TRAVERSE CITY -- Some people joke that "For Sale" signs are the true sign of a northern Michigan spring, but it almost feels like "Now Open" might be in the running.
New restaurants are springing up like tulips, offering everything from pastrami to pastries. We explored a few of them.
-- Cherry Bowl Gifts and Goodies, 1234 U.S. 31, just south of Honor, next to the Cherry Bowl Drive-In; 325-3333; open 10 a.m.-7 p.m. seven days a week; no smoking; cards accepted.
If you've been to the drive-in, you've heard The Voice. It's Harry Clark's and it's his real voice. He jokes, bellows and tells long, funny stories to everyone he sees.
And now he serves food.
Cherry Bowl Charlie's Cafe is tucked into the back of the gift shop and specializes in baked goods, sandwiches and dessert, with an emphasis on local.
"Everything we bake is made from local fruit," Clark said. "I've got an asparagus farmer and we'll sell his asparagus and make asparagus quiche. Blueberries, cherries, strawberries, you name it."
A daily blue plate special sells for $4.95; example: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and a homemade biscuit. "You don't have to have a stimulus plan to eat here," Clark bellows.
All the food is made from scratch, including six or seven kinds of quiche, pasties, cheesecakes and brownies as big as your head. "That's a single serving!" Clark chortles.
There are 15 different "sandwich meals" that sell for $6.99 and include a sandwich, chips, a pickle and a dessert (a cookie or a cheesecake bite, for instance); salads, pies and homemade soups.
Food is available to eat in or take out. Local foods also pepper the gift shop, including Food For Thought products, Sleeping Bear honey and Leelanau Coffee. Soft-serve ice cream is also available.
Clark says the gift shop/cafe will be open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week beginning in June.
-- Bud's (Coffee, Ice Cream, Food), 3061 M-137, Interlochen, next to Interlochen Community School; 276-9090; open 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; no smoking, free wi-fi; cards accepted.
Delicious coffee and lots of it kick-starts the day in Interlochen at this restaurant built where Bud's Resort Service gas station started pumping in the 1950s. The restaurant celebrates its one-year anniversary this month.
If a steaming cup of Bud's Organic Blend doesn't seem like a complete breakfast, try one of the cake doughnuts made fresh daily. Other favorites at the restaurant include the cherry chicken salad sandwich ($6.99), daily soups ($2.99/cup, $3.99/bowl); and the burgers are "fabulous," according to the counter staff -- a classic is $5.99; the Dockside, with feta, red onions, lettuce and Bud's sauce on a pretzel bun is $6.99.
Soft-serve and hard ice cream are both available; the hard ice cream comes from a variety of sources after owner Sue Bowen taste-tested individual offerings at an ice cream show.
-- Rich's Family Diner, 2480 M-137, Interlochen; 276-6270; open 7 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday through Sunday; no smoking, cards accepted.
Rich Michalski hasn't had a day off in five years and currently works two jobs for about 100-110 hours each week.
He loves it.
One the major pluses is that he's finally working for himself. After years of working in everyone else's restaurant, including Blondies, the Omelette Shoppe, Schelde's and others, Michalski opened his own restaurant in June 2008.
He cooks everything from scratch.
"For instance, the hash browns," he said. "You can buy bags of shredded hash browns and they're pretty good. But I prefer to boil my own potatoes, then shred them to order. It saves me $300 a week. I can employ someone to make the food from scratch."
If breakfast is king at Rich's, then the all-you-can-eat breakfast is the emperor. For $6.99 you can order off the menu -- eggs any style, bacon, sweet rolls, corned beef or roast beef hash, potatoes ... well, you get the picture -- and the food is cooked to order, from open to close, seven days a week.
-- Creative Expressions, 5818 U.S. 31 S., Grawn, next to the Pantry Shelf; 276-3354 (DELI); open 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Sundays; no smoking; cards accepted.
Don Paone may have left his home state of New Jersey, but he never lost his love for New Jersey food.
"I grew up in the land of delis," he said.
Paone owned the Creative Expressions deli in Onekama for 10 years before running the restaurant and hotel businesses at the Little River Casino. He also help start a casino in Oklahoma before finally opening his own place in March.
Sue Hastings, of Traverse City, who works at Mother Goose Time day care in Grawn, stops in regularly for bread baked on site at the deli.
"I really, really like it," she said, as she got the last loaf of cranberry-pecan bread. "I love it as toast."
Paone said he tries not to make more than he'll sell, which is why he was down to the last loaf that day even though Hastings would have bought another one. But whenever there is extra food, he donates it to single moms in the area.
"My mother was a single mother," he said.
Besides baking bread, the staff, enthusiastically led by chef Matthew Circle, stocks the full bakery with things like cinnamon rolls (giant and colossal), cupcakes, muffins and more. There are numerous single-serving salads, plus deli side dishes that include hummus, chicken-liver pate and "half-sour" pickles, like the ones Paone grew up with in Jersey.
With one eye on the economy, the deli offers low-cost sack lunches for $3.99 that include a sandwich, potato chips, a pickle and a thumbprint cookie filled with jam made by Circle's Dynaloma's Jam company. There's usually a "$1 slider" sandwich special (ham or turkey) and the best-selling gourmet sandwich -- the deli's "bread and butter" offering, Paone said -- is the Quirkey Turkey: smoked turkey, havarti cheese, bacon, alfalfa sprouts and cranberry-orange mayonnaise on sunflower multigrain bread for $7.99. Half sandwiches are $4.99.
Creative Expressions delivers lunches. The walls of the deli, which seats 30, are filled with local artwork, all of it for sale.
-- The Blue Pelican, 2535 N. Main St., Central Lake, in the old Lamplight Inn; 544-2583 (BLUE); opening in its new location the first week of June.
Chris Corbett likes to say his Blue Pelican restaurant is rising from the ashes, but he's actually reviving two businesses at once.
The Blue Pelican, heavily damaged in a fire in July 2008, is moving into Central Lake's mammoth Lamplight Inn. Corbett is up to his elbows in renovations of the two-story building, which includes seven hotel rooms. He expects he'll have spent $1 million before he's done.
"There's a brand-new kitchen, bathrooms, an addition ... We have a front covered porch that's 90 feet long, so we can seat 120 inside and 100 outside."
There's also a fenced-in area with picnic tables that he uses for his weekly community meals. The "Two-Dollar Tuesdays" serve around 300 people, he said, and are specifically for the people in the area who might not dine at the Blue Pelican otherwise. This year, the hamburgers and pulled pork sandwiches will be $3, but everything else will stay at $2, he said. He said the picnic-table seating is a great way for everyone to mingle.
The Pelican Room, at the corner of West Old State Road and East Torch Lake Drive, is still available for rentals, whether meetings or wedding receptions. A group of "ghostbusters" are spending this weekend at the inn so "the man and the woman dressed in 1930s clothing" rumored to roam the inn might not be around for long.
-- Gusto! Ristorante, 111 St. Joseph St., Suttons Bay, formerly Samuel's, 271-6222; www.gustoM22.com; opening May 22.
Sam Hybels closed Samuels last fall and renovated for this spring's opening of Gusto in downtown Suttons Bay.
"After 20 years of bistro-style white linen dining, I wanted to offer a more relaxed and casual mealtime experience," Hybels said. He pronounces the restaurant's name in the Italian fashion: GOO-stow.
The restaurant will serve Italian and American food and be open for lunch and dinner, Hybels said. He is especially excited about the baby back ribs and hand-tossed pizza, but pasta, seafood and steak are also on the menu.
"We're putting together the kind of place people will think of as a neighborhood home away from home, a place where you're always comfortable," Hybels said.
Later this summer, a rooftop patio will open.
-- The Roadhouse, 7983 U.S. 131 N., Mancelona, 258-4673; 6 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, 6 a.m.-2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday; smoking allowed; cards accepted.
On the site of the old Mother Lode is the 10-week-old Roadhouse, now serving breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as being a bar hangout.
According to chef Jim Lardie, some of the highlights are the Friday night fish fry (all you can eat for $10.99), the eight-ounce prime rib sandwich, served open face ($8.99) and the Oriental chicken salad with homemade dressing ($7.99).
The Roadhouse just opened for breakfast this week. Breakfast highlights include the Roadhouse Special, a five-egg omelette with housemade prime rib hash ($8.99) and Jim Bob's Country Breakfast, with three eggs, 2 sausage links, 2 slices of bacon, ham and hash browns ($8.99).
Lardie said there's karaoke on Tuesday and Thursday nights, with plans to bring in bands on the weekends beginning with Memorial Day weekend. He said a grand opening is planned for June 14, complete with a pig roast.
-- Cantina to be named later, 127 S. Union, Traverse City.
Matt and Mark Davies, owners of Graystone Farm, which runs the Peninsula Grill and Bad Dog Deli on the Old Mission Peninsula, Western Avenue Grill in Glen Arbor, Riverwalk Grill in Elk Rapids and Graystone Farm catering, bought the Taylor Printing building on Union Street with hopes of opening a Tex-Mex cantina in September.
"It'll be Tex-Mex and a little more," Matt Davies said. "We're looking at an upscale Southwest grill menu with good, mid-price Mexican food, in the $5 to $10 range."
He said they're working on getting a liquor license and plan to serve "great margaritas." They're still figuring out a name, but are leaning towards "Union Cantina" or "Union Street Cantina."
The interior has been gutted and they've been happy to find classic hardwood floors, old brick walls and tin ceilings, Matt Davies said. All those touches will be retained.
It is the restaurant group's first foray in the city of Traverse City.
"Everybody downtown seems to be doing the bistro, so low- to mid-price is needed," he said.
Short takes
-- The Village Ice Cream Shoppe, 413 M-113 (corner of Clark), Kingsley. 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 12:30 p.m.-9 p.m. Sunday; no smoking. Hamburgers, $3.75. BBQ pork sandwich, $4.50. Malts are $2.40 small, $2.95 medium, $3.75 large. Ashby hard ice cream, $2 for a single scoop, $3 for double, $3.75 triple. Specialty sundaes offered, including the Peanut Butter Crunch, $2.65/$3.40/$3.85.
-- Steven's Place, 738 S. Garfield, Traverse City; 929-8945. Now open for lunch 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., and fine dining beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. At 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Steven's offers "learn to dance" demonstrations, lessons, practices and a margarita for $15/person; at 7 p.m. Wednesdays, hear old piano standards. Friday and Saturdays, beginning at 7:30 p.m., live bands play music of the '60s through '80s.
-- Crow About It Coffee and Cakes, 1990 U.S. 31 N., corner of Four Mile Road, Traverse City; 421-3799; open 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturdays; and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sundays. There's live entertainment Saturdays from 8 to 10 p.m. with Open Mic Night the first Saturday of each month. Creative Expression Night second Sat., Poetry Open Mic Night third Sat., Concert Night with featured musicians fourth Saturday.
-- The Green Leaf Cafe; 301 St. Joseph St., # 3, Suttons Bay; 271-0301; open 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Tucked away Suttons Bay's main drag, this restaurant hopes to open May 21, serving local, organic, healthy food.
-- The Bowery, behind the Bowers Harbor Inn on the Old Mission Peninsula, closed on Halloween and the space has undergone renovations all winter, according to general manager Tim Kleynenberg. "It's structurally the same," he said, "but there's a brand-new bar, new furniture." The Jolly Pumpkin is scheduled to open May 22, featuring microbrews by master brewer Mike Hall, signature wines and, in the future, distilled spirits, such as vodka and rum. The menu will still include house-smoked barbecue ribs, but will also feature artisan pizzas, sandwiches and wood-grilled steaks. The new Peninsula Room on the property can accommodate up to 150 people for weddings, banquets and other special functions.
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