Traverse City Record-Eagle,  Oct. 10, 2003
Let's hear it for lunch!
As summer recedes and work-a-day Traverse City gets back to normal, we can delight in two new spots for a happy lunch break that bracket Downtown at opposite ends of Front Street. One is Crema, at Front and Park Streets in the new Radio Centre building; the other is The House, at Front and Spruce, two blocks west of Division.

On the surface, they are utterly unalike. The House is as simple, homey and unadorned as Crema is hip, cool, trendy and urban, but both offer fresh and interesting fare and generally avoid the clichés that often make lunch a yawner. The closest they come is chicken Caesar salads, a Reuben, and a pepperoni pizza. Traverse City has a lot of good choices at lunchtime, and these two improve the picture.

The House is just what the name implies, and formerly was home to Nancy Allen's cooking school and City Kitchen restaurant. The new owners, Michael Bauer and Joni Capling, are ready not only to sustain you at lunch but to get you started at 7 a.m. with a hearty breakfast of such delights as a bacon and Gruyere egg sandwich, blueberry pancakes, eggs Benedict or scrambled huevos rancheros -- rolled up in a flour tortilla with tomato salsa and beans.

Crema starts at seven, too, honoring breakfast mainly with a broad array of coffee, cappuccino, espresso and latte and food of the muffin-and-scone variety. Crema also offers its whole menu well into the evening, long after The House quits for the day.

But it is at lunchtime that both places really hit their stride.

At The House, Bauer and Capling make a point of using indigenous ingredients and local farm products, and they vary the menu accordingly. This summer's "Farmer's Market Salad" incorporated whatever was in season, and we recently enjoyed a black bean and corn salad that included locally grown corn, tomatoes and greens, with chicken and cheese and avocado-buttermilk dressing. It came with a freshly baked herb roll and honey butter. The sandwiches, on grilled rolls or bread, are every bit as interesting, from a BLT with grilled chicken to roast turkey and Brie with apple relish.

Crema's sandwiches (all on house-made focaccia) are along similar lines. Think ham and artichoke; or chicken, cheddar, basil and tomato; or tuna with avocado, tomato, cucumber, and lime-ginger dressing. Both restaurants also have hearty vegetarian sandwiches with the likes of roasted red pepper, cucumber, sprouts and honey chipotle mustard (Crema) and avocado, spinach, tomato, pepperoncini, jack cheese, red onion and a Dijonnaise dressing (The House).

Beyond the salads and sandwiches, their styles go separate ways. The House has a new soup every day, while Crema does smoothies and fruit drinks, and their "main dishes" (for want of a better term) have nothing in common at all. At Crema, the specialty is flatbread pizza. The House offers plated entrées that, one day this month, were seared tuna, grilled beef, roast salmon or turkey. The latter was seasoned with cumin and sage, sliced onto a salad of roast corn and dried cranberry, and drizzled with a cilantro-laced roast-corn emulsion. It was hardly your basic turkey platter, and the other entrees seemed no less interesting. The pan-roasted salmon came on warm lentils, and the seared tuna with fruit relish on soba noodles.

Now, back to Crema's flatbread pizzas, which come (like the sandwiches) from an open-hearth oven. After that obligatory pepperoni, the pizza list takes some charming and unexpected turns. They, too, have a BLT, but it's a pizza of lettuce, bacon, cheese, tomato, and parmesan-pepper ranch. We opted instead for one of their two shrimp pizzas. The flatbread was spread with pesto, studded with shrimp, topped with mozzarella and generously sprinkled with savory sun-dried tomatoes and a chiffonade of fresh basil.

The prices at the two new spots are right in the local lunchtime ballpark, with salads and sandwiches in the $6-7 range and soups (at The House) for $3-4. Crema's 9-inch pizzas are around $6.50, and The House's entrées lie in the $7-9 range.

Crema is so slickly conceived and efficiently operated that we thought at first it might be just another chain outlet. But both operations are unique and thoroughly local. The House's Bauer formerly worked in the kitchens at Poppycock's and The Boathouse, and Crema is Brad and Alice Campsmith's spin-off of their Good Harbor Coffee shop on Front Street near Division, two blocks west.
With places like these to pick from, deciding where to go for Lunch on Front Street this winter may be mostly a matter of which way the snow's blowing.

DATA:
The House, 826 W. Front St., Traverse City; 231-929-4917 (faxed orders to 929-1125). Open Monday through Saturday for breakfast (7-10:30 a.m.) and lunch (10:45 to 3 p.m.).
Crema, Front and Park Streets, Traverse City (in the Radio Centre building); 231-922-9311. Open daily from 7 a.m., until 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 p.m. Sunday.