East end of downtown turning into food stop

Food

Related Photos

Chef and proprietor Eric Patterson works in the kitchen at The Cook's House during a Wednesday lunch. The restaurant has moved from its former location on East Front Street to nearby Wellington Street, combining with the Wellington Street Market to give The Cook's House 10 more seats and triple its kitchen space. Record-Eagle/Jan-Michael Stump
Black Tie cupcakes from Simply Cupcakes on East Front Street. Record-Eagle/Jan-Michael Stump

October 18, 2010

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS mdrahos@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Mon Oct 18, 2010, 07:37 AM EDT

TRAVERSE CITY — A new foodie neighborhood is springing up around East Front and Wellington.

The Cooks' House is moving, 9 Bean Rows is moving in and — wait, what's that? A cupcake shop?

Good thing, small package

No sooner had Len Mayhew put out the open sign than a line formed at Simply Cupcakes.

"We've sold out every day since," said Mayhew, owner of the new cupcake shop at 445 E. Front St. with his partner, David McClary.

Fashioned after gourmet cupcake bakeries in big cities, the shop opened Sept. 24 in a renovated framing store. It features pink-and-white checked flooring, white beadboard wainscoting, turquoise walls with local art and, of course, fresh gourmet cupcakes on tiered stands.

Mayhew, the go-to guy in his family for baking, quit his job as an insurance salesman to devote himself to a more fulfilling business. Now some 25 to 35 dozen cupcakes fly out the door each day.

Customer favorites include Black Tie: dark chocolate cake filled with buttercream, topped with chocolate ganache and finished with buttercream and chocolate shavings; Lemon Love: lemon cake filled with housemade lemon curd, topped with buttercream and curd and finished with lemon zest; and Key Lime: sour cream cake filled with housemade key lime curd, topped with buttercream and curd and finished with graham cracker crumbs and lime zest.

Other popular flavors are Red Velvet, Peanut Butter Passion, Hint of Mint, Silly Wabbit (carrot cake) and Funky Monkey (banana cake).

"They're not buying one flavor; they're buying one of each to sample," said Mayhew, who packs the sweets in signature bubblegum-pink boxes.

Menus rotate every day and are posted online and on a chalkboard inside. Customers get free coffee with their purchase.

"People love that," Mayhew said. "They can get a cupcake and a cup of coffee for the price of a latte down the street." Still to come are an L-shaped bar that will run the length of the Front Street window and barstools on which to linger over the treats.

"My hope is that people can enjoy them and I can be as creative as I want," Mayhew said.

The shop is open from 11 a.m. until "the last cupcake" — or around 5 p.m. Prices range from $2.75 for a 6-inch cupcake to $27 for a dozen; special orders are welcome. Customers who bring in their old boxes get 5 percent off.

Going, going, gone ... sort of

As a name, Wellington Street Market is a thing of the past. But customers can still get their favorite Wellington lunches and take-out, heat-up dinners at the Cooks' House, now located in the former market spot at 115 Wellington St.

The two eateries recently combined to make more seating for the Cooks' House — a prerequisite for a liquor license, said Chef Eric Patterson. The move boosts the restaurant to 30 seats and means two extra seatings during the most popular dinner hours, he added.

"Everyone wants 7 o'clock seating. We haven't been able to do that because we have 6, 6:30, 8 and 8:30 seating and we don't have enough tables over there," he said, referring to the old Cooks' House spot on East Front. "This will open up 10 extra seats for us. We're also going to have a cool little table for four that will be bumped up against the kitchen so (diners) can catch what's going on. It's our version of the chef's table."

Lunch will still be offered from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and packaged take-out from the deli case — including curries, lasagna,and pot pies — will be available through the dinner hours.

"Basically people can still come in for lunch and get the curry, wraps and all the things they like about Wellington," Patterson said. "Then at night, we'll put the white cloths on and serve Cooks' House dinner."

If it gets the liquor license, Patterson said the restaurant will be able to offer local and boutique domestic wines to complement its dinners centered around local, sustainable foods from farm and forest.

Best of all, he and chef partner Jennifer Blakeslee are cooking together again.

"For the past two years we've kind of had separate kitchens and the food has become his style and hers," Patterson said. "Now with the two of us together in the same kitchen, we're going to be able to produce the food that we originally wanted to produce.

"We're kind of Simon and Garfunkel," he added. "We're good separately, but we're even better together."

The stuff of life

Moving into the former Cooks' House spot at 439 E. Front St. is 9 Bean Rows Bakery, an artisan bakery specializing in naturally leavened breads baked in a wood-fired oven.

Starting Nov. 2, the shop will offer breads, pastries, crackers, coffee, tea, chocolate, juices, quiches and croque monsieur — a grilled ham and cheese sandwich — from 7 a.m. to noon Tuesday through Saturday.

"It's like a more permanent retail location for us," said Nic Welty, co-owner of the farm-market-based bakery with his wife, Jen. "We were doing seven markets a week last week and we'll be down to one in a few weeks."

Welty said the bakery will add to the neighborhood's developing food culture and offer another grab-and-go option for folks heading to work on Front Street. If foot traffic warrants, the couple may even consider selling vegetables from their Leelanau County farm.

Welty said the bakery will be similar to European-style bakeries, where customers shop daily for fresh bread and pastries.

"They don't have a bag. They usually just grab a loaf and throw it under their arm," he said. "That big window is an attraction, so I'm thinking of ways to make it a cool display, to have all the pastries in the window."

Baker Jen Welty's breads include baguette, sourdough, whole wheat, pain au levain (French bread made with sourdough starter), light rye, sea salt fennel, ciabatta and light wheat. Vienoisserie and pastries range from seasonal fruit tarts and croissants (butter, chocolate, almond, fruit with pastry cream and cream cheese) to brioche and — by special order only — chocolate mousse and chocolate eclairs.

While the bulk of the baking will take place in Black Star Farms' wood-fired pizza oven, some also will be done in the East Front kitchen. Welty said the couple is saving for a special oven with a 12-foot by 12-foot footprint.

"Our big long-term goal is trying to create a wood-fired bakery, and that involves a 45,000-pound oven," he said. "And we'll have to fly in someone from France who specializes in building these."

Meanwhile the bakery is taking memberships for a Community Supported Bakery to help fund the enterprise. Starting in March, participants will receive 50 weeks of bread, or about a loaf a week, for $162.