Greenspace Cafe

Greenspace Cafe
http://greenspacecafe.com/
215 West Nine Mile Road, Ferndale, MI 48220
QISA (4, 4, 4, 4), $13-20, Vegan

While looking for a new vegetarian restaurant to patronize in the Detroit Metro area, I came upon Greenspace Cafe, a fancy, vegan, kosher restaurant and bar along the fashionable Nine Mile Road in downtown Ferndale, just north of Detroit proper. The restaurant was started by Dr. Joel Kahn, a “plant-based cardiologist who combines the best of Western and complementary therapies for total healing.” Kahn, who was voted “Sexiest Male Vegan Over 50 by PeTA,” has created a plant-based restaurant and bar “inspired by health, as well as global culinary traditions and Detroit’s exciting artisan food culture.” His restaurant focuses on subtle flavors, textural variety, and fresh ingredients. The mixed drinks incorporate the therapeutic benefits of various fruits and botanicals and uses raw organic juices to become healthier versions of their standard form.

There was no way in Hell I was missing out on this one.

With its wooden Jenga block art motif and slightly too loud music, the restaurant was clearly going for a trendy vibe to wrap around its healthy vegan focus. However, the wait staff were very friendly, and the clientele included everyone from swanky 20-somethings, to middle-aged men and women in business suits, to elderly refugees from old Jewish diners. I felt perfectly at home.

I started with an Autumn’s Cup, a cocktail of cardamom birch bark infused rum, Saskatoon jam, fresh lime, orange bitters, and a wedge of blood orange. Although the drink started on the palate like a standard citrusy cocktail, it had a complexity that made you sit and think while exotic flavors danced at the borders of your subconscious. I felt all sorts of sophisticated.

I then began my meal with a cup of red lentil shorba, a North African stew with a dollop of green chermoula in the center that provided a sharp tangy contrast to the mild, comforting soup. The entire dish was artfully decorated by a swirl of cashew labneh on the top. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, I know that chermoula is a lemony marinade used in Tunisian and Moroccan cooking. Shorba is a type of stew found in the Balkans, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. And labneh is a strained yoghurt cheese. I felt all kinds of cosmopolitan with my new found worldly knowledge.

Finally, I got to my main course, a Chiapas Bowl, which was an esthetically rendered mix of seasoned black beans, chips, greens, quinoa, corn, and tofu, each residing in its own sector. The dish was a work of art unto itself. Although it was marked “spicy” on the menu, it wasn’t really. Rather, the flavors were subtle, focusing more on the inherit flavors of each ingredient, brought out through gentle cooking. “Oh,” I found myself saying, “That’s what quinoa is supposed to taste like.” The tofu, which was a local organic Michigan product called Panda Brand, was lightly marinated and baked, giving it a strong texture but mild flavor.

For dessert, I had a piece of turtle cheesecake. The cheesecake was a little small for its $8.00 cost, but considering how full I already was, it was the perfect denouement to the meal. The cheesecake had a slightly yoghurty tang that seems to be typical of vegan cheesecakes, but it had a ribbon of chocolate throughout, and it was covered with chocolate and caramel sauces that upped the decadence factor. The crust was a chocolate coconut crust, which was a different take on the standard crumb crust, but very effective and very delicious.

The restaurant is certified kosher by Kosher Michigan, which makes it the perfect place to take your Jewish vegan date. And the prices are quite reasonable for this type of restaurant, which means you can impress your date without wiping out your bank account. In fact, men, I would recommend you target Jewish vegan women and put Greenspace Cafe in your arsenal of romantic moves. It will show your woman that you are a self-confident, sophisticated, worldly, eco-conscious, and yet surprisingly physically fit suitor. Just pray that Dr. Joel Kahn is not there that night. I mean, really. Nobody needs that kind of competition.

Om Cafe

Om Cafe
http://omcafe.com/
23136 Woodward Ave, Ferndale, MI 48220
Vegetarian (Vegan Friendly)
QISA (4, 4, 3.5, 3.5), $11-14, Vegetarian (Vegan-Friendly)

It was a cold, wet, snowy day when I stumbled into the Om Cafe.

Wow. That last sentence reads like Robert Frost smoking pot with the crew of the Firesign Theater. Kids, go ask your parents. I’ll wait.

Perhaps, I should start again.

The Om Cafe is a 31-year old family affair, started way back in 1985 by a Colleen Smiley. The restaurant’s Website describes Colleen as a woman who was “waging a war of vegetables against meat, antibiotics, growth hormones and processed food.” Passed on to her eldest son Jason Smiley, and then eventually passed on to Jessica Norwood, a woman, “whose parents had been bringing her to the Om Cafe she she was three years old,” this hippie hideaway is obviously a labor of love.

Any epicurean establishment started as a political movement runs the risk of being a relic, a testament to a by-gone era. I’ve seen this time and time again, typically with old natural food co-ops that never learned to keep up with the Trader Joe’s, Wild Oats, or Whole Foods phenomenon. I’ve seen it with old vegan lunch spots that never learned how to marry flavor with fervor and that simply crank out food that tastes raw, earthy, and unrefined. Frankly, I was surprised to find out the Om Cafe was as old as it was; it felt like a new entrant into the vegetarian food market.

The interior of the small restaurant was decorated with strikingly colorful paintings by SooMee Lee, a local artist with her own expressionistic style. The alt rock music over the loudspeaker made me think of a particularly trippy Pink Floyd album with violins added in, but in a good way. Needless to say, the restaurant was creating its own modernistic style that leaned toward “in your face” but then fell back toward its own aesthetic groove.

I’d even be willing to go out on a limb and guess that back in 1985, there was a lot more paisley and sitar music, and a lot less trippy modern aesthetic groove with violins. But that’s just a guess.

Even the food has its own artistic flair. I ordered the El Mexicano, a big plate of loaded nachos, which was a crazy flavor mix of beans, black olives, kalamata olives, baked tofu wedges, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado, jalapeno slides, and onion. It was a group think of spicy, salty, chunky, crunchy, and meaty, all vying for the attention of your tastebuds. It was as if the color palate on the walls was bleeding into the food. But in a good way.

The meal was also my first experience with kukicha tea, a tea composed of stems, stalks, and twigs, giving it an earthy, toasty, and slight carob flavor. The tea was served with a slice of lemon, which added even more flavors to the taste palate. The fact that I got free refills didn’t hurt either.

The menu is not very large, but I have to give them points for originality. The loaded vegan mac, for example, adds kale and tofu to the noodles and mac sauce and tops the entire dish with crushed peanuts, cilantro, and lime. It’s macaroni and cheese meets pad thai. The General Tso Dinner is a mix of sauteed broccoli, cremini mushrooms, diced organic tofu, organic brown rice, and black sesame seeds, all covered with their house made sauce of ginger, tamari, and sesame oil. And bottles of tamari and sriracha join the salt and pepper as standard table condiments.

My only complaint was that at times, the restaurant felt a little too much like an art gallery. The waiter, for example, seemed a bit stand-offish and perfunctory in his duties until I asked him questions about the tea. Only then did he engage me in more than the basic level of human interaction.

Maybe this is what happens with any local family restaurant when one’s clientele becomes so local that the restaurant forgets to reach out to the strangers, the travelers, the new vegetarians, or the casual explorers. If so, this just won’t do. Not if they expect to last another 31 years.

Of course by then, a whole new generation will be in charge of the restaurant, and the style will shift again to match the times. The artwork will be neo-socialist retro steampunk and the menu will be inspired by farm-to-table pan-African-fusion cuisine.

I don’t know. Don’t ask me. I’m sure I will need my grandkids to explain it all to me over a shared plate of loaded nachos.