Join us for Blue, Brews & BBQ. Grab a seat right here!

If you’re looking for a good cause, a good meal, some good music, a bunch of great people, and taste of Ann Arbor history, book yourself (and someone you love) a seat at this dinner next Tuesday evening, August 7. We’ve got a great spread of Texas-themed barbecue and a couple of special guests: blues musician Blair Miller and our friend and farmer Melvin Parson of We the People Growers Association. For me, this meal is history come alive—local, national, musical, personal. It’s about remembering and reviving, connecting and caring, listening and learning. I can’t wait!

In the summer of 1902, Son House was born, about 800 miles to the south, in a small hamlet just outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi. He went on to become one of the great blues musicians of all time. In 1969, a handful of people in Ann Arbor took the initiative to start the very first festival to celebrate the music that Son House and so many others sang so passionately. The Ann Arbor Blues Festival was North America’s first ever electric blues fest! It happened a few weeks before Woodstock, took a break and then ran ’til 2006 before running out of steam. Son House was in the original lineup. Twenty thousand people went to the Fuller Flatlands near Huron High School over the few days of the festival to hear some amazing music from the top blues players—acoustic and electric—in the country. James Partridge, the executive producer of the current festival, says, “The original Ann Arbor Blues Festival was a veritable ‘who’s who’ of the blues. Not only did the best delta bluesmen perform—Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes—but the greatest electric artists of all time assembled in one place, BB King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf.  It was Coachella before there was Coachella.”

On August 7, at the Roadhouse, all of these amazing things come together with a fundraising dinner to help with the revival of the Blues Fest—this year is the 49th anniversary of its founding. The meal is a delicious dose of Texas BBQ to go with your blues. Texas “caviar” and collard greens, Tellicherry Texas brisket (smoked 18 hours over oak), East Texas hot links, smoked beef ribs, burnt ends and beans, and banana pudding for dessert! Each course is getting paired up with a beer from one of the Roadhouse’s favorite breweries—Wolverine State Brewing Co. Blair Miller will bless us with his blues playing at various points throughout the meal—an enticing “taste” of bigger things to come at the Blues Fest, which is coming up on August 17 and 18. The Blues Fest crew have put together a terrific musical line up!

The event is also special thanks to our guest Melvin Parson. A few years ago, Melvin started an amazing project called We the People Growers Association to craft an urban, world-class farm in Ypsilanti. The meal will feature produce from his farming work, in particular, some super delicious collards. Back when Son House started playing the blues, about half of the country’s African American population lived on farms. Today it’s like two percent. At the time, one in seven or so farmers were black. Today it’s one in about 70. So much of the original blues work came from working in the fields. Bringing the blues together with Melvin’s work to revive healthy local agriculture in the black community is a beautiful thing. Read Pete Daniel’s Dispossession for more on African American farming history.

Oh yeah, one more blues reference. Three months after the Blues Fest in 1969, in the first week of November that fall, Jim Morrison and the Doors recorded “Roadhouse Blues.” I grew up listening to it. The opening lines lead well into this marvelous meal:

Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we’re going to the Roadhouse
We are going to have a real
Good time

PS: The best book on the Blues Fest is Blues in Black and White, which features photos from Stanley Livingston and prose by Michael Erlewine. Jim O’Neal, co-founder of Living Blues magazine, wrote about it: “If Woodstock was one of the ‘Fifty Moments That Changed Rock ‘n’ Roll History’, as honored in Rolling Stone magazine, then the Ann Arbor Blues Festival was the coronation for the blues roots that sired rock to begin with…finally, we have this amazing book of Stanley Livingston’s priceless images, along with Michael Erlewine’s detailed chronology.”

Ronni Lundy probably knows more about the foodways and folkways of Appalachia than anyone else in America. I’ve been hoping to get her to town now for years! Her kindness, care and insider understanding of an oft-misunderstood part of American culture are something special. If you like food and learning, you will not want miss her visit to Zingerman’s Roadhouse next month.

The Irish poet, John O’Donohue says, “Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore.” His wise words, I think, apply to many of us on many fronts, and I would say, still holds true for many who live outside of Appalachia. While we’ve all heard the name, most Americans know little or nothing about the area. We hear the names of the states (Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina), but unless we come from there or have spent significant time studying their history and culture, we have minimal understanding of this fascinating section of the country.  Stereotypes get us stuck.

In an era where curiosity and care for people different than ourselves often seems sorely lacking, taking the time to get to know someone—or in this case, someplace—is a gift we can give ourselves, and those who we are getting to know. Ronni Lundy knows the Appalachian region at a depth of spiritual understanding that I only hope one day I will be able to replicate, really, for anything.

“While I didn’t grow up in them,” she writes in her James Beard-award winning new book, Victuals, “I grew up of the mountains, and all my life I have held these connections that are a beautiful and remarkable gift.”

On the evening of May 15, we are fortunate to have Ronni coming to share stories of her 70 years of living both in and of the mountains.  This is our chance to hear stories from the heart, of the heart, and to move past  preconceived notions to see—and taste—the beauty, wisdom and wonderful work of the foodways and culture that make the Southern Appalachian region so special.

As she writes in her amazing book, Victuals, “[L]ooking through the lens of real Southern mountain food—the methods of its growing, processing and eating—we began to see a vivid picture of a region and its people that had little in common with their most prevalent and demeaning stereotypes.”

If you don’t want to just take my word for the amazing quality of her work, know that Ronni’s earlier book, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken was recognized by Gourmet magazine as one of six essential books on Southern cooking. In 2017, Lundy received a James Beard Award for Victuals.  In 2009, she received the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award.  She is truly a living treasure and someone we’re very fortunate to have.

If you want another testament to the excellence of Ronni’s writing and scholarship, the marvelous musician Emmylou Harris said, that, “Victuals is so much more than just another cookbook. It’s a marvelous travelogue and history of an under-appreciated and often misrepresented part of America, it’s people and culture, written lovingly by my friend, Ronni Lundy. Still, as I finished the last pages, with their stunning illustrations, I couldn’t wait to get in the kitchen and try my hand at the delicious recipes she has gathered for all of us who just plain love good food.”

Ronni’s dinner at the Roadhouse, are meant to do the same.  You or I could make the trip for ourselves and traverse those same 4000 miles, but in the meantime, please don’t miss out. I’m confident, both culinary and culturally memorable. I will be there. I hope you will too.

Exploring Appalachian Cooking with Ronni Lundy takes place May 15, 2018 at 7pm. See the full menu and reserve a seat on Zingerman’s Roadhouse’s website

John Lennon once said, “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” I love the creative reality that emerges when two parts of our organization come together to make something magical happen. Like this—a special, never-happened-before event at the Roadhouse that will feature the amazing Ji Hye Kim, the managing partner and head chef at Miss Kim. While Ji Hye and her crew have built themselves an increasingly loyal (and vocally so—almost every day now someone stops me to say how much they love it) clientele for all the intricate and excellent flavors of traditional Korean food (some of it from centuries-old recipes), this special dinner will honor the food of the Korean-American community—a coming together of two rich culinary cultures to create a very memorable meal.

While it happened seemingly by accident that this dinner was the 222^nd one we’ve scheduled at the Roadhouse, the number itself is significant. In a Tarot deck, 222 is an “angel number,” which, for those in the numerological know, “resonates with ancient wisdom, vision, idealism, and transformation.” It represents creation, the beginning of new things, of something special happening. 222, it turns out, is timely: it’s spring, a new season. It’s also the beginning of Miss Kim’s ascendance to the reputation that syncs up with the quality of food the restaurant is already providing. Stephen Satterfield, the nationally-recognized writer and founder of the incredible, New York Times-recognized Whetstone magazine (available for sale at the Roadhouse) says, “to dine at Miss Kim is to taste [Ji Hye’s] taste memory, her learned and earnest love of recrafting the food from which she is constituted, adapted for the place in which she stands.” Ji Hye’s food, he goes on to say, is “hyper-local, very seasonal, and as much an approach to life as it is a bowl of food.” This dinner will also be a celebration of all the cool new stuff that’s happening at the Roadhouse.

While she might have learned how to cook from her mom, Ji Hye learned how to cook “restaurant food” at the Roadhouse—this dinner is a chance for her to pay homage to her two culinary homes—Korea and the Roadhouse. The menu will feature dishes like LA galbi (marinated, BBQ-short ribs developed by Korean immigrants who settled in Los Angeles), a very special version of bibimbob that will feature Roadhouse pulled pork, mini burgers with quail eggs and napa kimchi, fries with tteokbokki and cheese curds, a special Roadhouse-inspired kimchi, a silken tofu stew, matcha chiffon cake from the Bakehouse, and more.

See the full menu for the dinner here.

Here’s a little snippet of the history of Korean immigration into the U.S. to give you some context for the dinner:

Ahn Chang Ho and Lee Hye-ryeon were the first Korean couple to immigrate to America—they came to the west coast in 1902—the same year in which the Deli’s historic building was built. Ahn Chang Ho, known also as Dosan, went on to become a significant social activist. Committed to bringing kindness and care into the immigrant community, he founded the Chinmokhoe Friendship Society in 1903, the first Korean organization in the continental United States. “To pick even one orange with sincerity in an American orchard will make a contribution to our country,” he declared. Later, he campaigned hard for Korean independence. Arrested by Japanese authorities, he was asked if he would cease his struggle. His response: “No, I cannot. When I eat, I eat for Korean independence. When I sleep, I sleep for Korean independence. This will not change as long as I live. As all the Korean people want their independence, Korean independence will become reality; as world opinion favors Korean independence, it will become reality; and as Heaven orders Korean independence, Korea will surely become independent.”

Join us for this special Korean-American meal!

Tuesday, April 10 at the Roadhouse 7:00 pm $75.00. Seats are limited! Check out the full menu here.

 

Bring on the bidding for a really great cause at Zingerman’s Roadhouse!

The Roadhouse’s next Special Event #221: An Evening of Roasting, Braising, and Empowerment will be a very special night! Join us on Tuesday, March 13th, as we welcome James Beard award-winning cookbook author Molly Stevens and open the bidding on a Jelly Bean Jump Up silent auction for Ann Arbor’s SafeHouse Center.

In honor of his beloved dog Jelly bean, Ari Weinzweig started the Jelly Bean Jump Up fundraiser to contribute to SafeHouse Center. SafeHouse is a haven for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. By adding a silent auction to our Special Event #221, we hope to raise money to help survivors in our community.

We are grateful to the businesses who have donated to the auction, and look forward to showcasing the following packages:

Puppy Love at Cornman Farms! A Dog Wedding Dreams Are Made Of…

Treat your pup to the wedding of their dreams with a beautiful intimate wedding celebration tailored for your loving pups, at Zingerman’s Cornman Farms. Our intimate wedding celebrations are one of our most popular offerings, and we will customize our package perfectly for your pups. The Dog Wedding donation will include the following:

• Four hour venue rental of our renovated barn and outdoor spaces.
• Outdoor dog wedding ceremony.
• Two floral necklaces or crowns for the dog couple.
• Two hours of photography.
• Wedding Officiant.
• Three-course farm-to-table meal with gourmet dog treats for the pups.
• Sparkling wine toast.
• Zingerman’s Bakehouse wedding cake.

Value: $7,000

Take those Essential Steps with Dr. Michelle Segar!

Make 2018 the year you learn how to take really great care of yourself! Get expert advice about sustainable health behavior through exercise, and making your own self-care a consistent priority. Dr. Segar is a recognized exercise motivation researcher and coach with over 23 years of experience, frequently interviewed for her expertise by publications such as The New York Times and Health magazine.

• 1 signed copy of the bestselling book No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness, by esteemed exercise motivation coach, Dr. Michelle Segar.
• Four 60-minute Essential Steps coaching phone sessions with Dr. Michelle Segar (creator of Essential Steps).

Value: $1,000

Pamper Yourself with a Weekend at the Graduate in Ann Arbor!

Where your intellectual curiosity meets your favorite place to stay, the Graduate is the smartest place to stay in Ann Arbor! Located right across the street from campus in downtown, it is in walking distance of the town’s best restaurants, shops, and theater venues.
One gift certificate for a 2-night stay at the Graduate Hotel in Ann Arbor, including complimentary parking.

Value: $400

Give Your Pup A Basket of Love, from K9 Club!

K9 Club is an urban pet care facility located in Troy, MI, specializing in small group play and enrichment programs, along with boarding, grooming, and retail. Just like Zingerman’s, their mission is to enrich as many lives as possible and show love and care in all their actions. They do so by focusing on health, safety, and well being, and by caring for pets!

• A gift basket for your beloved pooch from K9 Club, including healthy dog treats, interactive dog toys, and a sustainable dog food container.

Value: $300

With Zing from the Roadhouse!

Let the Roadhouse treat you with all of our favorites from Zingerman’s! We’ve put together all the essentials: Peanut Brittle and Zzang Bar Bites from Zingerman’s Candy, Virginia Peanuts, Coffee Spice Rub, and a copy of Ari’s latest book, A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business. We are also throwing in a Zingerman’s Roadhouse Catering package, featuring the new Biscuit Sandwiches from our Happy Hour menu, for up to 10 people.

• A gift basket of our favorite things from around Zingerman’s, and a Roadhouse Catering gift certificate.

Value: $300

Learn the Arts of Braising and Roasting with Molly Stevens’ Cookbook

We are truly touched by the our guest of honor’s spirit of generosity! Cookbook author and teacher Molly Stevens shares her expertise about roasting and braising in her two James Beard award-winning cookbooks, All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking and All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art.

Molly has been described in the New York Times Book Review as “a beautifully clear writer who likes to teach”. Classically trained in professional kitchens in France, Molly has directed programs and taught at the French Culinary Institute, New England Culinary Institute, and L’Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in Burgundy, France and Venice, Italy.

• Signed copies of Molly Steven’s James Beard award-winning cookbooks, All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking and All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art.

Value: $60

Don’t miss out on an opportunity to win one of these incredible packages! Reserve your seats before they are going, going, gone, at www.zingermansroadhouse.com/events

On January 30th, Zingerman’s Roadhouse will be hosting our 13th Annual African American Dinner, featuring the noteworthy wines of André Hueston Mack. André owns his own winery in Willamette Valley, Maison Noir Wines, and was named Best Young Sommelier in America in 2003. He is the first African American to win that distinguished honor.

André’s road to success is one less traveled. For anyone who’s explored Ari’s anarchist approach to business, André’s philosophy will sound familiar. After learning about André’s guidelines to being a Mouton Noir, or “black sheep”, during his TEDx Talks presentation, I can definitely see how both he and Ari share ideas on becoming successful by doing things differently. Specifically, they both embrace the freedom of being unique, not following trends, and having fun while doing it. André fits right in to the Zingerman’s fold. Here are his rules for being a black sheep:

Don’t do what you are supposed to do.
In A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building A Great Business, the first ingredient for Ari’s Recipe for Making Something Special is A Vision of Uniqueness. Likewise, When André mentions creativity, he emphasizes defining yourself as being unique. He did not grow up around restaurants or vineyards, but André followed a course that would take him to become Thomas Keller’s Sommelier for Per Se in New York. This is when he gained the nickname Mouton Noir, because he was not like many sommeliers in New York City. He found the name empowering.

Don’t be afraid to do it yourself.
The second premise in Ari’s Recipe for Making Something Special is Bucking the Trends. He specifically speaks about the idea that when you start off doing something really different, you don’t often get a lot of support. André embraced his unique identity and chose to do something totally different…on his own. He left Per Se and became a winemaker. He opened his own winery, Maison Noir Wines with no startup and no investors. He didn’t have a design team to create his labels, so he created his own, and is now a talented self-made designer.

Don’t dress the part.
André started to design t-shirts in addition to his labels, like we do at Zingerman’s. And he wears them, like Ari. Neither of them want to be caught up in a status symbol culture. André’s mission is to make sure wine is accessible to everyone, and to make sure this happens, he chooses to not be restricted by how other people think he should appear.

Don’t seek approval.
According to André,“Wine is not a beverage reserved for the elite, but can and should be enjoyed by everyone.” He feels that wine is subjective, like anything else creative, so he does not have his wines rated. He understands that people will either like them, or they won’t. But he has to believe in the product, and avoid the anxiety of worrying about what everyone else thinks.Ari’s written an entire book on the Power of Beliefs in Business, and he’s been talking about the importance of belief since the beginning, “Without it…food is at best is technically correct, but almost always lacks the soul that makes it special.” By believing in his wines and not sweating about what everyone thinks they should be, André has been able to focus his energy on making them really great. Or as he says “put your energy into what feeds you.” In his new pamphlet, My Beliefs About Cooking, Ari echoes this sentiment, that the act of feeding ourselves just to get by has become so much more than that for him: “What was a rather unremarkable routine that ensured survival is now the centerpiece of my existence, something that sustains me physically and financially, intellectually and emotionally.”

Play.
Having fun is another crucial ingredient in Ari’s Recipe for Making Something Special. For André, creativity is key. There is something to be said for figuring out what feeds you and playing with it. André has designed a coloring book about food and wine, called Small Thyme Cooks: Culinary Coloring and Activity Book. Have you seen his labels? Or his t-shirts for that matter? Personally, I’m a huge fan of his Horseshoes and Handgrenades label, for a red blend that we will be featuring at the dinner:

If you like what you see, don’t miss out on an opportunity to meet the man who’s sharpened the edge on winemaking. He will be at the Roadhouse, and we will be drinking his amazing wines.

Dare to be different and join us. Come alone if you’d like, wear a t-shirt, don’t ask permission. We will feed you, literally and creatively, and it will be fun.

For more information about this unique event, visit our Community Events site.

Cookbook author, University of Michigan graduate, cultural storyteller… all these things and more describe our next Roadhouse Special Dinner guest, Joan Nathan.

What are we looking forward to the most about her visit with us for our Harvest Special Dinner? It might be that the multiple James Beard Award winner will prepare delectable dishes from her new cookbook using our harvest from the Roadhouse Farm. Or it might be that she will whisk us away and around the world of Jewish cuisine, right here in Ann Arbor.

About the book
King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World is a masterpiece of stories told through food. Eater calls it “A brilliant look at a culture that has adapted to and influenced nearly every region in the world…a winding journey through the foods of the Jewish diaspora, from Roman ghettos to Middle Eastern markets to homestyle flavors in Cuba.”

With 170 recipes, Joan Nathan’s book is a colorful treasure of food narratives from overseas and across time. She explores Biblical times and traces the regions influenced by Jews, connecting the dots of tradition as they developed over thousands of years. By traveling all over the globe, Joan has unearthed the roots of an ancient food culture and how it has shaped the Jewish cuisine we enjoy today.

A very special menu
The menu for the dinner looks divine. A hearty dish called Salyanka particularly catches my eye. It is a beef stew with red peppers from Georgia, a country located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. The way Joan describes it in her book, “a melt-in-your-mouth, silky stew” and “layered with flavors from onions, spices and bright red bell peppers”, has me counting the days until I can try it.

Aharaimi, an arctic char dish in a spicy heirloom tomato sauce, is a recipe I can’t wait to try at home after the Harvest Dinner. It is a fragrant fish casserole that the Jews of Libya make to start their Sabbath meal. Anyone can prepare it easily by simmering it slowly on the stovetop, or baking it in the oven, and the thick sauce is made from hot peppers, tomatoes, and fresh spices.

These dishes and more will not only be available at the Harvest Special Dinner #213 on August 28th, but they are all in Joan’s new cookbook, which will be available for purchase at the dinner. They look very approachable to prepare, and they are certain to bring the warm flavors of another time and place to your kitchen. Not to mention amazing smells.

Our Harvest Special Dinner with Joan Nathan takes place August 28 at 7 pm at Zingerman’s Roadhouse. You can see the full menu and purchase your tickets for the Harvest Special Dinner right here.