Welcome to Chowhound, a new bi-weekly column and your prandial information portal to what’s trending in Detroit food culture. Consider this your new feed for restaurant announcements, au courant culinary conversation, and assorted tasty news nibbles from our local dining front. And, hey, if you’ve something to share on those subjects, reach out to me, “Mr. C,” at [email protected]. Here we go:
Second Dynasty: Having returned for several visits now, I have to say: Novi’s China Café (24299 Novi Rd.) takes me back to the early ’90s. Living in Scottsdale, Arizona at the time, I read a review of a new restaurant concept recently opened in my neighborhood. The critic panned the place, scoffing at its future prospects, saying aficionados of Asian fare would never buy the concept, which he judged as an over-Americanized compromise of true Chinese cuisine culture.
That restaurant was the original P.F. Chang’s. Oops. To this day, that man’s major miss serves as my cautionary reminder to never stake my reputation on a bet as to how any restaurateur’s vision will be received by the dining public.
Having said that, I’m letting a little ride on some effusive praise for China Café, and ironically, for much the same reason my former Phoenix colleague decided to dislike Chang’s. The East-meets-West dynamic here really works for me. I appreciate the proprietary pedigree (Asian American business, family-owned and operated), the bustling Euro-bistro vibe, and love the slickly assertive service staff — always nattily-attired — who keep the in-demand tables turning.
Then there’s the food. While offerings of “old school” fried rice, fairly classic lo mein options, Crab Rangoon, and such provide predictable pleasures for the purist crowds, Café’s kitchen can take us cruising a little further from the heart of the Yangtze into stirring renditions of Pad Thai and Hawaiian-influenced fare as well. A card-carrying carnivore, I’ve somehow gotten stuck in the restaurant’s sizable Tofu section (try both the spicy basil and firecracker versions). Who knows? Maybe their rice-less cauliflower “fried rice” can shock my protein-saturated system next. Soups glistening with the clear craft of consommé art are slurp-worthy (a cultural compliment), and a precious little portion of their coconut-pineapple ice cream makes for a perfectly affordable ending ($4) to my meal, every time.
I’m no Nostradumbass. Stopping short of sticking my neck out and predicting the second coming of Chang’s dynastic Asian dining success for this little Jade Empire gem in Novi, what I will say is that I’ll buy stock in the IPO if it ever comes to that.
Consider those first-class jerk characters we all hated in the movie Titanic: Whatever you do or don’t believe about COVID-19, who’ll argue that these pandemic years haven’t proven a disaster to the restaurant industry? In one meteoric, viral strike, food costs went cataclysmic, a workforce disappeared like the dinosaurs, and countless business closures continue to amount to an extinction event for a corner of commerce everyone inhabits as consumers. We’ve all seen the signs at this point: “Please be patient. We have limited staff to serve you.” But does the message sink in? Are we sympathetic? One wonders. My news feeds tell me stories of restaurants struggling with stressed-out workers, managers, and owners finding themselves overmatched by impatient, entitled or otherwise challenging customers. And my conscience assures me I haven’t always been my best self while waiting to sit down, order, eat, or pay my tab, on more occasions than I care to admit here. And this admission comes from a guy who’s waited enough tables, tended enough bars, and cooked in enough crazy-busy commercial kitchens to know better.
Perchance you don’t know or remember what it’s like to strap on an apron and serve food for a living, rest assured: it’s no picnic. Try cooking a hundred-plus orders of eggs some morning, from soft-scrambled and sunny side up to over medium and poached. Maybe invite a mix of six or seven groups of people to your place for dinner: one or two couples (with and without kids), grandma and grandpa, your vegan friend with the friend who has food allergies, your neighbors who don’t like anything spicy, your fussy Aunt Edna, and that know-it-all from work that you just can’t stand, then wait on them. Oh, and have a few problem drinkers over, too, ‘cause that’s always fun. If you still don’t get the picture, just imagine the predicament so many restaurateurs find themselves in these days; with bills and payrolls to pay, fridges and freezers full of food they’ve received on credit, and then being forced to let money go unspent by customer demand they can’t keep up with for lack of kitchen and/or dining room crew. Imagine just not having the hands-on-deck to grab the money folks happily fork over every day to get their grub on. We only see the open booth in the unmanned section as somewhere we should be allowed to sit immediately, the skeleton crew service as unacceptably slow, and the restaurant struggling mightily to stay afloat as simply a sinking ship we’d sooner abandon than stay and help bail-out.
That’s when and how we become no better than those snooty Titanic passengers; seeing ourselves as merely inconvenienced by some others’ misfortunes, failing to seriously consider — or care about — what’s really going down around us.
Show-stopper: Like the song says, “People are crazy.” And some you meet where folks eat prove a prime example. Consider the customer I waited on some 30 years ago in a fancy, French bistro in Phoenix. Heir to an iconic American meat packing empire, he sat for lunch one day in my section and ordered a big, expensive bottle of Bordeaux first-thing. After it was opened, I was requested to take the cork to the kitchen and have it ground. I did so fully expecting to be questioned as to why. Instead, the cook I approached just took the cork from my hand without me having to explain, saying, “Wait here. I need my cleaver for this.”
Returning to the table with my little monkey dish of chopped tree underbark, I assumed this was just something wine snobs do. I was still a relative fine dining rookie in those days, so it was all new to me. Expecting the guy would either thumb through or sniff the crumble to find whatever he was looking for, he waited, instead, until his Frisée salad arrived, then sprinkled some on top before asking me for a few turns of crushed black pepper.
I chewed on the strangeness of the experience the rest of my shift without saying a word, for fear I’d expose myself as a wine service amateur ignorant of the fact that the best wine corks can also serve as croutons or bacon bits substitutes. It was only as I was leaving for the day that I learned the truth of the matter, which went on to prove itself even more profoundly over the course of my restaurant career.
“So, Chef told me you waited on So-and-So today,” my manager said to me with a wry smile during my check-out. “The guy eats cork. Can you imagine? He’s even crazier than he is rich, and that’s saying something.”
That was the first and last time I ever saw someone eat cork. Still, that tale doesn’t crack the top twenty wild stories I could share about life in bars and restaurants. You live, you learn everywhere, true enough. But if you do enough time in the food and beverage business, you get quite a taste of just how out there our appetites for indulgence can be. Stay tuned.
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