We’ll begin serving breakfast and lunch on May 4th, with a focused selection of Michigan craft beers and an abbreviated wine list. Dinner service begins Memorial Day weekend, with a full bar. Join us this summer at our newly-renovated Café for a unique Northern Michigan dining experience!

cheerful yellow café doors

view from the front door on lake street

seating in the gelato shop

a view of the bar

six seats at the bar

handcrafted bar stools in black walnut

a cozy banquette along the brick wall

comfy seating with a view of both the park and lake street

raw edge walnut table with room for larger parties

spring panzanella with asparagus, peas, & pickled wild leeks

our café burger with onion jam & whole seed mustard

On Friday, January 13th, our Wild Thimbleberry Jam was named a 2012 Good Food Awards Winner! We spent a gorgeous weekend in San Francisco attending a variety of Good Food Awards events and meeting dedicated food artisans from all over the country. Culinary Director Chris Dettmer proudly accepted the award on behalf of American Spoon on Friday night, and we were inspired by Ruth Reichl’s heartfelt keynote address at the awards ceremony. On Saturday, we set up a small table at the iconic Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and spent the day sharing tastes of our Wild Thimbleberry Jam with hundreds of good-food-loving local and visitors, most of whom had never heard of a wild thimbleberry before. Jars of this quintessentially northern jam made their way home with folks who fell in love with our beguiling wild berry, including Alice Waters herself, who tasted a spoonful and said, “Oh, I have to have it.”

The thimbleberry is a beguilingly tart, aromatic fruit that grows wild in northern climates, thriving in areas with cool summer temperatures. The large, velvety berries have a tangy taste reminiscent of currants and rasperries, with soft seeds that release their nutty flavor when chewed. Wild thimbleberries are beloved by both bears and humans, and for decades, we’ve worked with a handful of families in the Keweenaw Peninsula who beat the bears to the berries for us every year. In our kitchen, we prepare the scarlet berries by hand and carefully preserve them in our copper kettles using twice as much fruit as sugar.

We’re honored to be recognized for our long-standing commitment to capturing the singular flavors of exceptional fruits and for helping to sustain dedicated growers and foragers in rural communities across Northern Michigan. We’re so pleased that we had the opportunity to share our rare wild thimbleberry with such a devoted group of food artisans and aficionados, and we’re proud to be a part of this growing good food community.

It smells like chocolate in our kitchen today. Pure whole milk from Shetler Family Dairy is simmering gently in our kettles, and by the end of the day we’ll have filled about 400 jars with our new Chocolate Milk Caramel. It melds the creamy richness of dairy with the intense flavor of bittersweet chocolate and the warm, heady notes of Chinese Five Spice for a thick, chocolaty sauce that’s so special you’ll be tempted to eat it straight from the jar. Look for it online and in our stores next week.

We’re delighted to announce that American Spoon has been named a finalist for the second annual Good Food Awards! In a blind tasting, judges (judges like Alice Waters and Ruth Reichl!) selected our Heirloom Tomato Preserves and our Wild Thimbleberry Jam as finalists for this prestigious award honoring sustainability and craftsmanship.

For nearly thirty years, we’ve worked to build direct and personal relationships with independent fruit growers and foragers all over Michigan’s Northern Fruitlands. The Brandywine tomatoes for our coveted Heirloom Tomato Preserves are grown right here by a handful of Northern Michigan family farmers, and every summer we work with local residents of the Keweenaw Peninsula to pick precious wild thimbleberries for our Wild Thimbleberry Jam. Once they’re delivered to our kitchen, we prepare them by hand and carefully preserve them in our copper kettles using twice as much fruit as sugar and a little pure lemon juice.

We’re honored to be recognized for our long-standing commitment to capturing the singular flavors of exceptional fruits and for helping to sustain dedicated growers and foragers in rural communities across Northern Michigan. Our Heirloom Tomato Preserves and our Wild Thimbleberry Jam are exactly what good food is all about.

Winners will be announced on January 13th, 2012 at a ceremony at San Francisco’s iconic Ferry Building. Our supply of Wild Thimbleberry Jam should last until then, but Heirloom Tomato Preserves are already nearly sold out! We’re thrilled to be in such great company, and you can learn more about the awards and see a full list of finalists here.