Meat and Potatoes

We are fortunate, oh so fortunate and grateful that there is a farmer just up the road who sells us ground beef and potatoes every week to cook and serve for you. We drive over to Bahrman Farm and pick up big bags of (un-sprayed) potatoes and their ground beef that's been processed at a USDA inspected facility in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and returned to Bahrman's for sale to us. It's beef from their cows; it's just that simple. And though we take for granted that concept of simplicity, what apparently lurks in the corporate food world  is not quite as simple. Do we really want our food so engineered? When I look at a plate of food in our restaurant, I realize that I can visually see almost all of our ingredients almost all of the time. That's because there aren't any packages lurking in the back, filled with numerous unrecognizable ingredients. 

We make most everything from recipe. Often we'll have a guest with a particular allergy or dietary restriction, and though almost always I feel sure about all of our ingredients, I'll still walk in the back, grab the recipe, and go over it with the customer.  If it does include a complex ingredient, such as ketchup, the jug comes with me so we can discuss all of the details.  Digestion has to be better if one's really sure about what one's eating. We read the ingredients on a well known national cheesecake in a store the other night. The list was as big as this paragraph. Really? We use six ingredients, and, OMG it's fantastic! Our caramel sauce? Two ingredients on the stove. That's it. No more. Your hot cocoa? Four ingredients. Simple stuff.

Two things have been true since we opened: 

"Simplicity" tastes so much better.

"Local" is consistently higher quality than the alternative.

Stop in. Relax.