Traverse City Record-Eagle,  July 4, 2003
CW's Bluewater Bistro -- a Holiday Makeover
For a town with so many hotels, Traverse City has remarkably few hotel restaurants where local folks head for dinner. Reflections at The Waterfront and Grand Traverse Resort's Trillium come to mind (and we still mourn the demise of the old Top of the Park). Those, however, are on the pricey side. Not so the new all-purpose, 3-in-1 restaurant at the Holiday Inn downtown.

   Opened in May after extensive remodeling of the old Portage Dining Room, it is called CW's Bluewater Bistro, and our first impression is that it offers a fine place to enjoy good food and guest-oriented service without paying an arm and a leg.

   Fans of the Holiday Inn's Friday night fish feasts can rest easy, too, because all-you-can-eat perch and whitefish are still on the Friday agenda. In fact, that's what one of us enjoyed on our first visit, and what a bargain it was. However, this wasn't just because of the $10.95 price; it was also because of the food. In the interests of thorough research, we tried both the whitefish and the perch, and, frankly, we enjoyed the perch more. Both were quite fresh, lightly breaded and well drained, and properly flaky and delicate (although in future we'll stick to the perch; the whitefish was a bit too "fishy"). The deal included outstanding slaw and fries, plus a starter of baked whitefish pâté and a supply of buttery, seasoned toast rounds to spread it on. The platter also came with both lemon and tartar sauce. The house-made slaw was a satisfying marriage of creamy and crunchy, and with none of the cloying sweetness that too many restaurants inflict on us.

   No less a bargain was our other meal, a parmesan-crusted chicken with Riesling-sage sauce, roasted redskins and crisply cooked green beans. It's one of several interesting dishes the resort's kitchen has added to a freewheeling new menu. To go with it, we had a cup of clam chowder, made in-house, that was gratifyingly thick and creamy, packed with flavor and chunky with potatoes and clams.

   Dinner included a basket of hot, house-made herb-butter bread fresh from the oven, and our wine, we are happy to say, was local. CW's Bluewater Bistro is committed to stocking local wines, and offers an extensive list from three Old Mission and Leelanau vintners as well as a few of the usual Californians.

   Part of the value of CW's, we found, was service that positively made us glow. Aside from being friendly, efficient, and attentive, our server recovered adroitly in turning a timing glitch that could have messed up the meal into a happy outcome. The baked pâté we were supposed to get early in the meal was apparently in a batch that didn't come out of the oven until our entrees were ready. The server, Leslie, apologized and offered it regardless, but also suggested, instead, that she pack up a fresh order later for us to take home. Reheated, it made a lovely reminder as the appetizer at home the next night. It was lightly browned on top, chunky with white fish, satisfyingly rich but well balanced with flavor.

   The bistro's ambience was hardly cozy or intimate. But we were there shortly after the opening, and the blinds had not yet arrived for the window wall overlooking the pool. Now installed, they cut the glare of  late-day sunlight and mute the floor-to-ceiling view of a concrete pool deck and brick wall adorned by safety gear and warning signs. This is a hotel, of course, and for hotel guests there is logical convenience to the bistro's 3-in-1 design, with a deli-café and coffee shop off the lobby and a bar-lounge behind that through which one enters the inner-sanctum dining room.

   The front end of the menu is hardly a bargain unless you're grazing. Once past the $7 and $9 appetizers, the menu is quite inexpensive. Soups and salads run $2-4, and dinner entrees generally hover in the $12-15 range and top out at $18.50 (for a 12-ounce strip sirloin). Our two dinners plus a cup of chowder and three glasses of Peninsula Cellars chardonnay came to $52, including a generous tip for excellent and thoughtful service.

   Oh, yes: If you're as curious as we were about where the name "CW's Bluewater Bistro" came from, we asked, and learned that C and W are the initials of the hotel's owners. The Bluewater part we figured out on our own.

DATA:  CW's Bluewater Bistro at Holiday Inn West Bay, 615 E. Front St., Traverse City; 231-947-3700 (www.traverse-holidayinn.com). Breakfast-lunch-dinner daily.