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Well-chosen words are as critical as carefully provided ingredients, seasonings, service and atmosphere at a restaurant. Each makes an impression that can appeal or repel.
Gregory Holm: "I wanted to bring something that didn't exist." (Facebook photo)
While discussing the shutdown of Antietam in nine weeks, owner Gregory Holm crosses a no-go line with this comment to a Detroit Free Press freelancer:
"There was nothing here when we first started. . . . You had Slows and you had a Michael Symon hotel bar. So I came to the city because I wanted to bring something that didn’t exist here."
He apparently missed or forgot Aaron Foley's guidance for newcomers in a bluntly titled 2015 handbook: "How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass."
Holm's glaring misstep can be avoided without reading all 280 pages, though they're well worth it. The fourth of 20 chapters is "How Not to Offend People When Talking About Detroit."
"There are several competing narratives in Detroit. . . . There is the 'Detroit was a blank canvas (before the white people came)' narrative," writes Foley, a lifelong resident now on the mayor's staff as head of The Neighborhoods storytelling and information website.
The author elaborates with a blinking caution signal any prudent person can heed:
The "blank canvas" idea has taken off like a rocket. . . . Longtime residents bristle as this term, seeing as the city was never "blank" to begin with.
There were people in the neighborhoods where these entrepreneurs started opening up shop, and the "canvas" was filled with the history that came before they arrived. To say the city is "blank" is a total erasure of the city's colorful past.
Clear, right? And yet, the writer himself flags the faux pas Monday in a tweet that has an image of Holm's blundering comment:
The owner of Antietam is why I wrote that book pic.twitter.com/xeKuP9mo8u
— Aaron Foley (@aaronkfoley) January 22, 2018
An admirer of the author takes it to this delightful level:
— RED (@RED_NGS) January 22, 2018
Want the book?
If you're new here or haven't read Foley's essential guide, it's available from the publisher at a discounted $12 price, plus shipping.
Original article, Sunday:
The strip of commercial stores on Gratiot Avenue, across from Detroit's Eastern Market, was long vacant and rundown until recent years. Newcomers like Antietam restaurant popped up, giving the area life.
Now, after about four years in business, the Antietam will shut March 31, editor Brenna Houck writes at Eater Detroit.
Owner Gregory Holm announces the closure on Facebook:
The last 5 years have been a tremendously rewarding experience during the creation and execution of Antietam. I could not have more respect for all of my staff and Chef Seth High …. simply incomparable.
We will be serving dinner though March 31, at which point Antietam will become a memory. The very reason it was created. In the Spring the building will be sold to give way to greater creative challenges.Thank you to everyone for bringing this vision to completion.
Houck writes:
The Eastern Market eatery with its stunning Art Deco interior was one of the early entrants in Detroit’s culinary boom, garnishing attention from the New York Times and was a longtime member of Eater Detroit’s 38 Essential Restaurants map.
At the Detroit Free Press, Erin Podolsky writes:
With several letters of intent in hand, Holm has not yet settled on a buyer for the property. But just as he took his time creating Antietam – a painstaking 2.5 years to restore the building to its gleaming present state – he’s willing to take his time to place it into the right hands and continue its legacy. That could be with a turnkey sale to another restaurateur, or something entirely different.
