texasmesquite

Chef to bring heartland style to new Book Cadillac restaurant

BY SYLVIA RECTOR • Detroit FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • October 12, 2008

SUSAN TUSA/DFP
Michael Symon shaves his head, rides a Harley, roots for a losing pro football team and likes showing off his tattoos -- especially the one over his heart, where two flying hogs hold up a banner that brags, "Got Pork."

But those badges of blue-collar charisma aren't why Symon thinks he and Detroit will be such a great fit.
It's really all about the food -- hearty, meaty, Midwestern food.
A nationally celebrated chef, pioneering Cleveland restaurateur and permanent member of Food Network's "Iron Chef" team, Symon is the man behind Roast, the soon-to-open anchor restaurant of the $180-million Westin Book Cadillac Detroit.
With so much attention focused on the magnificently restored Book hotel and Symon's celebrity-chef name stirred into the mix, the project couldn't be more buzz-worthy.
Or more ... well, untraditional.
"For the most part, it's a meat house," he says. "There's going to be seven steaks, four chops, and we'll do a whole roasted animal of the day. ... It's like a pig roast. Every day will feature a different animal off the rotisserie. So one day it might be a suckling pig. The next day it might be goat. The next day it might be lamb."
The big wood-fired stainless steel rotisserie, custom-made for the restaurant, stands within view of the dining room, so guests can watch it roasting if they care to.
With the street-level space at the corner of Washington and State a construction zone last week, Symon wasn't ready to commit to a firm opening date -- though it shouldn't be too much longer.
But he took time out to talk with the Free Press about growing up in Cleveland, his life as a chef, how he ended up opening the Book's showcase restaurant and why he thinks it's just perfect for Detroit.
Family an influence

Symon grew up the son of a Greek and Italian mother and a father whose family was from eastern Europe. Dinner was cooked from scratch and eaten at home with the family seven nights a week.
"Everything big in my family transpired around the dinner table," he says. It was where everyone talked about their day, good or bad. "It wasn't just all about the food, it was all about the process, and the process is what I still love today," he says.
A "high-maintenance kid" with a lot of energy, he was a standout high school wrestler until a severely broken arm ended his career and cost him his college scholarships.
To help pay for tuition, he took a job in a Cleveland rib joint and fell in love with the business.
He went to the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., working in Manhattan restaurants on the side. After graduating, he says, "I had the opportunity to stay, but I have a Greek mother. I'd been gone for three years, and she wanted me to come home. So I did."
Making his mark

Widely credited with helping spark a restaurant renaissance in his hometown, Symon, 39, gives much of the credit to good timing.
When he got home in 1990, he says, there were "three restaurants trying to be a little unique." He had worked at two of them, so he headed to the third, Players, where he met his wife, Liz.
Not long after, they teamed up to run a little place called Caxton Café with cutting-edge food and 40 seats. "The city just took to it. It got an enormous amount of local press" and some national notice, Symon says.
Then in 1996 they opened their own place, Lola, casual and funky with sophisticated food in a transitional neighborhood called Historic Tremont. Only two years later, Food & Wine named him one of the 10 best new chefs in America.
"I'm obviously good at what I do, but life is timing -- right place and right time. I was fortunate. ... Food & Wine came, and then Gourmet and then Bon Appetit.
"We were getting all this national attention, and I think it gave a younger generation of chefs -- who, like me, had left to learn in New York or San Francisco -- it gave them the confidence they could come back to their hometown and have success."
Cleveland today is "a little mini-mecca of a food scene," Symon says. It has a vibrant farm-to-table movement, farmers markets as good as any in America and 15 to 20 restaurants "you could put anywhere in the country and they'd be successful," Symon says.
"There's a lot of depth of people doing things the right way," he adds. "I don't think you can say that about a lot of cities."
The Symons and their business partner, Doug Petkovic, own two of those venues. There's the new, fancier Lola, now located downtown, and Lolita, a more casual spot in Lola's original digs in Tremont -- a neighborhood now dotted with galleries, shops and many other restaurants.
Symon, of course, has become a fixture on Food Network after winning a coveted "Iron Chef" title in a season-long competition in 2007 and was tapped this year to take over the "Dinner: Impossible" series.
Love at first sight

It took the three of them about six hours after seeing the Book Cadillac and walking around downtown Detroit to decide to do a restaurant here.
He had been asked to look at the space by developer and hotel owner John Ferchill of Cleveland, whose family Symon has known since he was 13.
"He said, 'Mike, I'm doing this beautiful historic hotel, and we want to put a restaurant in there, and I want you to put it in.'
"So here's this guy who has been there for me since I was a kid, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. ... He was so passionate, he said, let's go look at it."
They fell in love with the building and instantly felt comfortable in Detroit, the chef says. "I think it's because it's a lot like Cleveland. It's a hard-knocks, blue-collar town -- and we like that, you know?" he says, breaking into the indescribable laugh his television audience knows so well.
"We knew we could go back and forth regularly and really oversee it. We weren't going to come and open a restaurant and put our name on it and walk away."
Then they went home and asked Lola's executive chef Derek Clayton and pastry chef Cory Barrett -- both of whom previously worked at Tribute in Farmington Hills -- what they thought about it.
"The thing they both said is, 'Chef, it's like Cleveland. The people are like Cleveland. The city is developing like Cleveland. We both have bad football teams,' " said Symon, a die-hard Browns fan.
Just like Cleveland

But will Detroit take to a Cleveland chef and his style of cuisine?
"I think it is like Cleveland -- a very Midwestern city with those Midwestern values, and at the end of the day, I cook a very Midwestern style. It's who I am.
"I have a passion for meat, for things predominant in the Midwest, for some of those eastern European flavors and those Mediterranean flavors" -- the flavors of his childhood.
"The food I do at Lola and Lolita and the food we're going to do at Roast is extremely approachable. It's not pretentious. It's ... like Detroit."
Focus to be on meat

"We're going to do prime dried steaks. We're going to do heritage animals, different kinds of pork. Roasted goat. Baby lamb. Everything will be wood- or charcoal-fired," he says.
"There will be some seafood options and some vegetables on the menu, but at the end of the day it's a very meat-focused restaurant."
Former Big Rock Chop House executive chef Jeff Rose will be in charge of Roast's kitchens, though Symon will be at the restaurant frequently, especially in the beginning.
He plans to keep prices below those of the casino restaurants, he says.
"There will be plenty of menu options in the $18 to $22 range. ... Prime dried beef comes with a price, and it costs what it costs." But his prime aged steaks will be more in the $30s, rather than the $40s, he says.
"We're not going to hammer people. That's not how we do business."
And while Roast may be the most important restaurant at the most impressive hotel in Detroit, Symon wants it to be enjoyable.
"If you want to come in jeans, if you want to come in a suit, you can be comfortable no matter how you look or how you're dressed or what your food loves or phobias are."
"I love great food, obviously, and I have incredible respect for chefs who put out great food," he says.
"But I don't think people go out to dinner to pay homage to the chef. They go out to dinner to have a great meal and a great experience and have a lot of fun."