The Grange

For those of you who don't know me IRL, my 21st birthday is only a week away! Naturally, I've planned out a day/evening of fun birthday freebies, delicious cocktails and five-beer samplers.
Since my good friend Katie (who you met during my Jerusalem Garden post) will be leaving to study abroad in London before this pivotal day, she implored that we must go out to preemptively celebrate before she leaves.
We settled on dinner at The Grange, a main street joint who's schtick is producing gourmet dishes from locally-sourced food. Now, I know that many restaurants today advertise locally-grown cuisine, but most can get away with saying that even if only 30% of their food is local. I believe I read somewhere that The Grange sources nearly 90% of its food from local vendors, which is astronomically unbelievable.

Madison (left) and Katie (right) settled down at our cozy table and surveyed todays offerings. Since the menu changes often to reflect the foods that are in-season, it's always a surprise to see what's on the plate for the day.

Mallory and I posed for the camera.

 We started out with a small plate of fried chickpeas. Light and crackling bubbles of deliciousness oozing with spice and flavor. I will definitely be attempting to make a pan-fried version of this in the near future!

For the main dishes, Mallory selected the perch and veggie medley...

I grabbed a steaming bowl of gnocchi, veggies and michigan shrimp doused in pesto. Katie and I, being connoisseurs of gnocchi, were moaning over how deliciously melt-in-your mouth these little lumps of potato dough were. Simply ah-mazing. 

Katie opted for the grilled rainbow trout with mushrooms and corn relish...

While Madison snagged a spectacular plate of roasted duck breast in a corn puree and peach relish.

I'd never tried duck before, and Madison was nice enough to let me try a small piece. It was very meaty and very gamey - I felt like a huntress who'd just brought home her kill for a feast.

Seeing as it was an almost-birthday celebration, we had to grab some dessert. Fortunately for us, The Grange's dessert menu includes a lovely sampler platter of 4 mini desserts and a giant mug of coffee.

From left to right, this platter comes with some sort of delicious berry dish, a watermelon granita, a mini-drumstick with homemade ice cream in the center (I grabbed that one!) and a cantaloupe sherbet.

Within five minutes, our dessert tray looked like this:

I think we liked it!

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Sweetwaters

I'm obligated to write a post about my favorite cafe in Ann Arbor, Sweetwater's Coffee and Tea. Why is it my favorite, you may ask? Well, for one thing, it's one of the few cafe's that isn't biased one way or another to favor tea over coffee or coffee over tea. You know how you can tell that certain shops, like Starbucks or Caribou, favor coffee over tea? Or tea over coffee? Yeah, Sweetwater's doesn't discriminate. 

And they prove this by making equally good-quality coffee and tea treats. Their ginger-lemon tea is to die for - a hot blend of spicy ginger, tart lemon, and the perfect amount of sweetener. I like it on a day-to-day basis in the winter, but I especially recommend it to my friends when they're fighting off a bad cold or allergies. Yet I'm also a glutton for their espresso sundaes, a large version of an affogato at a much cheaper price than most coffee establishments (of course, you could save even more money by making the homemade one that I posted about several days ago.)

See what I mean? Equal amounts coffee and tea!

The seating area is also much more spacious than that of a typical coffee or tea house. It's easier to think here, in my opinion.

There are three different Sweetwater's locations in Ann Arbor, one in Kerrytown, one off of Plymouth road, and one downtown off of Washington and Main.

And, their decadent collection of quiches, brownies, sandwich wraps, and assorted pastries make it an easy place to squat for an entire day and get some serious work done.

 When I stopped by recently, I treated myself to an iced tea lemonade - the hot tea just didn't sit well during a scorching afternoon. Luckily, since everything they make is excellent, I didn't miss out!

I like all of their locations equally, but if you stop by the one on Washington, be sure to search inside for the fairy door!

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Mark's Carts, Part 1

I took my lunch break at Mark's Carts today, a fun collection of gourmet food carts in downtown Ann Arbor. The carts are enclosed in a little courtyard down Washington St. right past Main. My friend Katie was the one who first told me about it, and I kept finding new reasons to not make the trek downtown every time I was tempted to try the food. But today I was determined to try it, and boy am I glad I did. 


Each cart specializes in some type of gourmet food. As soon as you walk in, you're greeted by The Lunch Box, which specializes in good-tasting vegan dishes. 

Right across from it is San Street, a cart that serves up Asian street food.

Right next door sat Debajo Del Sol (Spanish for "under the sun." Good to see 4 years of Spanish has gotten me so far in my translations....) This cart has a lot of interesting stuff on the list, including paella! They also make different Spanish tapas, or small plates, like churros and chorizo corn dogs.

A2 pizza π comes next on the list. They make authentic wood-fired pizzas.

I was skeptical of how wood-fired their pizzas could actually be, considering they're being cooked in a cart. But they actually had a real wood-firing grill right outside the cart that employees kept popping pizzas in and out of.

They had their margherita pizza out for sampling. Don't they look delicious? And just $8 per pizza!

Across the way were two other specialty carts: Cheese Dream, which focuses on gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, and The Beet Box, a creative cart using local natural ingredients.

At the end of the courtyard sits Darcy's Cart, which changes its menu weekly to reflect the harvests of locally-grown food. Today, I saw a lot of people getting the whitefish tacos.

For my lunch, I selected the last cart in the courtyard, Hut-K Chaats (I'm very happy that I don't have to pronounce that, because I'm sure I'd butcher it.) Specializing in "nutrilicious Indian food," their style incorporates fresh, light, and filling indian dishes, most of which are vegan. Why did I select this cart, you might ask? Because it won last year's Le Creuset cook-off!

I ordered the award-winning dish, Shanu Chaat, and, needless to say, it was certainly worthy of its title. I've eaten plenty of Indian food in my lifetime, and this was like nothing I'd ever had before! 

Since most of my Indian food experiences have occurred in local Americanized buffets, my idea of Indian food was rich, filling, and often high in fat (what can I say, I just love butter chicken!). This chickpea dish was fresh, light, filling, and crunchy. I even got to taste a sample of it ahead of time so I knew what I was buying. Needless to say, one bite and I was sold! For $6, this is some of the cheapest and best Indian food I've ever had. Kudos to its creators!

Tragically, I didn't have a stomach large enough to sample food from every cart today. However, I'm sure to be back soon for more!

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