The Sweet Life

In an industry where the failure rate averages higher than 50 percent over three years, a restaurant that can carry on for more than two decades is unusual. So it is with Sweet Lorraine's Café and Bar in Southfield, which opened in November 1984 and continues to hold solid ground in the Detroit restaurant scene.

That year, the best-known restaurants in metro Detroit included the Golden Mushroom in Southfield, Chez Raphael in Novi, Sparky Herbert's in Grosse Pointe Park, Escoffier in Ann Arbor, and a young Jimmy Schmidt was still cooking at the London Chop House, then considered the Sardi's of Detroit.

All were near the top of anyone's restaurant list; today, not one still exists. Research shows that one-quarter of new restaurants fail their first year in business, roughly 15 percent more drop in the second year, and upward of another 10 percent go out of business in the third.

Today, Sweet Lorraine's fits snugly into the restaurant landscape, and it continually ranks in the Top 20 of best restaurants in most publications. When it opened as the first serious example in metro Detroit of a new wave called American bistro cooking, it was considered quite edgy.

Sweet Lorraine's didn't catch a wave, but rather it filled a gap by spanning the divide between white-linen dining and the good, savory home cooking of an inexpensive family-style restaurant.

It was one of the first in the area to provide an American version of the not quite fine dining that Europeans had long enjoyed on weekdays.

"There weren't a lot of people around Detroit doing fresh, high-quality food at reasonable prices at that time," says co-owner and chef Lorraine Platman. "Chuck Muer was doing some things in his restaurants. But other than that, you had to go all the way to the high end to eat well."

It seems mundane today, but Platman, who was born in England and arrived in the States at age 10, gave Sweet Lorraine's distinction from other restaurants with her insistence on fresh ingredients, the highest-quality meats and the freshest fish, and by preparing all of her food on site. That wasn't so common in 1984. And over the years, Sweet Lorraine's has retained that thinking, with a few additions and upgrades.

If food set Sweet Lorraine's apart, so did its décor. It hasn't changed much, allowing it to maintain a casual, energetic atmosphere. Red walls, bright colors, and oversize posters for Perrier and other French food products set off a whimsical look and feel. Tables are stained with curvy wood-tone patterns, funky candleholders, and amusingly large handcrafted pepper grinders. Soft halogen lighting dots the room, and a second-floor balcony overlooks the main dining area.

Platman, 50, met her husband and partner, Gary Sussman, 53, when she was in high school in Detroit.

"We met through our parents and married three years later," Platman says. "At the time, I told him I wanted to be a businesswoman." But she had no idea what kind. The newlyweds lived in an apartment at Six Mile Road and Woodward where, she says, "I learned to cook out of necessity. ... Hunger can do that, you know."

Platman went to school to study fine arts, which eventually led to a job managing a gallery in Royal Oak.

"I ended up doing desserts for all their openings, and I had little cards made up that said 'Sweet Lorraine's.'" Soon, she also started selling her pastries to Merchant of Vino stores and to restaurants, and then from a storefront deli she and Sussman opened in Madison Heights. Two years later, they had a restaurant.

"Honestly, we didn't know what we were doing," Platman says. "We didn't know that if you fall off the bicycle you could get hurt."

But to be sure that they didn't get hurt, they hired a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America to do the cooking, while Lorraine ran the cold foods area. Eventually, she moved in to run the kitchen.

Today, Platman cooks mostly in her kitchen at home, looking for new recipes, photographing food, and sending the results to the Southfield restaurant and two other Sweet Lorraine's in Detroit and Livonia. The new recipes are added to the menus, but she leaves the restaurant cooking to her kitchen managers.

"I call my food Global Beat Cuisine," Platman says. "It's vibrant, and you feel good when you look at it."

The restaurant has a new, exuberant addition as well, a colorful mural of musicians that was taken from a 1952 poster created in Paris to advertise a Cuban band playing at a music expo. By January, she expects the restaurant will also be serving breakfast, in addition to lunch and dinner.

The food has evolved over the years. "We've now gone all organic and buy as much locally as we can," Platman says. "What meat I buy is very important to me. I want humanely treated, grain-fed animals. We don't want to be zealots about it, but we don't have veal on the menu."

On a visit in October, the food reflected the attention that has always marked Sweet Lorraine's.

A crab cake-and-avocado first course was fresh and surprisingly light, not at all doughy, nicely browned to a golden color and stuffed with celery and green pepper, and a touch of hot spiciness.

A serving of potato chips, also an opener, is worth trying for no other reason than to see what a real chip can taste like. Cooked in canola oil, the chips were served a shade shy of brown, in cardboard funnel, dusted with Parmesan cheese, and with a side dish of chipotle mayonnaise for dipping. It reminded me of buying French fries from a stand in Brussels, where the very best in the world are made and sold with mayonnaise on the side.

The one fault I found was in a pizza, which came with intensely fragrant and fruity coarsely chopped tomato, superb mozzarella and chopped onion. But the crust wasn't sufficiently cooked or even puffy. Good ingredients, but a slip-up in the cooking.

A solid main course is the pecancrusted chicken, a free-range hen served with a heaping of mixed rice. Likewise, a plate of three pieces of beef tenderloin served on toasted croutons with a French onion sauce arrived with a hefty dollop of garlic-mashed potatoes.

"Both Gary and I come from families where starch and large servings were a big part of the diet," Platman says. Platman's deconstructed Pasta Bolognese is made with wide, flat noodles, green chard and a very dense brown meat sauce. Unusual, but worth it.

In addition to daily specials, the menu includes various homemade soups, a maple-cured Norwegian salmon, chicken and shrimp Creole, a hot yellowfin tuna Niçoise salad, and the "Lorraine's special salad" with Gorgonzola, pears, hazelnuts, and cranberries. There's also a wide range of vegetarian dishes and freshly made desserts.

The wine list is fairly expansive, with more than 100 listings and plenty of wines by the glass.

The longevity of the restaurant is due largely to fresh ideas and an understanding of what its customers want. When we look at Whole Foods Market today, making it on a mantra of organic food and local products and leaving competitors in the dust, it helps clarify how ahead of its time Sweet Lorraine's was 22 years ago.

29101 Greenfield Rd., Southfield; 248-559-5985. L & D daily.

This article appears in the December 2006 of Hour Detroit.
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