GQ magazine calls Ann Arbor, Chelsea Top 10 places for ethical eats”

Ever feel guilty for enjoying a delicious meal and not just for the calorie intake? Fear not, GQ magazine has come up with a national Top 10 list for places to enjoy a meal that is both ethical and delicious. An Ann Arbor-based eatery is at the top of the list and a farm in Chelsea is in the thick of it, too.

Excerpt:

With a few glorious exceptions, eating ethically for a month, as I did for this month’s GQ, was an exercise in frustration. One illuminating moment took place in a coffee shop in Boston: My café au lait was handed to me in a disposable take-out cup, whereas everybody else in the place was drinking coffee from genuine porcelain cups. I wanted mine in a real cup, too. Not only is there less waste, the need to wash the cup creates a job for an entry-level employee, possibly someone with a family to feed.

I noticed that the two people sitting next to me were discussing the environment. Expecting sympathy and support, I cheerfully said something about their lovely cups being superior to mine. I got no response, just a funny look. Embarrassed, I went to the counter and asked for my coffee to be transferred to a real cup—thereby causing the paper cup to be thrown uneconomically in the trash. When I returned, I sat down smiling, certain I had done the right thing. The woman, now a little wary, looked over and said patronizingly and soothingly, “Everything is okay now, isn’t it?”

People who act ethically, as I tried to do this past winter, are subject to constant disparagement. When I brought glass and plastic empties back to a local supermarket for reimbursement, something (I’m sorry to admit) I don’t normally do, I was treated less well than usual. Return empties in this country and you’re classified as impoverished, unemployable, or crazy, somebody who regularly stands in line outside churches for government-surplus cheese sandwiches. Anything you do that deviates from the conventional will make you a laughingstock, whereas unethical behavior seldom if ever results in chastisement or reprimand.

When I ate in restaurants run by chefs committed to ethical eating, or in the homes of people who feel the same way, dining was a joy, not simply because the products were better, but also because the people doing the cooking were inevitably committed to preparing wonderful meals. I’m not talking about dining with gastronomic outcasts, such as disciples of macrobiotics. (You’ve seen them. They endure a colorless life of brown food and brown clothing.) People devoted single-mindedly to ethical-eating causes invariably dine poorly, whereas those who make ethical eating a component of a higher dining ideal tend to be entirely admirable—plus well-fed. When I drove through rural Maine, I stopped at Chase’s Daily in Belfast for a bowl of made-from-scratch vegetable soup, followed by a preposterously rich chocolate meringue tart, the kind that can easily sustain a person meatlessly through a winter New England day. Chase’s Daily is part-restaurant, part-bakery, part-farmstand, and almost incidentally vegetarian. It’s not a health-food restaurant—butter and cream abound. It offers the sort of ethical eating I came to admire on my travels, devoid of the pretentiousness and dogma that so often curses admirable causes.

Here then are my top ten ethical dishes, some from restaurants, some from homes or farms, all enjoyed earlier this year during my ethical-eating travels through America.

1. Brioche-Crusted Walleye, Grange Kitchen & Bar, Ann Arbor, MI
We northeasterners hardly ever get to eat freshwater fish—okay, maybe now and then somebody slips us a trout. This filet of walleye showed me why the Great Lakes deserve to be called great. The flesh was sole-like, and the crust offered a light, sweet accent.

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