America’s secret fruit shows up on the Southside
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It was nearly 20 years ago that we started the project to make Paw Paw Gelato at the Creamery. At the time, hardly anyone in Ann Arbor knew this old American fruit. Today, I’m happy to say, paw paws are getting more and more popular! I’ve seen them in half a dozen shops around town. And we now have a good number of fans waiting for our annual autumn release of this super tasty gelato. I’m happy for paw paw’s increasing popularity. It’s the kind of traditional, delicious food with a great story that we love to work with. In the context of what I wrote last week about awe and wonder, the paw paw is pretty much a perfect example of the wealth of wonder-ful foods and drinks we get to work with every day.
Once upon a time, paw paws were very popular and far easier to find around these parts. Native to North America, they have been known historically by a range of wonderful monikers: Prairie Banana, Hoosier Banana, Indiana Banana, Poor Man’s Banana, Quaker Delight, and Hillbilly Mango. Paw paw trees are about 10 to 20 feet in height with long dark green, sort of droopy-eared leaves and the largest edible fruit that grows in North America. They look a bit like a mango, but with pear green-colored flesh. The fruits are ripe when their skin gets a bit darker and the perfume is more pronounced. One reason that paw paws pretty much disappeared is that, like many great heirloom varieties, it’s hard to grow, has a very low yield, and the fruit one does get requires a lot of handwork to process. Thanks to a couple of local farmers and the Creamery crew, the rest of us can just stick our spoon in and enjoy the fruits of their labor!
Even after a decade of doing this special gelato annually, most folks we encounter are still unfamiliar with this fruit. That said, it has slowly but surely built ever more fans! One of them is Roadhouse bartender Cori Scharmin: “It’s so freaking good! It tastes like a tropical fruit but it’s from here in Michigan. A little mango and it’s really banana-y. It’s really good and really different! I love it!” To my taste, the Paw Paw Gelato is slightly citrusy, kind of custardy, a bit like passion fruit and Cherimoya with a little hint of lime, a touch of vanilla, papaya, and ripe pear. Serious Eats said it’s “a riot of mango-banana-citrus that’s incongruous with its temperate, deciduous forest origins.”
You can get the Paw Paw Gelato at the Cream Top Shop (by the Bakehouse on Plaza Drive), the Roadhouse, and the Deli. Better still, ship some gelato to your cousin in California where paw paws will be an unknown culinary delight. Ask for a taste for sure next time you see us! Pairs beautifully with the Gingerbread Coffee Cake as well!
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| P.S. The city of Paw Paw, Michigan is named for the fruit. It’s also the place where Malinda Russell was living when she authored A Domestic Cook Book back in 1866. It was the first such book published by a Black woman. Russell is featured in Patrick-Earl Barnes’ “Blacks in Culinary” art piece at the Roadhouse and is also featured in the center of the terrific t-shirt we made from Patrick-Earl’s piece—I get many compliments on it every time I wear it! Proceeds from the shirt go to the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County. |
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A Beginner’s Guide
Have you ever pulled up to Zingerman’s Roadhouse and wondered what the silver tea-pot-looking thing is in the front? That’s Zingerman’s Roadshow! It was established in 2004 as the to-go destination for Zingerman’s Roadhouse. The silver 1952 vintage Spartan trailer attached to the front of the Roadhouse today is a destination for drive-through Zingerman’s fans. Would we be Zingerman’s if we did not serve our guests their latte and croissant in style?
The Roadshow has come a long way over the years, and some are new to its charms, so here is a beginner’s guide to Zingerman’s Roadshow. Come along as we walk you through some insider tips, fun facts, and the best ways you can fully take advantage of what Zingerman’s Roadshow has to offer.
Check out the menu online before arriving
The first tip of the beginner’s guide to Zingerman’s Roadshow is that we highly recommend looking at the menu before arriving to maximize your experience. The Roadshow, not your typical drive through, with a menu board and loudspeaker, offers the convenience of enjoying high quality artisan food from the comfort of your car and on-the-go. It would be best to call ahead, pre-order, then pick up your order at the drive through. This will save you time and let you enjoy great food with little to no waiting time upon arrival.
No worries though if you are unable to call ahead to place an order. If you want a quick coffee and snack, then ordering right at the window of the Roadshow works great as well! Walk up guests can order from the Roadhouse Express menu. Did you know there are two menus to choose from at the Roadshow? There is the Roadshow and Roadhouse Express menu that can be found in one place. Check out the express menu here. That leads us to our next point, the menu.
Which menu should I order from?
The Roadshow menu items are prepared more quickly in the Roadshow itself, and are for our guests who want a quick bite. Guests who are using our drive through may wish to order from the Roadshow menu. The Roadshow also offers the Roadhouse Express menu, which includes items from the main-in-house menu that can be prepared in a shorter amount of time. Food from this menu will be served to you in 30 minutes or less. Guests who order from our walk-up window, who wish to dine in the Roadhouse Park, or who would like to order from the Roadhouse menu but do not want to wait too long may wish to order from the Roadhouse Express menu.
What to do when you arrive to the Roadshow
Now that you know all the amazing and tasty food options available, what do you do when you first arrive at Zingerman’s Roadshow? At the Roadshow, you are guaranteed to receive personalized and friendly service. For your convenience, there is no need to get out of your vehicle. When you arrive at the Roadhouse, just pull around to the Zingerman’s Roadshow. Staff will come out to your window and take your order.
You can expect your food to arrive in between five and six minutes when ordering a quick bite. If there is a need for a longer time, guests can pull into designated parking spots and receive their food in 30 minutes or less. Right across the parking lot there is the Roadhouse Park. Even though full service from the Roadhouse is not offered at the Park, it is the perfect way to have an office day to just work and relax in a pleasant atmosphere with delicious food. With the warmer weather, you can order to-go and enjoy your meal outside. After placing your to-go order from the Roadshow walk-up window, our staff will bring your order out to you in the Park when it is ready.
Breakfast Options at the Roadshow
The Roadshow is open at 7am seven days a week. The Roadshow breakfast menu is served from 7am to 11am daily. If you arrive for the Roadshow breakfast, there are plenty of to-go options. Their famous breakfast burrito, the Diez y Uno, is a menu item that you will be sure to love. It is made to order with farm fresh eggs, green chiles, Nueske’s applewood smoked bacon, and Ig Vella’s Monterey Jack cheese, all wrapped in a tortilla. Did you know that the Roadshow sells about 1000 burritos per month? It is safe to say, the breakfast burrito is a must-try when you visit the Roadshow for breakfast. Never be afraid to order extra bacon as well! In need of breakfast for your little one? No problem. Your kiddo can dig into the Kid’s Breakfast Burrito, just a smaller version of the Die z y Uno without the chiles. Perfect for those smaller appetites!
Another popular option is the Smoked Salmon Bagel, layered with hand-ladled Zingerman’s Creamery cream cheese, smoked salmon, and your choice of healthy toppings, such as capers, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, and onion. All served on a toasted bagel of your choice.
If you are in need of a speedy snack to kick start your day, snag some of the Breakfast Noshers, such as toast from the Roadshow. Feast on artisanal bread from Zingerman’s Bakehouse baked fresh every morning and toasted to perfection, spread with farm butter or with organic peanut butter. The Roadshow can make toast from any kind of specialty Bakehouse bread available that day, just ask about our offerings!
The breakfast pastries are sure to not disappoint. Enjoy a large assortment of Zingerman’s Bakehouse pastries made fresh and ready to serve every morning to you with a smile. Find your favorite from our extensive list of Croissants, Cinnamon Rolls, Scones, and more! Fun fact, at 5pm, these delicious pastries are 50% off. Who can say no to that?
You can also indulge in the hand-made coffee cakes made with love by Zingerman’s Bakehouse. These coffee cakes can be enjoyed by the slice or grab a whole one for the road. Sour Cream, Hot Cocoa, Lemon Poppyseed, and a special seasonal flavor are all options you can choose from.
The Breakfast Sammie, made with farm-fresh scrambled eggs, Nueske’s applewood smoked bacon, and melted Cabot cheddar cheese served on either toast, a brioche bun, or freshly baked butter croissant, is another delicious breakfast option.
It gets even better! Quench your thirst with a wide selection of beverages such as a classic cappuccino or latté, Rhode Island Coffee Milk, or fresh-squeezed orange juice and lemonade. Prefer your coffee drink flavored? We make all our syrups in house! The Roadshow uses espresso and coffee exclusively from Zingerman’s Coffee Company.
Guests can create their own drink as well. All staff have gone through Zingerman’s Coffee Company training, how to pull and serve espresso, and how to taste the coffee and rate it so you can be sure your coffee will taste great!
Lunch and Dinner Options at the Roadshow
Enjoying all the yummy breakfast options? Let’s dive into the lunch and dinner menu. Served from 11am until close at 9pm, there are lots of delicious options such as the house-made Tuna Melt using line-caught tuna salad, melted with Chalet Swiss cheese, served on toasted Bakehouse sourdough bread.
Need something hearty but quick? Our Sea Island Sweet Potato Fries, made with sweet potatoes hand-cut and twice cooked served with house-made spicy mayonnaise, is a popular option. Did you know we can make them gluten-free? The Roadhouse Garden Salad, a refreshing healthy option, made with organic mixed greens, topped with cucumbers, carrots, and house-made salt-and-pepper croutons, with your choice of dressing on the side.
The Roadhouse Macaroni & Cheese is a huge favorite as well, available on the Express Menu. House-made béchamel sauce and lots of Cabot cheddar cheese caramelized with Mancini pasta. You can never go wrong with this cheesy goodness.
A BBQ Pork Sandwich, pit-smoked pork dressed with Eastern North Carolina BBQ sauce on a brioche bun with yellow mustard coleslaw, or a Turkey Cucumber Wrap made with Sy Ginsberg’s sliced turkey breast, sliced cucumber, lettuce, and house-made ranch dressing wrapped up in a flour tortilla, are all wonderful options that can be made to order from the drive through window of the Roadshow.
Who knew delicious food like a Carolina Gold Rice Bowl, made with Anson Mills’ Carolina Gold rice topped with the Roadhouse pit-smoked pork, tasty Millican Texas pecans, seasonal pickled veggies, fresh avocado slices, and garnished with the famous Roadhouse Red Rage BBQ sauce, can be ordered on-the-go?
How to stay connected
Hopefully, this guide to Zingerman’s Roadshow will help you navigate the to-go destination for the Roadhouse. Our rule of thumb, if you want a main meal, dine at the Roadhouse. If you are looking for a quick coffee and snack, then you can order right at the window of the Roadshow.
Stay up to date with all things Roadhouse and Roadshow by subscribing to the newsletter. See you soon at Zingerman’s Roadshow!
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 Super-tasty Zingerman’s synergy by the spoonful!
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In the interest of organizational health and well-being, I’m almost always thinking of win-win ways to bring together different parts of our diverse organization. I’m not sure who actually first thought of this one, but I love it! What if you take the Bakehouse award-winning, nationally renowned, Sour Cream Coffee Cake (featured on the cover of Zingerman’s Bakehouse!) and then blend it into really great gelato from the Creamery. What a wonderfully tasty way to sweeten up your day!
Thirty-something years ago, I remember we mixed the batter for the very first Zingerman’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake in the tiny prep kitchen in the basement of the Deli. Then, and now, it’s made with lots of butter, sour cream, Indonesian Korintje cinnamon, fresh eggs, toasted walnuts, and really good real vanilla. All these years later, the Bakehouse bakes thousands of them a year and Mail Order ships a literal ton. The Deli, Roadhouse, and Coffee Company sell a fair few, and we wholesale them to dozens of other pastry-loving cafés and retailers.
The coffeecake has long been one of those products that lots of people seem to love. Kids love it, pastry chefs love it. All age groups, religions, races, and political persuasions are apparently agreed on its excellence. Not only that, but it can be eaten happily any time of the day—with a cup of coffee or tea for breakfast, as a snack, for dessert after lunch, or dinner. If you’re looking to bring a gift to someone’s house or ship something from Zingerman’s to someone you love or look up to, the Sour Cream Coffee Cake could well be a wonderful option.
Here, Lexi Stand and the lovely crew at the Creamery have created a super-tasty, cinnamon-scented, coffee cake-laden gelato that you can eat by the spoonful after dinner! Ask for a taste next time you’re in! It’s the perfect way to have your cake, eat it, and your gelato too! Sip a cup of Tree Town Blend and savor a spoonful of this delightful dessert! Or do as Jenny Tubbs of Zingerman’s Press does—pop a scoop of the gelato atop a bowl of artisan oatmeal! It’s shockingly good! The Sour Cream Coffee Cake Gelato is at the Creamery’s Cream Top Shop. |
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Great summer vegetarian supper at the Roadhouse
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This summer special features some lovely local produce and the world-class, historically-significant, organic Carolina Gold Rice we get from Anson Mills down in South Carolina.
The main feature of the dish is the organic local Lion’s Mane mushrooms we’ve been getting from the fine folks at Stoney Creek Mushrooms. When the local Lion’s Mane come in, they’re huge—about the size of a head of cauliflower! The flavor is earthy, delicate, and delicious. The rice is less visually striking but no less delicious! It dates to the 17th century when it came to the Carolina coast from West Africa where it had been widely and skillfully grown for centuries. Carolina Gold (the name comes from its color when it’s still in the husk, in the field, shimmering in the sun) is the rice that made so many South Carolina planters wealthy, wealth that of course came via the unpaid labor of enslaved Africans.
West Africans were the tech minds that made the rice growing work. After Emancipation in 1863, the low yield/high labor of Carolina Gold, like most heirlooms, made it less appealing to farmers looking to make money and by 1920 it had completely disappeared from commercial sale. Seeds were found in a seed bank in Arkansas in 2000 and thanks to the folks at Anson Mills and a handful of others, it’s made a comeback. What we get from Anson Mills is field ripened (to bring out the rice’s natural full flavor), milled only when we order it to retain full flavor, and the germ (brush up on your grain anatomy here) is left in which a) makes it a perishable product and b) significantly enhances the flavor.
The crowning touch on the dish is the pesto. It starts with some beautiful, exceptionally aromatic, organic basil that’s coming in from a series of local farms, most particularly Tantré Farm in Chelsea and Tamchop Farm in Dexter. We take the fresh basil leaves and turn them into a pesto in the Roadhouse kitchen with olive oil, fresh garlic, Parmesan from Wisconsin, pine nuts, and a bit of Tellicherry pepper. The dish comes together beautifully—the gentle nuttiness of the rice, the herbal brightness of the pesto, and the delicate earthiness of the Lion’s Mane mushrooms. Swing by for lunch or dinner! |
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P.S. If you’re dining on a Tuesday, the Roadhouse offers any bottle of the 36 artisan American wines on its list at 30% off (this offer is extended every day for take-out orders!). The majority of the wines on the list are made by winemakers or wineries led by women or folks from underrepresented minorities—a great way to make diversity come alive in a practical and very tasty way!
P.P.S. We’ll be paying particular tribute to traditional African American foodways at the special dinner at the Roadhouse on Tuesday, September 12th. My friend, author and historian Adrian Miller will be the guest speaker and the event will be used to raise funds for NEW Center!
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Sign up for Ari’s Top 5 e-newsletter and look forward to his weekly curated email—a roundup of 5 Zing things Ari is excited about this week—stuff you might not have heard of!
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Great, weekday meal for barbecue lovers
If Fried Chicken is the superstar singer on the poultry part of the Roadhouse menu, the Pit-Smoked Chickens would probably be the bass player. They’re happily in the background, grounded, steady, and really really good at what they do. And while that Fried Chicken is really really fantastic, I’ll offer that I eat far more of the Pit-Smoked Chicken. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite products in the ZCoB!
If it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, give some thought to swinging by and picking up one of these exceptional oak-smoked chickens from the Roadhouse. I can say from a LOT of personal experience that they make an exceptional evening meal! A whole Amish chicken, rubbed with our freshly ground, farm-to-table Tellicherry black pepper and salt, put on the pit to smoke slowly over smoldering whole oak logs for about three or four hours. We’ve had them on the carryout menu for the last few years, during which time they’ve been a very regular item at our house.
All you need to do is call ahead to order one, then swing by the Roadhouse and pick it up. (You can also just come by, but we’re only doing a limited number of these every day so … if it were me, I’d order ahead to make sure I got one.) The Roadhouse crew puts a bit of butter atop the bird, then wraps it really well in foil so you can get it home in good shape. Best bet, I think, is just to unwrap and eat. If you want to heat it up, either stick it in a hot (350° F) oven in the foil for a bit, or you can microwave it (after you take it out of the foil!) for a few minutes if you want to go more quickly. Since Tammie and I eat dinner late at night, we did the latter, and it worked out just fine.
The big news here though is that you can now get the Pit-Smoked Chickens inside the restaurant for dinner. We’re still on that same limited-times and limited-days schedule—Monday through Thursday, dinner only, and, when we’re out we’re out. The beautiful oak-smoked, Tellicherry black pepper-dusted bird comes plated with side dishes that make it a great dinner and a great deal! Start out by snacking on a glass of those incredible single-origin peanuts we’ve been getting from Elisha Barnes in Virginia and a small salad. Finish the evening off with a scoop of that Roadhouse Joe-lato!
If you have leftovers, I’ll share that they’re awesome for adding to soup or salad, making into smoked chicken salad, or just nibbling on out of the fridge when you need a snack. Tammie and I take the bones that are left behind and boil them with an array of vegetables to make a magically terrific broth. (When we serve it, we drop on a spoonful of that IASA peperoncino!)
Once again, the Roadhouse only smokes a limited number of these pit-smoked whole chickens Monday through Thursday. They come out in time for dinner and it can’t hurt to order ahead and have us hold one for you. It’s hard to believe a chicken could be life-changing but this might be it.
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