As Detroit’s population continues to shrink, nature is starting to take the city back. A dwindling population and high unemployment has also drastically reduced the opportunites for healthy food options. The documentary Grown in Detroit, which is playing at The Rotunda tonight as part of an ongoing discussion about food justice, shows how a handful of students in the Motor City have turned to urban farming to raise their own food and fight the blight.
The film is about the urban gardening done by a public school in Detroit, where 300 students, many pregnant and parenting teens, who farm land near their school.
The screening is part of the monthly “Food Justice Movie Night” series at The Rotunda, sponsored by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and the Urban Nutrition Initiative and admission is free and a discussion on urban farming and eating locally will follow. Dinner is included. The screening begins at 6 p.m.
What could be a harbinger of fast food restaurants to come opened near 40th and Walnut this week.
Sweet Green features “make your own” salads that include season and, when possible, local ingredients for $6.35. Ingredients include a range of greens – from mesclun (lettuces combined with some dandelion greens or other edible leaves) to baby spinach – a ton of fruits and vegetables, five kinds of cheese, and more than a dozen dressings. Meats, tofu and shrimp are a little extra. Other salads and wraps range from $7.50 to $11.
Organic frozen yogurt is also on the menu. A naked cone is $2.50. A small bowl of soup is $3.75 and drinks include housemade lemonade and iced tea.
The West Philly location is the second in the area (the other is in Ardmore). Sweet Green started in the D.C. area and company officials say the West Philly location design is a throwback to their original store. The inside of a fast food-style restaurant can’t get much more hip than this place. The woodwork, for example, is made from recycled bowling lane planks.
Writer Ann L. Rappoport has discovered and written about a well-kept secret in West Philly: The bathrooms at The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College (4207 Walnut St.). They are pretty magnificent.
Entering it through the bar in the school’s international restaurant, I was greeted by hundreds of antique perfume bottles. Vintage ladies’ hats and beaded bags commanded notice, posed on vintage hat racks suspended from the walls and ceiling, which also host over-the-top sconces and chandeliers. Lace and feathered boas drape the stalls, recalling at least the French Quarter of the Big Easy, if not Paris itself. Somebody had a blast putting this together.
College president Danny Liberatoscioli had the initial idea to make awesome bathrooms to compliment the school’s restaurants.
“We’ve got this thing for restrooms here,” he told Rappoport.
Last week’s warm weather got us pining for spring. So even though the spring-like weather has passed for now we wanted to get something onto the site that reminded us that spring isn’t too far away. Filmmaker Clay Hereth has just what the doctor ordered.
Hereth spent parts of the 2010 growing season filming work at the Mill Creek Farm (49th and Brown Streets). The documentary he produced, West Philly Grown, debuted at the farm’s fundraiser in December. The farm produces, sells and donates thousands of pounds of produce per year and is an important neighborhood asset. An ongoing issue with the farm is getting the land it occupies into a permanent trust.
Organizers are petitioning the city, which owns the vacant lot where the farm and a community garden were started, to place the land into the Neighborhood Gardens Association land trust. That would ensure the land remains a farm and community garden in the future.
Here is part 1 of Clay’s film (we will put part 2 up tomorrow):
Here are two fun West Philly things to keep an eye out for in a couple of weeks.
First, Mariposa Food Co-op will hold a giant craft fair and flea market in the new building at 4824 Baltimore Ave. on February 12 and 13. The building isn’t officially open yet, but this will give folks an opportunity to get a sneak preview ahead of the fall 2011 official opening. This shindig will feature jewelry, baked goods, handcrafted items, clothes, books and much more. See the flyer below.
On February 21 Manakeesh, the new Lebanese cafe and bakery at 45th and Walnut, plans to celebrate its official grand opening with a party that will include free giveaways and all sorts of goodies. The party will run during regular business hours.
Should we start calling the pocket in West Philly around 45th and Walnut “Little Beirut” or maybe “New Lebanon”? The corner is anchored by the Association of Islamic Charity Projects mosque on the northeast corner, Saad’s Halal Restaurant on the southwest corner and now Manakeesh, a Lebanese bakery and cafe, in the old bank building on the southeast corner.
After much anticipation, Manakeesh, named after its most popular dish, opened this week with a dazzling interior and vast assortment of Lebanese fare. The menu is built on the manakeesh, a Lebanese flatbread sandwich that is made to order in front of you. The standard manakeesh features zaatar, a mixture of thyme and olive oil spread on the bread before it is baked. Other traditional favorites are the cheese manakeesh, which includes an assortment of vegetables, and the lahm bajeen – minced lamb.
These are just three of the nearly 20 different kinds of manakeesh made to order. Some have a distinctly American twist, like manakeesh with pastrami or sausage, egg and cheese. But as vital as the manakeesh is to the menu, this place has a lot more to offer, including several kinds of baklava, cakes, salads and coffee. Oh the coffee. Perhaps the most prominent feature behind the counter at Manakeesh, besides the exceedingly friendly staff and the brick oven shipped over from Lebanon, is the Mac Daddy of espresso machines – the Excelsior. It’s orange and chrome and looks like something that might have come out of a Detroit auto factory in the 1950s.
Yunis Ali works the Excelsior.
The general manager of Manakeesh, Abd Ghazzawi, essentially grew up in the neighborhood. He attended the mosque school across the street from Manakeesh and has invited some of his old friends to work at the cafe. The result is an inviting atmosphere with a lot of chatter. That, he said, is the point. Ghazzawi hopes that Manakeesh becomes more than a cafe and bakery, but a “community centerpiece.” You can hear much more on his thoughts about the neighborhood around Manakeesh and the cafe itself in the interview below.
So stop by and give Abd and the others a hearty mabrouk (congratulations in Arabic). It’s been a long wait, but it was worth it. Here is the full menu.
As Detroit’s population continues to shrink, nature is starting to take the city back. A dwindling population and high unemployment has also drastically reduced the opportunites for healthy food options. The documentary Grown in Detroit, which is playing at The Rotunda tonight as part of an ongoing discussion about food justice, shows how a handful of students in the Motor City have turned to urban farming to raise their own food and fight the blight.
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