One of Marquette’s culinary treasures is closing down.
Tu Kaluthia Café, which has served delicious Greek food and coffee in a corner of the Peter White Library for the past nine years has been forced to close its doors by the city building inspector.
The problem? There’s no vent for the toaster oven in the café, and the library isn’t going to build one. Tu Kaluthia has never been a full service restaurant and was never intended to be.
Tough luck for owner Aza Wolfcale and for the fans of her cooking. You might recall she had to close down the Rubaiyat, an ambitious and charming Mediterranean restaurant, two years ago, even though it seemed enormously popular.
Good food and good service don’t necessarily translate into restaurant success.
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For some skeptics, year-round farming in the U.P. might seem like a pipe dream but don’t tell that to the newly created, non-profit Partridge Creek Farm. They’ve got 27 acres of land in southeast Ishpeming that they hope will be producing harvests in the next year.
Among the plans: a hardy, four-season greenhouse, a farming education center, two fulltime employees, and outside fields that will produce crops between June and November.
Zoning issues still need to be resolved with the city and grants are being solicited, but private donations are already coming in. The farm’s board of directors is also seeking counsel from private farmers in the area.
What’s not to like about the idea? More locally grown food for us, more education for us on how to grow our own.
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The rumors have been out there for more than a year–the CBS affiliate in Green Bay, WFRV, is planning to make a big splash in the U.P. by starting a local newscast on its local affiliate, WJMN.
In other words, another station to take on TV6, one of the most dominant small stations in the U.S., along with TV10.
“When” has always been the question for the move. We now know that a WJMN executive has been contacting current and former TV6 news staffers about possible employment, but no one is saying publicly when WJMN would start its local newscast. Or even where. The studio could be in Marquette or elsewhere.
Repeated calls to the general manager at WFRV have yielded no answers so far.
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On the radio front, ESPN UP has a new personality. He’s Ryan Mayer, fresh out of Philadelphia and Hofstra University.
He replaced longtime veteran Casey Ford who recently left broadcasting to sell cars at Frei Chevrolet. Cynics in the broadcasting industry would say that’s clear evidence of upward mobility.
Mayer now teams with Bill Blohm for their daily Sports Pen show from 4-5 pm. What kind of audience does the show get? Nobody really knows.
Station general manager Tom Mogush says Arbitron used to do the count but it recently sold out to Nielsen which, he claims, makes only a token effort to measure the radio audience here in the U.P.
Mogush is convinced, however, that there’s a real hunger for more local sports here. He promises expanded local programming in the next year. No details yet.