Food : In the News

Metromode regular contributor Nicole Rupersburg is a writer who wears a dizzying number of hats. On her Eat It Detroit blog she offers up five must-attend summer fests for metro Detroit. Be there or be square!

Excerpt:

"Summer in Michigan can mean only one thing: a whole year's worth of partying, festivals and events crammed into four months. To be fair, there's something happening somewhere around town pretty much every single weekend all year round (even in the post-holiday doldrums of January), but summer is when there are SO many events that to simply sit on a patio soaking in the sun seems passé. (Besides, that's what Mondays are for.) Now that summer is officially here (versus being unofficially here since, like, March), here are some of the summer's best fests."

Read the rest here.

Metromode has always admired the folks at B. Nektar and this video does a good job of capturing what they're all about.

Give it a look.

In celebration of last week's American Craft Beer Week HuffPo featured the best of Metro D's brews in a wonderful photo essay. Feel free to heartily voice your support or angrily disagree.

Excerpt:

"There's all sorts of good beer news on the far side Michigan: Grand Rapids just tied Ashville, N.C., in a widespread online poll for the title of Beer City USA.

But you don’t have to drive west, or to Asheville, to get great craft beer. There's plenty of breweries in Detroit and the metro area."

Read the rest here.

Metromode has long sung the praises of the food truck movement and it looks like others are catching up. This month Ferndale will host "Street Eats," a celebration of mobile food vendors. The idea is to make it a once-a-month event.

Excerpt:

"The event will be similar to the food truck rally at the Farmer's Market in Royal Oak earlier this month, which at only halfway through the event saw 1,200 customers served by the six food trucks and a cart from Treat Dreams in Ferndale.

The event was sponsored by the Michigan Mobile Food Vendors Association."

Read the rest here.

Camera or no camera, the food rush is on in Detroit. In this episode of "Bizarre Foods America", the Travel Channel guzzles up soul food, BBQs pig head and other meaty picnic dishes with the Detroit Mower Gang, guzzles more soul food, and shares a Ramadan feast with a Dearborn family.

See the highlights here.

Looking for that post-Valentine's dinner date? Ring ahead for a table at Birmingham's Forest Grill or Bacco Ristorante in Southfield. Chefs David Gilbert (Forest Grill) and Luciano Del Signore (Bacco) are contenders for a James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef in the Great Lakes region.

More on this story here.

Put this in the "Betcha didn't know" column. Living Essentials, the company that makes the 5-Hour Energy drink (and has sued out of existence the 6-Hour and 8-Hour Energy copycats) is a billion-dollar company in our own backyard. That's right, billion -- with a "b".

Excerpt:

"The privately held Living Essentials doesn’t report revenue or profits, but a source with knowledge of its financials says the company grossed north of $600 million last year on that $1 billion at retail. The source says the company netted about $300 million. Checkout scan data from research firm SymphonyIRI say that 5-Hour has 90% of the energy-shotmarket. Its closest competitor, NVE Pharmaceuticals’ Stacker brand, has just over 3%.

Yet Bhargava, 58, is so under the radar that he barely registers on Web searches. His paper trail is thin, consisting primarily of more than 90 lawsuits. This is his first press interview. “I’m killing it right now,” he says, adjusting a black zip-up cardigan from behind the table of a soulless conference room in a beige low-rise building in a suburban business park in Farmington Hills, Mich. “But you’ll Google me and find, like, some lawyer in Singapore.”

Read the rest here.

Adapt or die is the mantra for business and that holds for apple growers too. Taking a page from Michigan's successful Pure Michigan campaign, Michigan Apples has partnered with the state to push Mitten-made fruit online. The results have been impressive.

Excerpt:

"Some stores in suburban Chicago were provided with in-store chef demos, which were also very popular. Community events in Chicago included Oktoberfest and Legoland® family activities, as well as a chef-led cooking event for bloggers, nutritionists and journalists in downtown Chicago.

The intense October-long promotion in Chicago generated 56 million impressions, about 90 percent of them in a targeted retail environment where consumers make their purchasing decisions."

Read the rest here.

It's nice to see the narrative shift from broken Detroit to can-do Detroit, but could someone tell these out-of-town journalists that Detroit actually has grocery stores?

Excerpts:

"Nevertheless, there is more than just demolition in Detroit. Families who have lived there for generations, as well as recent transplants, are taking back their city with their own hands. Old Detroit still offers a stunning collection of art deco architecture, a museum with a billion-dollar art collection, and a solid manufacturing infrastructure.

Now, all of it will be embedded in an environment that offers both the urban and the rural. And it is the rural, built with those determined hands, that could change our conceptions of what a city is. Detroit will be model for ageing cities and towns looking for a redefinition.

The wide open spaces now prevalent throughout Detroit have given residents an opportunity to reconnect with their food. With supermarkets almost non-existent and drugstores selling mostly processed food (or fresh food imported from South America), civil organizations such as Earthworks are teaching local people everything about growing fruits and vegetables, including planting, harvesting, composting and canning."

Read the rest of the story here.

You jump through enough hoops...

Given Metromode's recent coverage of the budding food truck scene in metro Detroit (we wanted to write 'blossoming' but it's still early days) we thought it right to update Detroit's contribution to the trend. Finally.

Excerpt:

""El Guapo is the first one to have secured a space through the Buildings, Safety, Engineering and Environmental Department," the manager said.

While other food truck operators in downtown Detroit have set up shop without permits, Anthony Curis and Doug Runyon, co-owners of El Guapo, made dozens of trips to City Hall to find a path to legality. "

Read the rest of the story here.