Friday, November 16, 2007

Plotnik: Support bistro, 'amazing opportunity'

Our friend, Julie Plotnik, writes:

Brian will be before the City Commission at City Hall this Monday, Nov. 19, to bring a proposed bistro style restaurant to Birmingham. He plans to locate it in the new building behind AAA on the corner of Forest and Elm. I hope you will attend (discussion will begin sometime after 8 p.m.) to express your support for this amazing opportunity. Please help get the word out by forwarding this email or by bringing a friend to the meeting.

From the Five Lakes Grill website:

Award-winning chef Brian Polcyn is nationally recognized for his creativity and culinary talents, and as the visionary behind some of Detroit's most acclaimed restaurants.

Polcyn's road to Five Lakes Grill has spanned several decades of devotion to culinary excellence. While still in his 20s, Polcyn honed his skills at two of Michigan's most prestigious restaurants, the Golden Mushroom and the Lark.

He created three of Michigan's most notable restaurants before opening Five Lakes Grill, nearly a decade ago. In 1987, he debuted Pike Street Restaurant in Pontiac, Michigan. Within weeks, food critics were heaping kudos on Chef Brian and his staff. In 1990, he premiered Chimayo, Michigan's first restaurant featuring authentic Southwestern cuisine. Three years later, he created Acadia, an area trendsetter specializing in foods cooked over various hard woods.

Polcyn's national reputation as a chef and restaurateur continued to grow, and so did his family. Now a father of five, he decided to move his family out to the quieter countryside and devote his time to a single restaurant endeavor where he could create and serve the kind of food other chefs can only dream about. To do so, he created, trains and personally supervises a peerless team of chefs, wine experts and service professionals. Chef Brian is so "hands-on" that you'll find him cooking in the kitchen almost every night. His vision for Five Lakes Grill has made it one of the country's most beloved restaurants.

Chef Brian has been featured in local and national publications, including The New York Times, The Detroit News, Atlantic Monthly, Gourmet, Bon Appetite, Playboy, Detroit Hour Magazine, The Detroit Free Press and Wine Spectator.

His numerous awards include three gold medals and a silver medal from The American Culinary Federation. The Hiram Walker Corp. recognized him as a "Rising Star in American Cuisine." In 1990, he was first runner-up in the semi-annual American Culinary Gold Cup Bocuse d' Or, a competition seeking America's top native-born chefs. He has cooked several times at the James Beard House in NYC and was prominently featured in Michael Ruhlman's widely read book, The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection.

Besides operating his own restaurant, Chef Brian teaches charcuterie at Schoolcraft College. He has authored a book on the subject scheduled for publication in 2005. Metro Detroit viewers tune into Channel 7 to watch his weekly cooking show, and catch frequent sightings of Chef Brian working for many local charities, including Michigan Chefs Against Hunger and Share Our Strength