Get ready for a new farm-to-table restaurant opening up in Marquette later this summer.
It’ll be called The Marq and it’ll be located in the space that the much-loved but short-lived Rubaiyat occupied a few years ago, next to the Childrens’ Museum.
Chef Austin Fure and three partners, all from the U.P., are behind this new culinary venture that will strive to bring as much local produce and meat to their tables as possible throughout the year, including winter. Hoophouses are extending the growing season here.
Fure, who worked as a chef in New England and Chicago after graduating from the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson and Wales University, describes The Marq as a “gastro-pub.” That’s fancy restaurant talk for cool, hip food and great drinks. The drinks will include creative cocktails and craft brews.
The four partners will be adding a full sit-down bar to the restaurant but, otherwise, the changes will be only cosmetic. The empty restaurant is already a great space.
The hope is that the gastro-pub will attract both date-night diners and the more casual types, taking a break from their bike rides.
What’s not to like here? It’s an infusion of young and local energy into the Marquette restaurant scene which would seem ripe for exactly what The Marq will offer–fresh, local food.
Anticipated opening date is August.
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Meanwhile, a few blocks away, L’Attitude (no, it’s not plural or possessive…there is no “s”) is undergoing a few changes of its own.
The owners, Steve and Sam Nagelkirk, are bringing in a new management team who will be starting in about three weeks.
Tommy and Elizabeth Wahlstrom, the owners of Elizabeth’s Chop House, had been managing L’Attitude for the last three years but the Nagelkirks say they’ll be taking the parkside restaurant in a new direction.
Most of the staff will be staying on but a new wine list is on the way, and a new menu will likely follow once the new management team gets in place.
The Nagelkirks say they want the new iteration of the restaurant to offer a more casual, friendly, welcoming atmosphere with an emphasis on drinks as well as a good but limited selection of food. The kitchen is small.
Just an opinion: the food, under the Wahlstroms’ management, has been good. Diverse and tasty. Let’s hope that doesn’t change too much.
L’Attitude is as good a restaurant space and location as any in Marquette. Aged brick on the walls, with high ceilings, and huge windows looking out on the park and Lake Superior. Inside and outside seating.
The furnishings were recently updated and made more comfortable. The only obvious improvement, it seems, would be a fireplace or wood-burning stove to warm the place up for the frigid winter months, but that apparently is not doable.
L’Attitude should keep doing what it’s doing…just do it a little bit better.
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A strange and ugly story is playing out in Tennessee but it has a distinct connection to Marquette.
Seems that a former resident here who claims to have taught English here and published the weekly live-arts magazine Marquette Jam several years ago has had a conversion to rabid anti-Semitism.
The guy’s name is James Laffrey who says on his Tennessee-based blog that he’s 56 and once voted for Barack Obama but now he’s seen the “truth.” He describes himself as an educator and journalist.
There’s a lot of nasty, angry, frustrated people on the blogosphere but the reason this is relevant to us here is that, for some reason, Laffrey is spewing some of his hatred at Jason Schneider, a former city commissioner and now a candidate for county commissioner.
Schneider says he once knew the guy and Laffrey seemed nice enough. Normal. Why did Laffrey change? Schneider’s got no idea.
In any case, he and another man who was also the target of Laffrey’s hate-mongering, notified the police and FBI of the problem back in December. Laffrey’s now being monitored by authorities.
And Schneider, who’s one of our brightest, most talented and forward-thinking citizens in Marquette, is left to wonder…What the hell? What did I do to piss off some middle-aged man in Tennessee?
You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com