Nov. 12, 2004
Some places are more local than others
When it comes to work-a-day restaurants, every place has its unsung little hometown favorite that the locals love and the tourists never hear about. Some of these little eateries are more local than others, however, and there's one in Traverse City that's so local that not even a local can be counted on to know about it.

We're talking about the Centre Street Café, and if you're still scratching your head, you're forgiven. It looks from the outside less like a restaurant than like, say, the side entrance to a warehouse, and the take-out menu describes its location as "across from National City Bank, next to ATA Black Belt Academy." These aren't exactly famous Northern Michigan landmarks.

To its knowing clientele Centre Street Café is the landmark. It's so famous among fans for its fresh, generous, scratch-made, lunchtime fare that it might make more sense for the bank to advertise that it is across from the Centre Street Café.

It is clearly chef-owner Pete Boothroyd's food that does it, because the ambience is more or less contemporary, painted concrete block behind an ever-changing, floor-to-ceiling display of local artists' works. On paper, the fare is the stuff of any lunchtime eatery -- homemade soups and salads, and a vast array of sandwiches and wraps of turkey and chicken, cheese and tomato, mayo and mustard, veggies and pesto. But there's something about Pete's sandwiches and wraps that ooze a certain passion for customer satisfaction.

The last time we had lunch there, late in October, we arrived before noon to be sure of a place to sit, and ordered one smoked-turkey wrap, a cup of what Pete calls "Swamp Soup," and a one of his "Shuffled Salad" plates of mixed greens and veggies. The soup was a hot, tomato-based delight with spinach and Swiss cheese, and the salad came with Pete's homemade ranch dressing. The wrap was the star of the meal -- a sun-dried tomato flatbread roll almost two inches across, thick with moist turkey and low-fat Swiss, and richly painted with Pete's house-made mustard-mayo dressing. It came on a platter with a mammoth pickle spear and a generous supply of homemade black-bean dip and corn tortilla chips. It was all that two of us could handle, and we waddled out after settling up our check for about $16, including tax and tip.

This lunch hardly scratched the surface of the café's immense menu. We passed up three other kinds of wrap and five different breads; we passed up cornucopius sandwich makings, from avocado and jalapeno to cranberry and Asiago.

Pete has been there since the 1980s, when the place next door was a general-purpose fitness gym and his café was a sort of adjunct that offered the customers "health food" after their workouts. When the gym moved uptown, someone else took over from Pete, but the business languished. Five years ago Pete persuaded the landlord to improve the facilities so he could move back and turn it into a full-fledged lunchtime café.

The place does a sizeable carry-out and office-delivery trade, too, but the best way to enjoy the café is in person so you can watch Boothroyd and his sous-chef nephew, Jesse, in action. They work with astonishing panache and concentration, right up front where they can stay in close touch with the customers. When business is brisk--which is most days--service sometimes slows a bit. But the customers, Pete says, are very patient. We suspect that's because they can so easily see how much care and work Pete and Jesse put into the food.

Pete is strictly self-taught, and says he is "amazed" by his success. "I'd love to tell you that I learned to do this in the south of France, but I didn't." His only explanation of his culinary background is an acknowledgement of a huge assist from his late mother. "Mom was one of those people who never let you get away without something to eat," he explained. "So I do have a palate."

He also has a devoted work-a-day following of office workers, route drivers, tradesmen, and retirees. But if you ever find a tourist in his place, you can probably assume he's lost.