RapidBlog: Restaurant Week at The Spinnaker

Putting together great menus is what my team and I love to do. We have built a great team in the last year that knows what it takes to provide a great food experience for our guests. Joe Frizzell, executive sous chef, brings years of experience from the Amway Grand Plaza and Tre Cugini, and has the important skill of blending the right components together to make a great dish. Jayson Leek, kitchen supervisor, brings great experiences from his time with Bombay Cuisine and the Gilmore Collection and has a knack for keeping the kitchen in running order. All of us together, along with a great support crew of Nate, Marquis, Renee, Leysis, Jorge, Rich, Rachael, Eliel, Will, and Spencer work to keep a clean and organized kitchen, while providing the freshest and most local dishes we can for our hotel and local guests. What we love about Restaurant Week is that it gives us even more of an opportunity to "play" and show people what we can do. The Spinnaker has a rich local tradition and we are ready to be back on the scene as a great locally inspired restaurant competing with all the newest restaurants downtown.

For our Restaurant Week menu we have provided both a two people for $25 option, as well as the three courses for $25. This choice gives our guests a chance to dine lunch, lounge, or dinner, and choose what and when they want to eat. Working together with our local vendors, (Sysco, Superior, and Farmlink) we look to try and interject as many local ingredients as we can into our regular menu, and even more into our Restaurant Week menu! EIghty percent of our food and supplies come from Sysco, who provides us with the best product and does a great job of sourcing local when products are available. During the season they get almost of our produce from local farms, as well as, eggs from Sunrise Acres in Hudsonville all year round. They also supply us gelato and sorbetto from Palazzolo’s in Fennville, dressings from Litehouse in Lowell, pasta from Mama Mucci’s in Canton, Farm Country Cheese in Lakeview, and bread from R.W. Bakers in Muskegon.

We also use Superior for most of our steaks and seafood, and they have no problem tracking down whatever we need at anytime. Superior provides us with our chicken from Otto’s in Middleville, pork from Devries in Coopersville, Zoye Oil from Zeeland, Harrieta Hills Trout, Great Lakes Kettle Chips from Traverse City, Harrison Pickles from Edmore, Grassfields cheese from Coopersville as well as Blis Caviar, local honey, syrup, and mustards. West Michigan Farmlink is the final piece to the puzzle.

While I have used them in the past, the last six months we have really picked up the pace on supporting our local farms and vendors and truly care about supporting our community, while still using the best quality ingredients. For Restaurant Week 2013, we made no exceptions and are supporting Farmlink as much as possible. For this year's menu we have featured over 15 different local purveyors through Farmlink alone, 30 plus with our other vendors. We have also paired up with 2 Lads Winery in Traverse City for our Restaurant Week wine options.

Our first priority for this year's Restaurant Week menu was to incorporate as much local ingredients as we could into two distinctive menus.

We start out our 2 for $25 menu option with more of a laid back, relaxed lunch or lounge menu alternative. We’ve put together 3 different appetizers to share, choice of one entrée, and then choice of one dessert to share.
Our 2-for-$25 appetizers include:

• Smoked whole rabbits from S&S Lamb, braised with our signature honey barbeque sauce. Then, we blended Dancing Goat Creamery Chevre & Schmohz Brewery Hopknocker IPA with our best waffle recipe and finished this dish with a Cholula cream sauce.
• Our second appetizer option is our chicken wings from Otto’s Chicken, battered and deep fried, then tossed with our Creswick Farms bacon barbeque sauce, and served with Grassfields Leyden cheese dressing.
• The final appetizer choice is garlic-pepper rubbed whitefish from The Fish Mongers Wife, hot smoked in house. We serve this with local honey, Baked by B pretzel roll chips, Blis caviar, and Vertical Paradise microgreens

 
Our 2-for-25 entrees include:

• Two Heffron Farms slider burgers, with Farm Country Cheddar cheese, house made onion rings, and served on The Little Rooster Bread Company Garlic Pepper Rolls.
• Creswick Farms Babyback Ribs rubbed and smoked in house with our, Shady Side Farms baked beans, and Michigan sweet corn on the cob. This dish is probably one of my favorites as it incorporates nothing but local ingredients and blends smoky barbeque and good fresh products.
• Crispy fried buttermilk Otto’s chicken with Devries smoked pork, sweet cabbage slaw and Sriracha aioli for a little extra heat.

Our 2-for-$25 dessert course created by Executive Sous Chef Joe Frizzell includes:

• Farm fresh eggs from Sunrise Acres blended together into caramelized sugar crusted custard, and served with sweet cinnamon sugar potato crisps, and Fresh Blueberry Vanilla Sauce - both the potatoes and blueberries coming from Crisp Country Acres.
• Peach Crisp made with Michigan peaches, brown sugar, whole butter, cinnamon, pecans and puffed rice cereal and finished with Vanilla Bean Gelato from Palazzolo’s.  
• Creamy house Key Lime Pie with a sweet pastry crust, vanilla crème anglaise, whipped cream, and sugared limes.

On our 3 courses for $25 menu, we are offering a choice for each course with more upscale options.
Our 1-for-$25 Appetizers include:

• The garlic-pepper rubbed whitefish from The Fish Mongers Wife, hot smoked in house, served with local honey, Baked by B pretzel roll chips, Blis caviar, and Vertical Paradise microgreens.
• A fresh field green salad from Vertical Paradise Farms, with Dancing Goat Creamery chevre, sweet sugared pecans, fresh blueberries from Crisp Country Acres, and Blueberry Chardonnay vinaigrette.
• Beef Carpaccio made with Heffron Farms New York strip steak and served chilled with Grassfields Edam cheese, Old World Olive Press Summer Peach balsamic vinegar reduction and garlic olive oil along with Vertical Paradise microgreens.

Our 1-for-$25 Entrees include

• Fish Mongers Wife Potato Chip Crusted Walleye with sour cream and Great Lakes kettle chips and pan fried until golden and serve over soft polenta blended with Farm Country cheddar cheese, then served with baby arugula from Vertical Paradise Farms and a citrus cream sauce.
• S&S Lamb Rack crusted with fresh roasted garlic, rosemary, and Dijon mustard, and then roasted until medium rare. Served with our local Lamb Pastrami Hash (also from S&S Lamb), and our Schmohz Brewery Black Cherry Demi.
• Creswick Farms Flank Steak marinated in sweet soy, brown sugar, and mustard then grilled to perfection. Served with local baby spinach, pickled radish, and Creswick Farms bacon vinaigrette.

Our 1- for-$25 dessert course created by Executive Sous Chef Joe Frizzell includes:

• Farm fresh eggs from Sunrise Acres blended together into caramelized sugar crusted custard, and served with sweet cinnamon sugar potato crisps, and Fresh Blueberry Vanilla Sauce - both the potatoes and blueberries coming from Crisp Country Acres.
• Peach Crisp made with Michigan peaches, brown sugar, whole butter, cinnamon, pecans and puffed rice cereal and finished with Vanilla Bean Gelato from Palazzolo’s. 
• Creamy house Key Lime Pie with a sweet pastry crust, vanilla crème anglaise, whipped cream, and sugared limes.

 
We are very excited to be a part of this year's Restaurant Week, and hope that many people will join us for a great, local meal that they can tell their friends about. All of these menu options will be available at the Spinnaker Restaurant & Lounge through August 24.The 2 for $25 menu will only be available for lunch 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. or in the lounge after 11:00 a.m. Reservations are suggested.


Disclaimer: RapidBlogs are lightly edited and honor the stylistic decisions of the writer. Views and opinions expressed in RapidBlogs do not necessarily reflect the views of Rapid Growth Media or its staff.