Su Casa Es Mi Casa

The big window at The Goose.

It may surprise some people to know how often I frequent The Blue Goose Cafe. It is my home town diner in Fennville, Michigan, and it is a small town diner in every way. There is nothing grown locally or organically on the premises unless by accident, and no real worries about what their food "means" on behalf of the owner or chef. As you can tell by reading earlier posts I think a lot about how I source my food and what kind of story it tells, and the more jaded among you may find my patronage of a small town diner in some way disingenuous. But the fact of the matter is I don't like looking at what I do as a cause. The fact is I want to cook and I want to tell a story, which, I suppose, is my story. At the Blue Goose, the story is still there. It just isn't the same as mine. I t took me a long time to realize that my story wasn't the only story, and even longer to be comfortable with the idea that this doesn't at all diminish my story's value.

I am very humbled by restaurants like the Goose, restaurants that don't over think things, that just go out there everyday and do good work. They work with great pride and dignity. Pretentiousness is not even possible here. There is no chance anyone will be made to feel out of place. They know me by name, know how I take my coffee, know that I like honey with my biscuits, and they really and truly care that I am happy when I leave. They don't give a shit about James Beard semi finalist lists and write ups in magazines, and these things surely do not intimidate them or inspire them to treat me differently or lay my table out with extravagances. I sit down, they receive me warmly, I order and eat, and I pay my bill. They smile genuinely and attend to me properly and with real affection.

The same is true at Su Casa, though the lens is different.

At Su Casa, they answer the phone in Spanish. This is because the restaurant was opened by a Mexican family who intended to feed the local migrant population, which has for years given the restaurant an unimpeachable authenticity. Fennville was a very serious fruit town for a great deal of its recent history. Many migrant workers came here to pick tree fruits and blueberries and grapes and many settled here. Those days are all but gone now but to this day these travelers from Mexico have a pronounced presence in the city of Fennville and to this day they answer the phone at Su Casa in Spanish.

When I first moved here, the restaurant was in the back of a super mercado in a broken down building that made you really think you had been transported to Mexico. The parking lot was a collection of large shards of concrete jutting in to the air in all directions. There were seriously times when I felt so joyfully, completely immersed I wondered if I should be drinking the water. There were layers upon layers of posters and old tape on the doors and walls, VHS rentals of movies I'd of course never heard of, a long meat case filled with fried pig skin, liver and intestines, and huge cuts of bleeding red meat behind a pane of insulated glass with one long, arcing crack that ran the length of it. Bins of tamarind candy and dried chilis, a soda merchandiser filled with Jarritos & glass bottles of Mexican Coke (still made with cane sugar, not corn syrup), a cafeteria style dispenser churning horchata. And in the restaurant, hand painted Oaxacan murals on the walls and old posters for bull fights. On the menu, (in Fennville Michigan!) tripe, tongue, baby octopus, beef cheek: the drooled over currency exchanged for cachet by every big city chef hoping to prove the honesty of his connection to the world of real food, the food of poor grandmothers with deeply weathered faces and sunken, curled spines.

A part of the mural at the new Su Casa.

But Su Casa is in the very same spirit as the Goose. It is a place where people come to get fed and find comfort, find something they know, and put themselves in the care of someone who knows they like their barbacoa with onions and cilantro, and a slice of lime in their Coca Cola, and extra pico de gallo with their flautas. Su Casa has since moved in to new, fancier digs, and yes I'm one of those sad sacks who misses the old place, though I am very happy for their success. I recently had a mild panic attack when the Blue Goose was remodeling and the large paintings Sue Park and her students had done of the town were taken down. I was assured they'd be back, and smiled widely when I saw for myself that they were.

These are the rooms where, by some small standard, anyway, I became a local. Though really in Fennville "local" is not defined by how many years you've been there, but by how many generations are behind you. But at the Blue Goose and Su Casa, slowly I was recognized, called by name, and it was assumed I did not need to see a menu. I was not born here, but I perhaps somewhat presumptuously call it my home (it's only been a little north of a decade, after all). And when pressed, I always name it as my favorite place to eat.