Tag Archives: ann arbor
Lazy Journalism
It seems pretty unlikely to me that anyone would mistake my drunk blog ramblings as “journalism,” but just in case, let’s be clear: I’m not a journalist, and I don’t know all the pressures that a journalist faces. And I don’t really know all the work that goes into making good journalism.
I do, however, know punk ass crap journalism when I see it.
Last week, annarbor.com – the electronic replacement for the old Ann Arbor News – ran a piece about how Tim Horton’s was going to replace Lab Cafe on Liberty Street. Internet chaos ensued, with hoards of Ann Arborites bemoaning the loss of some decent coffee and locally made pastry, ostensibly to be replaced by stale Timbits and shitty coffee in mammoth cups.
Except here’s the hilarious thing: IT’S NOT ACTUALLY HAPPENING.
It could someday, I suppose, but it’s not now. The intrepid drunk blogger that I am, I wandered down there on my coffee break last week to talk to the fine folks at Lab. Since it’s a regular source of coffee (not to mention DELICIOUS MACARONS), I needed to get the skinny. What they said (paraphrasing here) is basically that they were renegotiating their lease and that they were deciding whether to stay in that location or move down the street. Annarbor.com apparently called for a comment, and Lab balked, basically noting that they were in the middle of a business deal and it wasn’t the right time or place to be talking about this publicly.
Naturally, annarbor.com ran with the story anyhow. After the resulting chit chat online and all the confusion, Lab’s landlords cut off their very preliminary discussions with Tim Horton’s, who would have been a potential replacement if (and only if) Lab Cafe chose to move.
Is there a replacement story in annarbor.com? A retraction? A sticky comment on the original story? Not that I can see anywhere. The result of the story was that an indie coffee shop has panic among its customers and possible pressure placed on it to move with its lease prematurely, and the story itself was entirely bullshit.
It’s one thing to be wrong. It’s quite another to be so wrong and so irresponsible that you cause a business to have to explain itself to its customers because of someone else’s mistake. It’s a shame to see that kind of thing.
But on the plus side, according to the folks I’ve spoken with at Lab, the cafe isn’t going anywhere – at least, they’re not unless they want to. So we’ll see what happens, but it’s a safe bet that it won’t be what thousands of people read on annarbor.com.
The Brinery’s New Turnip Pickles
Ann Arborites have been able to sink their teeth into the naturally fermented products of The Brinery for some time. David Klingenberger, owner and crazy mad genius of the old school lacto-fermentation process, has been selling at the Ann Arbor farmer’s market and working with Washtenaw County restaurants. Thankfully, he’s now at Eastern Market and those of us a little closer get regular access to his goods.
His most recent offering is made from a turnip of Japanese origin. And it’s amazing.
Hakurei turnips (pronounced, as I understand it, hah-kur-eye) are, in Klingenberger’s words, “the honeycrisp of turnips” — sweet, crisp, tender, and juicy. He’s routinely made turnip pickles in the past, and they’re perfectly delicious with a nice earthy flavor and cut thickly for a nice combination of chewiness and crunch. It is evidently the ideal turnip for consuming raw and doesn’t even require peeling, a notion espoused by plenty of blogging salad lovers.
Given The Brinery’s natural fermentation process whereby the raw veggies are preserved by bacteria (rather than by cooking and vinegar), these would seem to be pretty well suited to pickling.
And indeed, they are: Their new Hakurei-based pickles are shaved exceptionally thin and remain quite crunchy. Klingenberger sources these from Ann Arbor-based Garden Works, a certified organic 4.5-acre truck garden and greenhouse farm, but the turnip is a hybrid developed in Japan in the 1950s.
The pickles are irresistible on their own, or throw them on a little baguette sandwich if you can keep your hand out of the jar. Fans of fermented goods can pick them up on Saturdays at Eastern Market or check out where David will be selling his products next at The Brinery’s website.
Anthology Coffee
As though we all weren’t caffeinated enough already, we metro Detroiters are clearly in the midst of a regional coffee explosion. Never have there been so many roasters, so many cafes, so many interesting coffees from which to choose. Perhaps I’m overstating it since coffee is a fairly new thing to me – but I’m pretty sure that my Coffee Explosion Theory is on the money.
Consider: The hype-worthy Corktown spot Astro Coffee opened last week (they’ll get their own GUD post or series of praiseworthy poems soon enough). Great Lakes continues to replace hazelnut flavored sludge with real coffee across the area and to sell new microlots or new blends at Eastern Market. And of course, you couldn’t go 15 minutes without hearing about them on WDET for the better part of the last year. Lab Cafe, Comet Coffee, and the storefront for Mighty Good all opened in Ann Arbor within the past 18 months or so. Commonwealth Coffee arrived in Birmingham only several months back.
And now it turns out that the in-house roastmaster at Commonwealth is also selling coffee under his own label.
Anthology showed up at Comet Coffee in Ann Arbor a few weeks ago. I needed a bag of beans to grind and brew on my office Chemex setup, and the half pound allotment from this ostensibly tiny roastery of which I’d never heard was the freshest on the shelf. Despite the somewhat hefty price tag, my inability to resist a compelling east African coffee took hold of my arm, and before I knew it, I was back in the office making up a batch of his Karimikui AA coffee from Kirinyaga, Kenya. (AA, I learned only a week or so ago, is a grade designation for coffee beans that means larger than normal beans. While it’s apparently not universal that larger beans mean more flavor, there is some degree of association there.)
It’s pretty delicious stuff. There’s bitterness, but it’s more akin to a hoppy saison or a grapefruit in that it’s acidic and fruity while bitter (rather than more “simply” bitter). While I only ever drink my drip coffee unadulterated, the flavor is plenty full, fruity, and sweet, so I can’t imagine that anyone would add much in the way of sugar or cream to this. The next day, when I made some more, it tasted more like cocoa, but the finish remained mildly bitter and cleansing.
As with goods sold by just about any tiny new operation, cost is going to be a barrier for all but the nerdiest, most dedicated customers. The 8-ounce (250g) package I bought was $16. When compared to some of the better single origin offerings from larger outfits from Great Lakes to Intelligentsia to Counter Culture, that’s an awfully steep price.
Still, the coffee was good, and that’s ultimately what matters most. And it’s made here, part of this ongoing influx – no, I mean EXPLOSION – of delicious, interesting coffees. They’re also currently selling another Kenyan, a peaberry from the same farm/co-op, which I haven’t tried yet.
If you want to buy some, I’d check out Comet in Ann Arbor or just head to the Anthology website, where it appears their first two coffees are available for purchase.
Serious as a Cart Attack: A Look at Mark’s Carts
Delicious food has been available from mobile eateries for a while now in Michigan, and Detroit has long had its share of taco trucks. But ask anyone who’s had a little dumpling filled with fresh octopus or a bowl of impossibly good vegan stew from a cart no larger than a large hatchback automobile: There’s more to the current nationwide food cart trend than well-prepared Mexican snacks.
Japanese. Spanish. Vegan. Pork. Korean. Burgers. Brisket. Fish and chips. Every cuisine has a cart somewhere in the U.S. — a little restaurant with no building, low overhead, and plenty of hungry customers. All of this is true of Mark’s Carts in Ann Arbor, which opened earlier this month.
Standalone carts have been common elsewhere for a long time, and the concept of a place that serves cheap, crave-worthy food curbside is an inspiringly simple brand of genius.
But why stop there? Portland has been bragging about its diverse, courtyard-style approach for a few years now. I’ve seen the concept at work in Austin, and now it’s in Ann Arbor, satiating that quintessential American desire for choice.
Each of the carts has its own focus, and there are over a half dozen options. I would have written about Mark’s at opening, but given the variety, there’s simply too much food to sample for a single visit.
Among my first selections was a “headcheese hoagie” from the Humble Hogs cart. The proprietor is Keith Ewing, recently back in Ann Arbor from Houston. As I discovered in a brief conversation with him, he’s obsessed with pigs – history, farming, culinary uses, and everything in between. His passion is evident in his use of pasture raised animals and in the sheer deliciousness of the rich heritage pork in the hoagie, which is less a sandwich than a pile of moist, loose headcheese on a single piece of Zingerman’s Pullman Toast and slathered in onions and peppers. It’s an expensive plate for $6, but it’s delicious, the pigs are sourced well, and speaking from experience, it’s much more filling than it appears at first glance.
Taking a notably less carnivorous approach is The Lunch Room, a larger, well-organized vegan operation. Where Humble Hogs’ staff stands next to a pushcart barely larger than a beer cooler, the Lunch Room duo is tucked inside a small wooden hut that happens to have wheels, nicely outfitted and smartly covered in interchangeable menus, literature, and ads for branded goods like shirts and buttons.
On one trip, I ate the BBQ tofu sandwich, served on a whole grain bun, which was tasty but not as delectable as it looked. I found myself thinking, “This tastes pretty good for something so healthy” rather than “This tastes so damn good I’d beat that old man next to me to get the last one.” Still, I’m not a vegan, and I’d certainly eat that sandwich again, perhaps even aspiring to that level of quality in my own experiments with vegan cooking. Their slaw is also quite tasty, priced as a combo with the tofu at $5. And one can add a very well-made (and never cloying) cookie for only a dollar or a smoothie for only a few. Suck on that, McDonald’s Value Menu.
Immediately next to The Lunch Room is one of the newest additions to Mark’s Carts, an Asian-themed eatery called San Street tied to the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. If you’re not familiar, Zingerman’s empowers its staff with viable, interesting business ideas to leverage the Zingerman’s name and to work with them to create these new companies based on their passions. In this case, said passion is Asian street food.
Their weekly offerings will change, according to the proprietors, but the other week, they were serving up pork buns, a la David Chang. The pork belly is tender but crispy on the outside, and it’s wrapped inside a nicely prepared steamed bun with sweet-and-sour pickles, some sort of relish, and optional siracha. Each sells for $4, so as with Humble Hogs, patrons are paying for the quality (and, let’s be honest, the omnipresent Ann Arbor mark-up), but I’ll certainly be back to try their other buns.
Interestingly, both San Street and The Lunch Room conduct all their business from iPads, using a small attachment to the top of the device to run credit cards and process all their transactions. While cash is handy (and, I would imagine, appreciated), it’s hardly necessary.
Visitors may also head to the far back to stand in some of the longer lines (thus far, at least) to eat from Darcy’s Cart, which seems to be doing a fair amount of business with its traditional cart fare: meat and kimchi tacos. But they also sell a breakfast burrito and a host of other options, each using local ingredients.
In fact, many of the carts, including Darcy’s, publish a list of their local food sources. Among some of the names one might see on any given day are Zingerman’s, Calder’s, Black Oak Farms, and The Brinery.
Another outfit with a similar approach is Debajo del Sol, for which the flagship menu item is paella. They describe their menu as tapas, and that’s somewhat accurate in terms of the small plates and heavy Spanish influence, though I don’t think anyone would mistake their smoky chorizo corn dogs for traditional tapas. Hand-ground and hand-seasoned, the chorizo is definitely a treat, and the corn dog batter is exceptionally rich. One crunchy, fluffy bite will leave your lips coated in grease.
The other cart at which I’ve had a chance to sample is Eat, which has been a staple of the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market in Kerrytown for some time. They’ve recently been preparing their classic pork and beef sandwiches, the latter of which is covered in Brinery kimchi, though the lamb “Sloppy Joe” with aggressive spicing – I want to say North African flavors – was a new treat to me.
The Mark’s Carts model isn’t without its flaws – namely higher prices than similar ventures I’ve seen in New York or Austin and a cramped space without much shade from Michigan summer heat, let alone the snowy eventuality of winter.
Shutting down for the colder months aside, the other problems are hardly insurmountable: Quality and sourcing of the food is justification enough for the extra cost. Why not pay $9 for three small, healthy, interesting items instead of paying $7 for a plate of frozen french fries and a mediocre Reuben? And the mediocre environs are only a problem when it’s exceptionally crowded or hot, and neither people nor the summer sun makes pork belly taste bad.
On the whole, it’s definitely a success. And as much as I think many people would have predicted a positive outcome, it’s actually a bit surprising considering the regional history with food carts.
As cited in a recent NPR story about food trucks and carts across the Midwest, Mark’s Carts is one of the few success stories near the Great Lakes. (Of course, not mentioned in the story is the fact that Mark’s also hosts a commercial kitchen next door for food prep, presumably to overcome the requirements of local laws.) Chicago has a twenty-year-old law that forbids the production of food on trucks. Even hot dog stands are subject to the rule. And Detroiters are certainly familiar with the battles fought by mobile and community eateries like Pink FlaminGO and Neighborhood Noodle in order to get their operations running within the confines of the city’s regulations.
Still, this was inevitable in Michigan. Like sushi a couple decades ago or natural wine over the last five years or craft cocktails this year, it’s one of those fashionable concepts that apparently takes a while to permeate our heartland sensibilities.
Indeed, trends tend to reach the Midwest pretty late. Overlaid on a map, any food trend might look a bit like an epidemic sweeping down the well-travelled, heavily populated coasts before converging inward, like a big national race to Dubuque.
Some people think these food fashions die out over time, but that’s never really true. The hype is what dies while the food lingers in our local cultures in its own way. The best trends – sushi, craft beer, good coffee, cocktail bars – all continue past the initial shock and awe inherent to their newness.
So it will be with high end food carts – at least if the early success of Mark’s Carts is any indication.
Les Giroflees
Five or so years ago, I was sitting on a gravel patio in Royal Oak with a group of friends when Putnam walked up with a long, slender bottle of sweet, orange wine. At first, I was appalled: It tasted a little like NutriSweet. Then he presented a fresher example, and in going back and forth between the two, I discovered how the fruit and floral qualities in the latter changed to what was in the former, and they both became beautiful.
The wine was Les Giroflées, a rose produced from the pineau d’aunis grape by Eric Nicolas of Domaine de Bellevue, and it’s been a favorite ever since. In the past few years, though, it’s had one major flaw: Nicolas hasn’t been making the damn stuff.
Enter: the 2009 vintage. Only a few cases made it to the US; only a few of those made it to Michigan; half of one has made it to my house; and one of those bottles is sitting in front of me, open. Santa came a few weeks early this year.
Aromatically, it has the round, softness of an elegant chenin blanc, but it’s tinted with strawberry. It’s a soft, fleshy wine with fruit that just explodes on the palate. I realize now that what I took as NutriSweet initially is an unusual, unique interaction between ripe strawberry flavor and the typical minerality one finds in many Loire Valley wines. That aroma and sensation of freshly broken stone is the same sharp quality I get in artificial sweeteners, but over the course of really falling in love with this wine, those grew distinct. I don’t recall this wine historically having as pronounced a bitter quality — almost like unripe fruit — at the finish, but it’s there just a bit, which nicely offsets that off-dry sweetness that I love so much. There are also some pleasantly tart undertones that linger on the finish after the bottle’s been open an hour or so and warmed up. Very pleasant wine.
I got my bottle of this little treasure, which weighs in at 13.5% abv, at Everyday Wine in Ann Arbor.
The C in OCD Stands for Coffee
Friends of mine know that I have a tendency to get more than a little obsessive about my beverages. After a few months of drinking piss poor beer and whiskey (and a resulting bout of stomach sickness), I swore that alcohol would never again pass through my lips. Then I had a decent bottle of beer in the form of Hacker-Pschorr Dunkel Weisse, and four years later I had a collection of 1,000 unique beer bottles and about 1,500 different beers on my drinker’s resume.
Then came wine. Then tea. Then cocktails.
And now coffee.
My previously chronicled adventures with coffee drew some laughs from friends and colleagues, but I’ve started to really embrace the stuff. More importantly, I’ve finally had some truly bad coffee to really put all the great stuff I’ve had into proper perspective.
On a recent trip to Stratford, Ontario, I had coffee at two of the little cafes — two of the only options not serving mass market stuff and one of which was “fair trade” — and in both cases, I was thoroughly underwhelmed. The espresso at the one place was thin and lacking any flavor beyond that of burnt cardboard, and the drip at the other place was OK, but it was again thin in body and lacking much flavor beyond bitterness. While I’ve never had coffee from Blue Bottle or many of the other great American outlets, I’ve definitely come to realize that I’m spoiled with my three most common coffee options: Great Lakes (at home), Intelligentsia (Lab Cafe in Ann Arbor), and Ritual/49th Parallel (Comet Coffee in Ann Arbor).
Some recent thoughts:
- James at Great Lakes roasts my two favorite coffees, period. And I’m not just saying that because he knows where I live and/or because he could easily spike my beer. One is an Ethiopian that I understand comes from Amaro Gayo, which draws plenty of internet praise in and of itself. The other was a particular Kenyan microlot of a peaberry coffee. The thing I find remarkable about both of these coffees is how much the non-bitter flavors dominate while remaining entirely balanced. The Ethiopian screams blueberry, blackberry, and black currant; and the Kenyan had a wonderfully acidic quality that popped out from behind some cherry and peach skin. Amazing stuff.
- Lab in A2, which I’ve blogged about before and which continues to be my “go to” option when I’m not at home, serves exclusively Intelligentsia coffees, and while I can’t speak to the espresso (yet), their single origin pour overs are all great. This morning, I had a coffee from the Homecho Waeno cooperative in Ethiopia. The roaster describes a lot of light, citrus, floral notes, but I just don’t get it. To me, I taste chocolate, spice, and bitterness. Nevertheless, it’s a delicious drink, but it feels more masculine — for lack of a better word — than I get when reading the notes from the company. And more importantly, especially in the context of my next bulletpoint, it was served to me by Emily, who is always smiling and polite (and if it weren’t served by Emily, it would have been served by Toby or Dusty or any of the other great folks who are talkative and inviting).
- Last week, I went back to Comet Coffee after a few weeks away. After my bad experience in Canada, I figured I’d give it another shot. Previously, I’d been less than thrilled with that particular venue for two reasons: (1) Their pour over coffee is so dark, I usually can’t taste much nuance, and (2) More than half the people who work the counter are jerks. I’ve seen the uber-hipster staff audibly sigh at people (or even chastise them for) asking about outlets for laptops, and I’ve had the staff virtually ignore me while half-assedly completing my transaction so that they can rap with each other about some new product they’re drinking. (I’m only barely holding it against them that they’ve screwed up my order in the past after I waited for people behind me in line to get their correct orders.) Staffing issues aside, the Kiangol AA Kenyan coffee I had the other day from the Rungero Farmers Cooperative Society was solid. Full bodied, it had the gravitas lacking in the cups I drank in Ontario. But it lacked the finesse of James’ coffees or anything I’ve ever had at Lab. They described “sparkling acidity” on their menu, but it weighed on my tongue and was something of a chore to drink. Admittedly, I’m a coffee novice, but if it’s that much effort for a “newbie” to get into it beyond the caffeine fix, color me disappointed.
If all goes well — read: if I don’t have a hangover — I’ll be headed to Eastern Market on Saturday morning to load up on more of Great Lakes’ wares. If you’re a Detroiter and haven’t tried it, you owe it to yourself to find James’ most recently roasted stuff and brew it up. Delicious, and definitely worth obsessing over.
Recent Tastes
My wife is gone for a few days, and I miss my in-home drinking companion. It’s no coincidence, I think, that a glass viewed from a heavenly direction looks like a ring. Without her here, I’m forced — forced, dammit! — to drink a full bottle all by my lonesome.
So at this moment, I’m struggling through a 2007 De Montille Bourgogne Rouge. Fans of the wine documentary Mondovino will recognize the family name from one of the film’s larger-than-life figures. However, the vineyard and winemaking duties have since been turned over to Etienne De Montille, the son of the affable, elderly gentleman portrayed not just in the movie but on its promotional posters.
The bourgogne rouge is lighter and far more feminine than the few cru wines I’ve had from De Montille. The nose absolutely reeks of cherry and creme de violette, and on the palate, tart cherry and raspberry dominate. The fruit is never jammy — always playful and natural tasting — and the finish explodes in a wash of lovely acidity that lingers with some minor, funky undertones that really make it sing.
Earlier today, I had my third cup of coffee. Ever. Beyond the look of bewilderment on the faces of several colleagues, great enjoyment has been derived from the eye-opening exploration of what coffee offers. The revelation actually came late last week when I sampled the Kenya Kirimikui single origin from Intelligentsia via Lab Cafe in Ann Arbor. Standing in stark contrast to the Nicaraguan product I’d had (and blogged about) previously, the Kenyan coffee exploded with acidity — absolutely pure lemon and lemongrass flavors just ripping through the mid-palate and finish.
Today’s drink, a Guatemalan coffee delivered to me via the same outlet, was a bit harder for me to understand. The roaster describes the acidity as being akin to that of tropical fruit, and perhaps I simply haven’t learned the lingo, but I thought of it more as chewing on a peach pit. There was fruit there, and the flavor wasn’t nutty, but it had that tannic, fibrous quality one might get from gnawing on a fruit pit a bit too long. It wasn’t distinct enough to scream any real notes to me, but it was so very clearly different from previous drinks that I was at pleased that my reaction wasn’t something like, “Oh, huh… it’s coffee.”
I love everything Lab does, so I’ll be back there this week for one thing or another — it’s unquestionably my favorite spot in all of Ann Arbor right now, as evidenced by my three or four plugs for them in as many weeks — but I may grab my next cup of coffee at Comet Coffee, also in Ann Arbor, just to try something completely different.
I love my hobby. And I think there’s just a splash of that De Montille left. Gotta go.
I’ve Got the Jitters
Today was the day. After a failed attempt at My First Coffee at Abraço in New York’s East Village (they were out of town when I was in town), I decided that I could no longer put off my first foray into coffee. As a longtime tea drinker and someone who has no desire to get hooked on caffeine at age 30, never have I seen the need to get serious about coffee. But what kind of beverage snob can I be if I were to ignore such a rich area of exploration?
So my colleague Rob and I took a 10-minute coffee break — my first ever coffee break in literal terms — and headed down to Lab Cafe where they serve up Intelligentsia coffees. After missing out in New York, I figured my first sampling would be of locally made Great Lakes Coffee with roastmaster and friend James Cadariu, but today just seemed right, and Intelligentsia had come with James’ blessing.
Off we went, and here’s the rest of the story:
2:20pm – I walk into the store with some lingering doubts. Maybe I should stick with a sweet, caloric, filling chai latte. Old faithful. Can’t miss.
2:21pm – Screw that. Let’s do this.
2:22pm – I glance over the list of single origin options. I have no idea what I’m doing here. None at all. But since I’m losing my coffee cherry, I select a Nicaraguan product that allegedly has notes of cherry. (The sophistication of my logic knows no bounds. I can only hope that my palate and caffeine tolerance will match my impressively juvenile wit.)
2:25pm – The barista clearly doesn’t want to interrupt but also clearly wants to help. He chimes in and notes which coffees on the list are missing and mentions some other single origin item. I stay focused and place my order, sticking with a small cup for my first foray into this beverage.
2:33pm – The coffee is just about done. The young man applied a pour over method to my drink, which had previously been articulated to me in a New York Times “T Magazine” article courtesy of James from Great Lakes..
2:40pm – Back at the office. I’ve only had two sips on the way back. I had to get the drink to go, and I wanted to have a chance to really dig my nose into it, which is hard to do while walking. Safely at my desk, I can pull back the lid and really smell this liquid sitting before me.
2:54pm – I’ve decided to quickly catalogue everything that’s happening here. If any HR professionals at my place of employment are reading this, worry not: I haven’t spent more than 4 minutes on this so far. That’s probably pretty obvious to anyone who reads at an 8th grade level.
2:55pm – So that’s what caffeine feels like. It takes dramatically over-brewed tea and a totally empty stomach for me to feel this sort of impact. Still a few sips left. Just what I needed — another beverage in my life that throws my body chemistry out of whack.
By the end of this little experiment here, it’s clear I have a long way to go. Beyond the crazy jitters I’m experiencing, my palate can’t distinguish a lot of the nuance here just yet. I definitely was able to find the cherry fruit in this drink, and the bitterness isn’t any sort of appalling, blackened flavor. It’s more woody and tannic, but I suspect that’s a general flavor that I need to learn to taste through. With deliberation for a moment, I see what Intelligentsia is describing when they say the acidity has a tart, plum quality to it. There’s definitely that sort of hint that one might find in some Belgian beers — a much rounder, less acidic flavor than something more acetic or citric or lactic. Beyond these broad, vague strokes, I’m just getting “coffee.” I can tell it’s good coffee, but I can tell that it’s going to be a long, long while before I really understand things like regional differences and before I have a solid vocabulary from which to forge descriptions of my experiences.
More experimentation is required. Thanks for reading about this entirely self-indulgent adventure. We obviously post cocktail, beer, wine, and tea tasting notes here from time to time, and I suspect that I’ll post more coffee notes as I get a handle on what it is I’m drinking.
Lab: More Eventuality than Experiment
Needing a cup of tea a few weeks back, I hopped into a new cafe in Ann Arbor and quickly sucked down a cup of Bao Zhong. The tea, a light Taiwanese oolong, had a delightful fruit sweetness, enough so that one might have thought it had been dried with flower blossoms. Most other tea-friendly cafes in Ann Arbor either serve their tea in over-stuffed bags or brew their tea so long or so hot as to leech all the bitter tannins into the first cup.
That was my first introduction to Lab Cafe. Today, I decided on a whim to give it a more thoughtful visit.
A “friend” of the cafe standing on my side of the counter — a regular customer or off-hours employee, I’d guess — recommended a zucchini muffin. I asked where it was from, and the gentleman behind the register, Toby, replied that it was from a bakery in Kerrytown affiliated with Sparrow Market. Anticipating my next question, he followed with, “I don’t know exactly what’s in it; they keep it a secret. But it’s really quite good, and we get them fresh every morning.” The long strands of green vegetable protruding from the top indicated he was telling the truth, and the giant orange hunks of carrot embedded in the cake made by the same folks counted as a second “yea” vote in my mind.
The poured me a chai as well, which was spicier than some and less sweet than most. And I asked about the yogurt. He claimed that they made it there every day, “Well except for the milk. We don’t have cows, of course.” Having just had some less-than-natural yogurt at another place in town, I pressed him a bit and he also commented that the yogurt is sweetened only with pure sugar, no syrups or additives. I tried the four flavors — taro, honeydew, chocolate, and original — and all were delicious, especially the taro.
They serve Intelligentsia coffee, which had previously been favorably described to me by Gourmet Underground member and Great Lakes Coffee roastmaster, James Cadariu. I’m not a coffee drinker, so I can’t comment yet as to the quality of their work, but if the other products are any indication, I’m sure it’s marvelous.
Walking into the cafe is a bit like stepping out of the midwest — very minimalistic industrial design with plywood chairs, bright green accents, white countertops, and short movie clips projected over the wall where the typical Starbucks customer may be looking for a menu. But it’s nonetheless quite warm-feeling. The menus are adorned with instructional clip art (a little outlined French Press for coffee, et cetera) that I’m positive my wife would find adorable, and the floor-to-ceiling windows allow for a ton of natural light.
Coffee, tea, and yogurt cafes ranging from relatively full-service operations like Lab to tiny stands that are little more than closets with self-serve yogurt handles have been a “thing” in a number of cities, especially in places along the California coast, for a while now. So despite the experimental name, Lab is just an extension of that age-old rule that everything reaches the midwest 3-8 years after it hits the coasts.
But regardless, for those of us who work or live in Ann Arbor, it’s a nice mid-day treat, and for other Michiganders looking to occupy a Saturday, Lab might fit nicely into a stroll through the U-M Museum of Art and around the streets of Ann Arbor.
