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.

Zingerman’s Roadhouse, which has spent the last fourteen years bringing really good American food to Ann Arbor, ups its game in August—the restaurant will celebrate the diversity of cooking in US by welcoming two American culinary luminaries from opposite ends of the food world. One is a famous pitmaster, practicing a rare bar-b-que tradition, and the other is one of the most respected Jewish chefs in the country—both will create unforgettable menus for the restaurant’s popular Special Dinner series in August.

BBQ Special Dinner: A Meditation on Tennessee Tradition
August 8, 2017 at 7pm. $75 per person
Whole hog BBQ is a craft, and the mindfulness for perfecting the method is not gained overnight. Practicing a rare BBQ technique that only three people in the country can claim expertise in, Pitmaster Pat Martin smokes the hogs he serves at Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint in West Tennessee for 24 hours. The result is falling-off-the-bone tender, moist, smoky meat. Starting work every day at 5am, he and his crew make everything from scratch, and on August 8, Ann Arbor will get a taste of the treasured tradition. Pat will be on hand to share his passion for this long-time Tennessee tradition. Menu will include West Tennessee whole hog bbq, Redneck Tacos, Bar-B-Que Baked potatoes and much more. SEE THE FULL MENU AND RESERVE SEATS HERE.

Harvest Special Dinner: An Evening with Joan Nathan
August 28, 2017 at 7pm. $75 per person
James Beard Award winning cookbook author Joan Nathan, called the “queen of American Jewish cooking” by the Houston Chronicle, will be sharing stories and flavors from her brand new release King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World. Recipes from the new book, her 11th title, will be the centerpiece of the dinner, which will explore dishes from Israel to Italy to India and beyond. Featured dishes will include a Georgian beef stew, Indian Chicken, Tunisian Carrot Salad, and much more. Nathan will be signing copies of the book at the dinner.  The L.A. Times writes, “With a mix of deep historical research combined with personal anecdotes of her many friends, relatives and colleagues around the world, her book… combines Nathan’s celebrated knowledge of all things related to Jewish food with her accessible storytelling voice.” A University of Michigan alum with long time ties to both Ann Arbor and to Zingerman’s, Joan is excited to return to town. SEE THE FULL MENU AND RESERVE SEATS HERE.

Seats for both events are limited and likely to sell out! Reserve your spot today.

Join us for an evening of chocolate and cocktail pairing on Monday, May 15. Together with special guests Mindo Chocolate and American Fifth Distillery, we’ve planned the sweetest event at the Roadhouse yet! Reserve your spot here. And in the meantime, here’s a little bit about Zingerman’s favorite, Mindo Chocolate.

For us chocolate lovers, the selection of handcrafted bean-to-bar chocolate these days is like a dream come true. How do we choose? While I am not against making it my goal in life to try them all, understanding where any bar of chocolate comes from will affect my overall experience of how it tastes.

Chocolate is not simply a candy. Small batch, high-quality chocolate is healthy, and offers the full, pure flavors of cocoa bean. Like with any of the food we offer at Zingerman’s, chocolate should not only come from really good ingredients, but it should tell a story. Mindo Chocolate is a delicious real-life fairy tale, one that connects people across two worlds.

Once upon a brownie…

It started with José Meza and Barbara Wilson, a local couple who retired from owning an auto shop in 2007. José missed his home country of Riobamba, Ecuador, and when he took Barbara there to visit, they instantly fell in love with its native beauty and bought land in Mindo, a misty town in the cloud forest of the Andes Mountains.

José and Barbara set up their castle in Mindo in the form of an internet café, and started selling world-class homemade brownies. As the demand for her brownies increased, and people asked for shipment around the world, Barbara found she had a hard time keeping up when she couldn’t find really good finished chocolate in Ecuador.

Join us at the Roadhouse for our Decadent Chocolate and Divine Cocktails event, Monday, May 15.

Who needs gold when you can have chocolate?

There was no one selling magic beans that would turn into bars, either, so José and Barbara took matters into their own hands. Using a table-top juicer, they started spinning beans into rustic chocolate that they could use in their amazing brownies. Over time, word spread across the land about the homemade chocolate, so José and Barbara turned their attention to cacao processing. After finding farmers in Ecuador who were growing full-flavored, organically grown Nacional variety of cocoa beans, they set up a facility on the property in Mindo to continue making their treasured chocolate. Their café, El Quetzal de Mindo, is now a tour destination for chocolate enthusiasts and is like something out of a dreamy picture book.

“If you’re going to make craft chocolate, you have to start with great ingredients.”- Mindo Chocolate Makers

In 2009, José and Barbara opened Mindo Chocolate Makers in Dexter, Michigan, and their operations now span international waters. Their community includes anyone and everyone who enjoys their raw product as well as their finished, artisanal chocolate across 3,000 miles and two continents. While their reach is far and wide, they retain a small-business mentality, ever grateful for the flavorful, quality product they source from sustainable growers and suppliers who care about where food comes from.

Whether you are enjoying their Pure 67% Bar, their 77% Bar, or any of their heavenly flavor pairings made with carefully selected ingredients, Mindo chocolate boasts a silky creaminess that is simply exquisite. Their story and commitment to providing the best experience possible can be tasted in every bite of their chocolate. And as long as they continue making it, I know I can live happily ever after.

To experience Mindo chocolate for yourself, join us for our very first chocolate and cocktail pairing event at Zingerman’s Roadhouse on May 15th, Decadent Chocolate and Divine Cocktails: www.events.zingermanscommunity.com

Spice up your life! It’s Spice Week at Zingerman’s—the Spice Trekkers from Montreal’s Épices de Cru will be here all week for their annual visit. If you haven’t already signed up for events, don’t worry—some have sold out, but we still have a few spaces for Spice-ology 101 and the Indian Spice Dinner at the Roadhouse. And you don’t need any reservations to meet them at Miss Kim on Tuesday and Wednesday. Reserve your spot today! You’ll be glad you did.

Reserve your seat today for these events:

Spice Trekker Philippe de Vienne from Épices de Cru in Montreal has decades of experience as a spice hunter. Before that he was one of the most sought after caterers in Montreal. His five cookbooks about cooking techniques from around the world are a treasured part of our personal collection.

For the third year, the Roadhouse welcomes Philippe to delight you with the authentic flavors of traditional Indian food. Join us April 18th for our Indian Spice Special Dinner #207. We’ll discuss and experience curry, chutney, and the depth and warmth of Indian spices. Chef Alex Young will add a dash of his own culinary talent by collaborating with Philippe on the menu for this very special event.

With Philippe’s expertise, we will guide you through the traditional flavors of Indian cuisine. This menu, a reflection of Phillipe’s talents and expertise, will be available to enliven any upcoming wedding or event though Roadhouse Catering.

Tuesday, April 18 &
Wednesday, April 19th, 2017

6:30pm–8:30pm, $35/person

Zingerman’s Deli

With Special Guests, Épices de Cru, from Montréal on their special once a year visit! Reserve your seat; will fill up quickly!

Few people know spices like the folks from Épices de Cru. They scour the globe to find the absolute best spices available. And they’re master blenders!—their spice blends combine the most amazing spices from around the world to make blends that really sing. Join us for an evening as they share their wisdom and savoir-faire about tasting, sourcing and cooking with spices. Last year this one sold out quickly and the attendees’ dinner tables at home have never been the same.

What you’ll learn: where spices come from, how to use them in your everyday cooking, how to store them, grind them, serve them and how to tell you’re getting the best. Guaranteed to elevate your creativity in the kitchen!

Tuesday, April 18 &
Wednesday, April 19th, 2017

5:00pm–10:00pm

Miss Kim

Miss Kim is honored to host the fabled Spice Trekkers from Épices de Cru during their annual visit to Ann Arbor! On Tuesday, April 18th and Wednesday April 19th, they will be on site (dinner service only) and available to talk with YOU, answer YOUR questions and regale you with stories of their travels while you dine!

While they’re visiting, we will also be highlighting a number of our favorite Épices de Cru spices in our dishes: Chinese 5 Spice Braised Pork, our hand-made Mushroom Buns, featuring Sancho Pepper and a very special Pu-erh Tea are just a few of things that we can’t contain our excitement about. Be sure to stop by for this exclusive opportunity because they won’t be back again until next year!