taken in, not a coffee shop, but the "English tearoom". Drake's Sandwich Shop on North University, bought by Truman Tibbals in 1932, is gone for good. It's Walnut room upstairs was a hot campus dance spot back in the '40s. The Whiffle Tree rises again! Robby Babcock is now running the Oyster Bar and Spaghetti Machine downstairs from Robby's at the Icehouse on First and Huron. He plans to meld the OBSM with the best features of his late lamented Whiffletree, an Ann Arbor institution destroyed by fire in 1988. Kerrytown Grille has closed after a very short tenure and it appears that Washington Street Station is metamorphosing into the Ann Arbor Brewing Company. Real Seafood Company on Main Street has just had a rather attractive face-lift.
Awards: The best spots, in my opinion, for good food, wine and service are still Gratzi (326 S. Main St.), Miki (106 S. First), Gandy Dancer (121 W. Washington), and The Earle (121 W. Washington); and Red Hawk Bar & Grill (316 S. State), and Casey's Tavern (304 Depot St.) for beers and burgers. The most interesting crowd trophy must go to Sweet Lorraines at 303 Detroit St. The latest-opening, pizza seven days-a-week award goes to Pizza House on Church Street and Bell's Pizza on Packard and State, both open until 4:00 a.m. Finally, for a real good'ole fashioned breakfast 24-hours a day you must visit the Fleetwood Diner on S. Ashley and Liberty.
Bon appetit!