Apr. 16, 2004
Blue Heron Café: a reason to bypass the bypass.

A week or so ago, on the road back from Grand Rapids, mid-day found us very hungry and approaching Cadillac on the US-131 expressway. With the new bypass, it had been a long time since we'd muttered our way through town, so we decided to exit and see what's new there. We were particularly keen to check out a new deli-lunch spot we kept hearing about, called the Blue Heron.

We very quickly found out why we kept hearing about it!

It was busy, indeed, with locals coming and going to both eat in and take out. Inside the café-curtained storefront on Mitchell Street, a big, glass display case ran almost to back of the sore, filled with cakes, breads, cookies and pastries and doughnuts. Cakes and catering, it turned out, are a big part of the Blue Heron's business. 

The place was well staffed by a team of efficient servers taking care of the crowd at the counter and providing table service for the dine-in folks. We joined the latter as soon as a table was available, and ordered a mango salad and the day's soup, which turned out to be an interesting combination of sweet, red, Japanese azuki beans, brown rice and sweet potatoes. More like a stew than a soup, it was hearty, rich, flavorful and earthy.

That was good enough, but the little café could have won our hearts just with the slice of white sourdough bread that came with it. The bread, made on site, might warrant a 100-mile round-trip from Elk Rapids all by itself. It was that perfect, rewarding combination of hard, flinty crust and chewy, flavorful interior. And it was only mildly sour. Some bread makers, we think, overdo the sour in their sourdoughs. Not the Blue Heron. They are very proud of their bread, and told us their starter is over 100 years old. They honor its great age by giving it almost 24 hours to ferment and rise, so it's no wonder it has crunchy crust and hearty flavor.

The Blue Heron offers a variety of breads -- whole wheat, rye, olive, Asiago, boules, and baguettes. And they are all sold over the counter and used in the many sandwiches on the menu.

The pastry list outdoes the bread roster, starting with 10 varieties of bagel, from whole wheat and onion to cranberry and chocolate chip, and six kinds of muffins, plus a vast variety of doughnuts and cookies.

Ahh, cookies! Cookies are a personal weakness. They're the reason we run and cycle and hike and ski and snowshoe. So, naturally, we bought a bag to take home. They were chocolate cookies, and had a cute name, like "Grand Slam," or something, but we didn't realize what treasure we had until we got home and tried one. Let's not tiptoe around here, OK? Let's just say they're right up there with the all-time greats in our cookie hall of fame. Their qualities, listed in no particular order, were "nutty," "chewy," "crunchy," "chocolaty," and "buttery."

But we get ahead of ourselves. The mango salad was a base of crisp, mixed greens topped with roasted pork, feta, red onion, sweet red peppers and a slightly sweet and very smooth mango vinaigrette. We thought pork and mango a great combination; it set this salad well apart from same old, same old.

The sandwiches are every bit as interesting --roasted chicken with chunky artichoke garlic spread, for instance, or a turkey-Havarti melt, or a stack of medium-rare roast beef with blue cheese and horseradish. Not the usual sandwich fare. Another dish that tempted us no end was an Oriental chicken salad of bowtie pasta, roasted chicken, asparagus, toasted sesame seeds, and chickpeas, with a soy dressing.

Looks like we'll be having lunch again when we go back down to Cadillac for more of those cookies and another loaf or two of bread.

DATA: Blue Heron Café, 304 N. Mitchell St., Cadillac; 231-775-5461. Eat-in or carryout. Open Monday-Friday, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. (breakfast 7-10:30 a.m.), and on Saturday for breakfast only, 7 a.m. to noon. Closed Sundays. Salads and sandwiches range from $4.75-$6.50.