By Elissa Karg
Published: 3/8/2000
Types: Food & Drink
DAILY PICK IS HEALTHY A shopper at Whole Foods Market in West Bloomfield did a double take when she saw celebrity chef Curtis Aikens doing a cooking demonstration. "I love you!" she exclaimed. "I love you too," ...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 2/9/2000
Types: Food & Drink
SWEET PASSIONS Before Valentine’s Day the lines can be long at Sydney Bogg, Detroit’s oldest chocolatier, but if you need to impress a certain sweetie, this is the place to do it. "What makes our candy so good?&quo...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 1/12/2000
Types: Food & Drink
FRESH READING In the summer of 1971, I worked for the United Farm Workers Detroit boycott office. One of my jobs was to go to Eastern Market every day at 5 a.m. and scout for scab grapes. If there were none, I could go home and sleep. Ot...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 12/8/1999
Types: Food & Drink
PEG, PAUL 'N' PASTRY When I invited myself to Dish, a gourmet takeout eatery on Detroit's east side, to observe a day in the life of a pastry chef, Peg Sulek said, "This is a good day to come. We're doing a wedding cake.&q...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 11/24/1999
Types: Food & Drink
MOCK TURKEY What to do about vegetarians on Turkey Day? There's a solution: Tofurky. It loosely resembles a rolled turkey breast, but it's made of tofu and wheat protein. It's even stuffed, and comes with a bag of gravy, four drumsticks ...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 11/10/1999
Types: Food & Drink
EASY BETS When three casinos are in full swing in downtown Detroit, how will you decide where to blow your money? The Motor City Casino, located in the old Wonder Bread building on Grand River, is betting that fine food will tip the scales. To hed...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 9/29/1999
Types: Food & Drink
LEARN TO TASTE Remember the high school science experiment where you blindfold your classmates, pinch their noses shut and offer them an apple and an onion to munch? Most people, if they can’t see it or smell it, can’t taste the differen...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 8/25/1999
Types: Food & Drink
Snake wine? Keith Famie, one of Detroit’s premier chefs, biked the length of Vietnam earlier this year. He brought home an image of the nation that puts war in the background. The bike trip included three Vietnam veterans and was filme...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 7/28/1999
Types: Food & Drink
CRITICAL MASS Here is what some restaurant critics say about their work: It isn’t fun. They work weekends, and spend a lot of time on the phone making reservations, canceling reservations and keeping track of their fake names. Phyllis ...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 6/30/1999
Types: Culture, Health & science
When Kevin Elliott Thompson practices acupuncture, he begins by looking at his client’s tongue. "If the tongue is moist or dry, if it’s bright or dull, pink or red, it tells me about dampness and heat, deficiency and excess," ...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 6/23/1999
Types: Food & Drink
Don Schneider is a world-renowned glassblower during the week, but on Saturday he is the Mushroom Man, known for selling all manner of fungi at Eastern Market. "Are these the ones that taste like butter?" a customer asks. "...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 5/5/1999
Types: Food & Drink
Buy it: Summer means produce. The eggplants are lush. The tomatoes juicy. Michigan strawberries are dark red – buy them by the flat in June and get blueberries late in July. At Eastern Market look for farmers bringing their own crops to market...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 4/28/1999
Ten-year-old Margaux Whitney has been figure skating since she was 3. The many medals she has won hang on her bedroom walls along with photos of Olympic skaters, including her favorite, Oksana Baiul. A fourth-grader at Detroit’s Bates Academy, Ma...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 4/7/1999
Types: Food & Drink
SOUP TO SHARE The Capuchin Soup Kitchen has a way of bringing people together. On a recent Tuesday afternoon there, a lawyer sat behind a desk, meeting with a client. "He offers his services for free every month," said Ken Dill...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 3/3/1999
Types: Food & Drink
Where do new ice cream flavors come from? Ashby’s Sterling Ice Cream, made in Oak Park, holds an annual Flavor Selection Day to determine its four new flavors. There were more than three dozen contenders this year, and ...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 2/10/1999
Types: Food & Drink
FOOD SERVICE FEEDBACK After breaking bread with restaurant consultants Colette Tremblay and Angela Stewart, I can’t go out to eat without noting how the busboy carries my glass of water and whether the meal has been paced correctly. I used to be grateful if the waitstaff wasn’t sur...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 1/20/1999
Types: Food & Drink
The table was laden with healthful food, sporting labels such as: "High Protein, Low Fat Noodle Pudding," "Golden Carrot Soup — lots of antioxidants!" "Veggie Chopped Liver," "Smoked Tofu Salad," "Whole Wheat Banana Nut...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 3/26/2003
Types: Food & Drink
Sweet Georgia Brown has it all: a stunning setting, exciting food, sophisticated wine, attentive service, live music and that elusive “buzz.” And as if that wasn’t enough — a river runs through it! Walk in the front door and the entire room spreads out before you. The space is unbroken, but fee...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 10/23/2002
Types: Food & Drink
At Shawn Loving's restaurant, Loving Spoonful, it is quiet in the afternoon. The day cooks are cleaning the kitchen; the evening shift begins to arrive. The cooks, in their white jackets, checked pants and baseball caps, tote cases of knives. ("The nicer the restaurant, the more they expect you to h...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 3/27/2002
Types: Food & Drink
Jeffrey Kalich, sitting in the balcony of the restaurant he built with his own hands, muses, “What would Jeffrey want to do when he grows up?” It’s a question he can answer easily: “Own a restaurant — or two or three or four, be a recording artist, be a race car driver, ride horses, invent things...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 3/27/2002
Types: Food & Drink
For Fiona Palmer, opening her tea house was a way to re-create favorite childhood memories — like coming home from school in her native New Zealand, her mother waiting with a pot of tea and a tin of homemade cookies — or Sunday afternoons spent with her grandmother, the two playing duets on the pian...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 3/27/2002
Types: Food & Drink
Lillie Howard was contemplating retirement when her son Pierre told her that he had found the perfect place for the restaurant of her dreams. So began Misha’s, a tiny eatery with a black-and-white checkerboard floor and a groaning steam table laden with collard greens, macaroni and cheese, black-e...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 8/16/2000
Types: Arts, Literature, Books
"Bravo!" has been heard often by Ann Arbor's University Musical Society. Fittingly enough, it’s also the title of a cookbook that brings together the Society's 120-year history and an exciting collection of recipes contributed by the likes of violinist Itzhak Perlman (bean sprout salad with ginger),...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 8/9/2000
Types: Food & Drink
They’re not cake decorators anymore. Sugar artists, if you don’t mind. Their medium is cake and frosting, and it’s gone way past roses piped on wedding cakes. The International Cake Exploration Societé gathers at the Renaissance Center’s Marriott Hotel this weekend for its 25th annual convention,...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 7/19/2000
Types: Arts, Literature, Books
Halfway through Ruth Reichl's memoir Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Random House, $23, 288 pp.), I realized with disappointment that the story was not moving fast enough to get to the author's experiences as a restaurant critic at the New York Times. Instead, it concludes as Reichl lau...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 7/5/2000
Types: Food & Drink
DONE TO A TURN On summer Saturdays, Eastern Market seems to be bursting at every seam. Stalls and sheds overflow with colorful produce as merchants set up shop along Russell Street. The crowd at Bert’s Marketplace (2727 Russell St. at Division, 313-567-2030) spills out onto the sidewalk and i...[MORE]
By Elissa Karg
Published: 6/28/2000
WHEELING FOR MEALS There’s the Grand Prix where you trudge across Belle Isle in the hot sun, paying $2.50 for a bottle of water, $3.50 for a slice of pizza, $5 for earplugs and $10 for a program. Then there’s the Grand Prix beyond the padd...[MORE]
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