Polish comfort food with a fungi-focused twist!

Looking for a remarkably delicious, warming, and wonderful bit of comfort food, one that will help you confront the newly cooler temps around town? Swing by the Roadhouse in the next couple of weeks and order up some of the remarkably good potato pierogi that are on the menu!

The autumn rendition of this traditional Polish dish is covered with sauteed Michigan mushrooms and the requisite side of sour cream. The dish is finished in the pan with a good bit of that delicious Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter that we’re all (rightly) raving about. The crowning detail is the beyond-terrific Chicken-Fried Mushroom that sits atop the bowl. It’s a big, beautiful, Maitake mushroom from Michigan’s “thumb”—for those of you who aren’t familiar, that’s the part of the state that sticks out to the east on the Michigan “mitten.” As the name suggests, we prepare the mushroom just like our fried chicken. It’s got that same delicious, softly spicy crunch. The plentiful ridges on Maitake make them especially good for deep frying. These marvelous mushrooms are on the menu without the pierogi, too—as an entrée and a sandwich. If you ask, we can sometimes make them as a side with another entrée, too. They are, by far, one of my favorite things on the menu!

To prepare the platter, we lightly pan-cook the pierogi in butter so the dough on the outside gets to a beautiful golden brown. The browning creates the perfect foil for the soft, creamy potato filling. You get the creaminess of the potato filling, the lightly caramelized dough of the pierogi themselves, the earthiness of the sautéed mushrooms, the smoothness of the sour cream, and then the spicy crunch of the Chicken-Fried Mushroom on top!

Pierogi are, of course, a big part of the culinary tradition of Polish immigrants who came to the U.S. most prominently in the 19th and 20th centuries. Polish settlers started arriving in the North American colonies far sooner, some as early as the late 16th century. Two of the early immigrants, Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, led Revolutionary War armies. Michigan has the third-largest Polish population in the U.S. (after Illinois and New York), so it’s only fitting that we fit this terrific platter onto the specials list. The pierogi we serve at the Roadhouse are handcrafted by a third-generation family business in Hamtramck, the center of Polish life in Michigan. In Polish, pierogi refers to just what it is—a stuffed dumpling. A bit of trivia: The word pierogi is linguistically connected to the Ukrainian pyrizhky and the Russian pirozhki, and it’s plural—one would be a pierog. The linguistic root in Old Slavic is piru, which means “feast,” and that’s exactly how I think of this platter. Many groups of visitors have been ordering a plate of pierogi to share as an appetizer.

This pierogi dish is terrific for lunch or dinner. Additionally, it’s a great meatless meal—ideal for vegetarians. We can make a vegan version for you by using olive oil to cook the pierogi and sautée the mushrooms. Comforting, delicious, and a taste of Polish-American tradition!

Reserve your table

Apricot cocktails from Paris in the ’30s to the Roadhouse

What do you get when you shake up a good amount of Zingerman’s Roadhouse Bourbon (specially blended for us by Highline Spirits), some housemade dried-apricot infused vodka, the dark artichoke overtones of Cynar, and a small bit of Vya Sweet Vermouth to balance out the bitter? If you swing by the Roadhouse this month, you can find out. This cocktail is called a Montparnasse Manhattan. It features amazing flavors, a fascinating foot in history, and a symbolic but still significant connection to dignity and democracy!

The Montparnasse Manhattan is an outgrowth of a phrase I have often said to myself in recent months, “It’s a small thing, but it’s something.” It’s part of an effort to help make apricots into a meaningful symbol for dignity and democracy. As per everything I wrote above, I sometimes feel self-doubt starting to drive me into inaction, but I have managed to push forward in the belief that something meaningful would come from it. Apricot t-shirts went up online last week, and proceeds go to Democracy Now! As I wrote last week, the Anarchist Apricot Toast is on the special menu at the Coffee Company all month! And thanks to bartender Kat Franko, we have this amazing apricot cocktail on hand at the Roadhouse.

The cocktail, as is true for most of our food and drink, is rooted in history. My early research on apricots turned up the true story of the persistent and positive presence of apricot cocktails in the storied conversations of some of the 20th century’s most famous philosophers. Existentialist anti-Fascists in the 1930s had a proclivity for consuming apricot-based cocktails. In a sense, the subtitle of Sarah Blakewell’s 2016 At the Existentialist Café sums up this entire essay with a surprising succinctness: “Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails.” It turns out, much to my surprise, that while autocracy was on the rise in Germany, a whole range of French philosophers—most prominently Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre—were gathering in Parisian cafes and sipping, more often than not, on apricot cocktails. The headnotes for the book’s opening chapter illustrate metaphorically what I’ve been imagining in recent weeks. Creating the kind of community in which people (metaphorically, at least) “drink apricot cocktails, more people stay up late talking about freedom, and even more people change their lives.”

In the spirit of this week’s opening essay, de Beauvoir shares in the preface to her autobiography that she began writing this book when she was in her teens, really with no intention of ever finishing it or putting it into print. Forty-five years later, she finished and published it. The Prime of Life came out 60 years ago, in 1965. In it, she writes extensively about her own work, and also about her storied relationship with fellow philosphe Jean-Paul Sartre in Paris. Beginning in 1929, when de Beauvoir was only in her early 20s, the two began to spend more and more time together, enjoying life, and working out the philosophical framing that would shape their lives, with the shadow of authoritarianism on the rise in neighboring Germany. De Beauvoir writes:

We ate bread and foie gras Marie [which you can see featured in this beautiful 1931 poster by the most famous poster artist of the era, Leonetto Cappiello] in my room, or had dinner at the Brasserie Demery … we did not feel deprived of anything. In the evening, we would look in at the Falstaff or the College Inn and drink our cocktails like connoisseurs—Bronxes, Sidecars, Bacardis, Alexanders, Martinis. I had a weakness for two specialities—mead cocktails at the Vikings’ Bar, and apricot cocktails at the Bec de Gaz on the Rue Montparnasse.

The role of the apricot cocktail in their lives had only just begun, though. It became famous in the annals of philosophical history in 1932, when philosopher Raymond Aron returned from a year in Berlin studying Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy:

We spent an evening together at the Bec de Gaz in the Rue Montparnasse. We ordered the speciality of the house, apricot cocktails; Aron said, pointing to his glass, ‘You see, my dear fellow, if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!’

All these years later, we have picked up Aron’s challenge. I’m not sure the work with apricot cocktails and their symbolic connection to dignity and democracy would fully fit Raymond Aron’s phenomenological frame, but at least they’re a start. (If you’d like, you can read more about the roots of this apricotian ideology.) The cocktail tastes great. Kat Franko describes its deliciousness as:

Honeyed apricots, a little smoke, and a nice bite from the bourbon. … We’re infusing a local Ann Arbor vodka with California apricots to make cocktails akin to what was sipped by French philosophers in Paris cafes in the 1930s, adding our own chapter to history and donating one dollar from each cocktail to Democracy Now! So that democracy might spread as far as the small, sweet orange fruit we’re so obsessed with.

Swing by, sip, convene with a couple of friends, and talk about what dignity and freedom might mean. Enjoy the day and drink a toast to what matters most to you and yours.

Make a reservation at the Roadhouse

One more week to score some of these super-tasty appetizers

Hush Puppies are one of those Southern classics most folks have heard of, but not many around here have actually tried—and even fewer have had a truly great one. All of which inspired me to write about them here. You’ve got one more week to catch these Pimento Cheese Hush Puppies on the Roadhouse specials!

If you aren’t familiar with them, hush puppies are deep-fried balls of cornmeal batter that are typically served alongside everything from ketchup to catfish. The name, legend has it, comes from cooks tossing bits of cornbread dough to their barking dogs to keep them quiet. Whether that story is true or not, they’re an epically Southern tradition. One friend of mine, who has spent years in the South, put it perfectly: “I love hush puppies. They’re comforty, they’re fried, and they taste good—like what you make in big old Southern kitchens.”

Hush puppies here at the Roadhouse start out with exceptionally delicious cornmeal from Anson Mills in South Carolina. Anson Mills raises the old varieties of heirloom corn (low-yield, high flavor), field-dries it (as opposed to the far faster machine drying) to protect its natural flavors, then stone-mills it at very low temperatures—downright cold, actually. They leave in the germ, aka the natural oil in the corn kernel, from whence so much of the flavor comes. All of which is why Anson Mills’ cornmeal really taste like corn, not just fried, slightly sweet dough. To make them even tastier still, in this case, the Roadhouse kitchen crew has mixed in some of our super popular Pimento Cheese, which makes them slightly spicy as well!

Although it doesn’t say it on the menu, the Pimento Cheese Hush Puppies are particularly delicious dipped into some hot bacon fat! The connection to pork fat like that came about courtesy of a very nice couple from South Carolina who stopped in at the Roadhouse one spring evening many years ago with their son and his girlfriend, both students at Michigan. Toward the end of the evening, the father gently inquired if I was up for one suggestion. “Of course!” I answered. “Your hush puppies are really good,” he said in a slightly conspiratorial tone. “But you’re missing one thing that would really put them over the top. You need to put a little bacon fat in them.” Sure enough, the bacon fat takes the already excellent hush puppies to the next level. We don’t add it to the hush puppy mix (to keep them vegetarian), but we can easily serve you some on the side if we have some on hand when you ask. It’s a compelling combo—a little like eating amazing cornbread with applewood-smoked bacon!

I got so jazzed about the Pimento Cheese Hush Puppies and the bacon fat that when I did the first draft of this piece, I almost forgot to mention what is probably for many the highlight on the plate—the Pamlico Bay Crab Cakes that are on an appetizer plate with the hush puppies! They’re terrific! Made with crab caught off the North Carolina Coast by our friends at Locals Seafood, they’re an East Coast classic that most everyone who loves shellfish loves to eat.

We are, of course, always happy to cook up either the hush puppies and/or the crab cakes on their own if that’s where your taste runs! And, although it’s not listed on the menu this way, I’d suggest getting hush puppies as your side for any fish or steak dish, too.

Swing by over the next week and order up!

Make a reservation

Thanks to the folks at Foley Fish for this superfine salmon

It’s one of the rarely talked about realities of the restaurant world. Though few know it, there are BIG differences in the quality—read flavor and texture—of farm-raised salmon. And since, to be clear, there are no wild-caught Atlantic salmon on American restaurant menus right now, that means that there are very significant differences in quality between two items that are each listed on the menu of their respective restaurants simply as “salmon.”

Needless to say, knowing that reality really well, we’ve been determinedly buying fish from the Foley family to broil, grill, and sauté at the Roadhouse every week since we first opened the restaurant’s doors back in September 2003. Then, and now, Foley Fish has been one of the best of the best. As Michael Foley, the grandson of the founder, writes in his history of his family and their now 119-year-old fish business, Swimming Upstream, “We have always had an absolute standard quality, not a relative one. ‘Best available’ or ‘good enough’ have never been good enough.”

Today, the Foley folks are still just as diligent about the quality of their fish, and they’re also at the forefront of promoting sustainability in the seafood world. Foley is as picky about who they sell to as what they sell; I feel honored to be one of their accounts. As Frank Foley, Michael’s dad, who I met many years ago on a visit to Boston, said, “Foley’s gimmick is quality. … Quality comes before everything. It’s the reason why profit is always the bottom line of a profit and loss statement—it comes after quality.”

The Bay of Fundy itself is an amazing place. Off the east coast of Canada, tucked into the Canadian Maritimes between New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the east coast of Maine, it was recently named one of the “Seven Wonders of North America.” Its remarkable tidal range of about 50 feet is the highest in the world—the average is just over three! Better water movement in the Bay most definitely makes for healthier farmed salmon.

What makes this particular Bay of Fundy fish so good?

1. Time out of the water—the Bay of Fundy salmon gets to Foley’s within 30 hours, and to the Roadhouse the following day! (Most salmon, often coming from Chile, Norway, or New Zealand, is 48-130 hours old before it even gets to the distributor, let alone the restaurant.)
2. The quality of the feed—For Foley’s Bay of Fundy salmon, no chemicals are used, and wild herring is added to boost both flavor and fat content, making for a more tender texture.
3. The fish are farmed at 20 to 30 percent less density, meaning there’s more room to move, better muscle development, and ultimately, better flavor.
4. A century of good work by the folks at Foley’s, who say, “We have been working with this product and farm for decades, they know our quality standards. … We expect the best, and if any of the fish is below our quality checks, we simply send it back.”

At the Roadhouse, we buy whole, 12- to 15-pound salmon, and butcher them regularly in the back kitchen. Because it’s been on the menu for so long, I have, I confess, taken the Bay of Fundy salmon a bit for granted, but I tasted some the other day and was reminded just how darned good it is. One piece had the Roadhouse’s Blackening Spice on it, the other was made with the compellingly aromatic Spicy Coffee Spice Rub! Both were outstanding—the contrast of the spices with the delicate richness of the fish was a beautiful combo.

Swing by the Roadhouse soon and order some of the Bay of Fundy salmon. Great for lunch or dinner, or added to a green salad or those terrific Smothered Grits, it will likely brighten your day in a big way. I know it did mine!

Make a reservation at the Roadhouse

Get Ari’s favorites in your inbox every week

Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter takes ’em to new heights

The big news around ZCoB parts right now is that the Roadhouse’s long-loved Buttermilk Biscuits, made from scratch every day, just got even better!

It’s been two years since we added the Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter to the bread service at the Roadhouse. The commercial butter we’d been serving up until that point had been a relatively peripheral product for us. Now, the cultured butter has become a signature offering with glowing reviews. The Vermont Creamery Cultured butter is a game changer—I actually added a few paragraphs to the “A Taste of Zingerman’s Food Philosophy” pamphlet in the final weeks of production just to highlight how good it is. We have had it on our counter at home regularly for many months now. I’m pretty confident that if you try it (be sure it’s at room temperature), you will be doing the same for your house as well!

Credit for the butter goes to Allison Hooper, longtime industry colleague and friend, who, along with her business partner Bob Reese, started Vermont Creamery back in 1984. Working in the small town of Websterville, the pair pushed from the beginning to make the kind of cheese and butter that Allison had experienced when she’d interned in France a few years earlier. I asked Allison for the back story on the butter:

The butter was developed early on, in the early ’90s. The story is that the farm that I worked on in Brittany had Jersey cows. They were separating cream, and they were selling butter and crème fraiche at the local market. It was so delicious!!! I wanted to make that butter here. Bob and I found a used churn outside a dairy barn and we bought it. We figured out how to use it, and we started making butter. I found this pretty famous French chef in New York, and I decided to take a chance and send him some butter. He called me back, and he was so excited. He said, “This is exactly what the great French chefs in New York are all looking for. It’s the butter of our childhood!” The chefs there loved it, and they really helped us get it off the ground. The chefs knew! They say we make the best butter in the country, and to this day, that’s what we’re known for.

The Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter is made with cream from nearby St. Albans Cooperative. Cream is cultured overnight and then churned into butter. All, and au natural! The butter is 86% butter fat. And like I said, you really can taste the difference! The American standard for butter is 80%. Even most fancy European butters are 82 or 83%. The Vermont Creamery Culture Butter is 86%. And it is so darned delicious!

The Roadhouse has been making its ever-popular Buttermilk Biscuits for decades now. As of last week, we began baking them with this spectacular butter. What has been really wonderful for many years is now noticeably better still. The aroma of the biscuit is amazing—bigger, beckoning you in to take a bite, or two or three. A small luxury to bring a little cultured, buttery, culinary joy to your day! They’re so good they’ve got me thinking I might well want to write a bit of poetry about them. After all, Carl Sandburg, the classic poet of my hometown of Chicago, once wrote, “Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.” At the Roadhouse, you can gild the butter-rich biscuits by spreading more of the same cultured butter on top just before you eat them! Grab a biscuit (or two) when you drive through the Roadshow. And/or, buy a dozen in the morning to bring home for brunch!

Reserve a table

How a lost pup united a community of givers at Zingerman’s SafeHouse fundraiser

When we lose a loved one, we grieve not only the loss of their presence but a loss of meaning and identity. We may wonder who we are without them. What matters most might not be as clear as it was before. As we search for answers, we can lean on the communities we belong to and find new ways to make meaning — and even joy — within them.

Jelly Bean Jump Up, Zingerman’s annual charity fundraiser, grew out of this quest. In addition to honoring the beloved canine companion of Zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig, this event supports Ann Arbor’s SafeHouse Center, which protects and empowers survivors of sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. The 10th rendition of the campaign, which raised more than $21,000, included a March 25 dinner at Zingerman’s Roadhouse, donation drives, sales of pet-themed calendars and corgi cookies, and more.

Dinner attendees enjoyed a family-style meal designed by renowned chef and award-winning cookbook author Molly Stevens and cooked by Roadhouse chef Bob Bennett. Many took part in a silent auction featuring donated goodies such as a CSA share from Tantré Farm, line-caught fish from Shoreline Wild Salmon, and a pizza kit from Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Meats. Everyone celebrated the power of friendship and community by breaking bread – or biscuits, in this case – with new acquaintances.

Breaking bread, building community

Ari introduced Jelly Bean Jump Up by reminiscing about the event’s namesake, a sweet and curious corgi who was a minor celebrity on Ann Arbor’s Clark Road. That’s where she and Ari would often go for a jog, passing SafeHouse on their route. Over the years, the perspicacious pup earned nicknames such as Jelly Bean the Jogger Dog and Zinger-man’s Best Friend. Ari organized the first Jelly Bean Jump Up in 2016, a few months after she passed away.

Ari also highlighted his friendship with Molly, which began at an American Cheese Society in the late 1980s. Over the years, she has appeared at five Roadhouse dinners and Camp Bacon, a bacon-themed festival with special classes, speakers, meals, and more.

“Molly is a great cook and a great cookbook writer, which are different things. But I don’t think of her for her cookbooks, like a lot of people do. I think of her as my friend,” Ari said.

Molly’s cookbooks include All About Braising, All About Roasting, and All About Dinner. She also hosts the Everything Cookbooks podcast with Andrea Nguyen, Kate Leahy, and Kristin Donnelly. 

The menu Molly devised reflected several special moments from her life as a chef. For instance, a vegetable course dubbed a “mess of bitter greens” was a nod to Zingerman’s other co-founder, Paul Saginaw, who she cooked with during a trip to Greece.

“I would relive that trip if I could, especially the experience of cooking with other people. I find the idea of this dish so comforting,” Molly said.

The menu also featured several dishes that incorporated cultured butter from one of the event’s sponsors, Vermont Creamery. These included butter-poached shrimp with tomatoes and garlic, butter pecan gelato topped with brown butter hazelnut shortbread, and a warm dip made with artisanal olive oil, garlic, and Fishwife anchovies. The centerpiece of the meal was braciole, a pasture-raised flank steak stuffed with SarVecchio parmesan, Newsom’s country ham, pinenuts, and raisins, all of which were braised in a savory tomato sauce.

During the meal, Molly shared some of her family’s Thanksgiving traditions and quirks with her tablemates, who shared details about their own holiday meals in return. Micki Maynard, a food writer at the table, said she was excited to see Molly Stevens’ name attached to this year’s Jelly Bean Jump Up.

“I’m a huge fan of Molly Stevens. I have come to her special dinners in the past, and Molly was super helpful to me when I was writing Satisfaction Guaranteed, my book about Zingerman’s,” Micki explained, adding that the dinner’s menu was “delicious from top to bottom.”

Micki also noted the positive energy the event’s crowd brought to the Roadhouse. 

“It’s a treat to see everybody come here because they’re so fired up for SafeHouse and so generous. There are such interesting people to talk to, and there’s a real feeling of community,” she said.

Showing up for vulnerable neighbors

Christine Watson, SafeHouse’s executive director, gave a short speech during the dinner. In addition to acknowledging the generosity of Zingerman’s and several community partners — Plum Market, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Dollar Bill Printing, Old National Bank, and Probility Physical Therapy — she thanked the audience for showing up for abuse survivors.

“You remind me we have a community around us who genuinely care. SafeHouse exists because of people like you,” she said. “There need to be places for survivors of abuse and assault to tell their stories, because we don’t always get to hear them. You help make that happen.”

In the United States, families and communities lose more than 1,300 of these survivors to violence each year. Pets also get caught in the cycle of abuse. Sometimes people stay in dangerous living situations because they can’t find shelter for an animal companion. In addition to increasing survivors’ access to counseling, legal advocacy, and temporary shelter, Jelly Bean Jump Up has helped SafeHouse expand its capacity to house pets fleeing violence.

Jelly Bean Jump Up reflects the hard work of Melaina Bukowski, Zingerman’s community giving coordinator. She’s proud that this event has benefited SafeHouse for a decade, becoming one of the center’s main sources of financial support.

“Our pets give us a sense of security and safety, and SafeHouse serves this need to feel safe in such a deep and fundamental way,” she said. “It’s such a crucial space within our community, and the people there do lifesaving work advocating for so many people.”

This relationship with SafeHouse inspired Melaina to create Nonprofit Spotlight, a blog that introduces readers to charitable organizations the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses supports. So far, more than 50 groups have been highlighted.

Jelly Bean Jump Up continues to be one of Melaina’s favorite events because it shows how pain can spark generosity and transform lives.

“It’s a remarkable thing to take the grief of loss and turn it into a big, loving act to take care of other people,” she says. “I’m always honored to be a part of it.”