Check it out! - Muer Kitchens

MUER KITCHENS
Clockwise from top left: Muer Kitchen’s State St. in Harbor
Springs (former location of Mustang Wendy’s).
Susan Muer in front of a photo of her father Chuck in her
Harbor Springs restaurant honoring his name.
Signature family recipes like Maryland crab cakes, Tenderloin sliders, German pancakes, JL Hudson Maurice salad, Grandpa Joe’s white bean salad with cottage cheese
and pumpernickel are sure to delight any palate. Photos
by Peg Muzzall.
By Kristi Kates
THE SCENE
Decorated in calming pale blues and greens
with a hint of red, Susan Muer’s new restaurant
opened July 12, offering just 38 seats and décor
that combines the best of lakeshore living with a
peek at her family’s restaurant history. It’s a petite
environment welcoming for any meal of the day.
“I’ve included some pictures of my family and some vintage newspaper articles about
our restaurants,” Muer said. “Our family also
collected art, so I have some vintage paintings
here, as well — all water or ski-themed.”
In addition to in-restaurant dining, Muer
is including a prepared foods take-out area for
grab n’ go items like crab cakes or salads.
“Sometimes people are in a hurry and just
don’t want to cook,” she said. “We love having
them here, but this is another great option.”
THE MENU
Muer Kitchens started by serving breakfast
and lunch only, but the restaurant plans to add
dinners in mid-October. Most everything is
made from scratch with organic eggs, organic
chicken and local farm produce. Muer herself
isn’t just front-of-house, but prefers to run her
restaurant “from the kitchen.”
Breakfasts are a definite change from the
norm. The Eggs Benedict Muer Style is served
with crab cakes; German pancakes feature a big,
light mass of fluffy pancake served with powdered sugar and lemon; and the Old Charleston
Shrimp and Grits — yes, for breakfast — features the southern corn-based porridge with
plump shrimp for protein.
Lunch features dishes like Muer Salmon
Cake Sliders with Dijon mustard sauce and
field greens on organic slider rolls; the Black
and Blue Burger, with blackened prime angus
sirloin on a roll with red onion and Roquefort
cheese; and the J.L. Hudson Maurice Salad, a
julienned ham/turkey/Swiss mix with the famous Maurice dressing served at the Detroit
Hudson’s department store.
New dinner selections will include a BBQ
baby back ribs recipe from Muer’s The Shaft restaurant in Aspen, Col., Seafood Pasta Pagliara
and Salmon En Papillote (steamed in paper).
“And for appetizers, we’ll have our smoked
salmon quesadilla with Boursin® cheese and
capers, mussels in Dijon sauce, and Joe Muer’s
white bean salad, the same one they served 85
years ago,” Muer said.
THE BEST
The most popular dish at Muer Kitchens
is the Maryland blue lump crab cakes, by far,
Muer said.
“There are different levels of crab meat,”
she explained, “from flake on up. We use the
premium blue lump for our crab cakes and everybody just loves them.”
Muer’s New England Seafood Pot Pie is another dish sure to bring the cold crowds in after
skiing this winter. It features salmon, scallops
and shrimp, plus onions and carrots in a sherrycream sauce beneath a pot pie crust.
“It’s just one of those comfort foods you come
back and get again and again,” Muer said.
Their non-alcoholic sangria is also a favorite, especially in the summer months. It’s a
special blend of cherry, pomegranate and orange juices that makes a refreshing, but not too
sweet, drink.
THE REST OF THE STORY
Muer’s restaurant family roots are well
known. Her great-grandfather founded Joe Muer
Seafood in Detroit 85 years ago. In the 1960s,
her father went out on his own and started the
Charley’s Crab chain of restaurants, resulting in
28 restaurants that operated for 40 years before
they were sold to new owners by the Muer siblings. The red highlights in Muer Kitchens’ décor
are a nod to these family restaurants.
Muer’s parents were lost at sea while on a
boat excursion in 1993. She’s made it her mission to bring the original Muer foods back into
the limelight.
“I felt it necessary to bring their food back
and I think that a lot of people have missed it,”
she said.
She’s has plenty of experience. Muer attended the Culinary Institute of America and
also runs a Detroit-based wholesale sweets
business called Johnny B’s Cookies, named after her husband John Buda.
“But we decided we wanted to live Up North,
so I started creating a new concept of Muer food.
The days of five-stars and white tablecloths are
gone; times have changed. So I like to call it ‘nothing fancy but the food,’” she said.
A lot of the recipes will be familiar to anyone who’s dined at Muer’s or Charlie’s Crab,
and part of Muer’s culinary goal is to “bring
those memories back.”
“Muer Kitchens is not just about me,” she
said. “It’s about every person I’ve ever cooked
with and every restaurant I’ve ever worked in.”
THE SKINNY
Appetizers start at $7.75, breakfasts at
$5.75, lunches at $8, and dinner entrees at
$12.75. Muer Kitchens is located at 131 State
Street in downtown Harbor Springs and is open
8am-3pm daily until dinner service begins. For
more information, call (231) 412-5003 or visit
them online at muerkitchens.com.
Northern Express Weekly • october 5, 2015 • 23