“But also beef barley, chicken noodle, clam chowder. “I make chicken lemon rice soup that’s a favorite,” says Jim, the cook. Breakfast forms a big part of it, rounded out by burgers, sandwiches, gyros, homemade soups, and Greek salad. They’ve dealt only with building owner Loreen McCalla (who for many years operated the restaurant herself, as Loreen’s Village Cafe). The Hoxhas were surprised to hear that the previous owners, the Cacinis, were also Albanian. When you go out on the street, everyone is taking a walk, everyone says hi.” Albana says she and Jim come from small towns on opposite sides of Lake Ohrid, a picturesque vacation destination on the border of Greece and Albania (she’s Albanian, he’s Greek), and “when I found this place I thought, Oh my gosh, it’s like home. The Hoxhas already run a restaurant in Wixom, part of the small Senate Coney Island chain owned by George Dimopoulos, but this will be their own place. The Hoxhas are calling it the Dexter Riverview Cafe. Albana and Jim Hoxha reopened the restaurant that was most recently, but not for very long, Dexter’s Coney Island. In late October, Dexter regained that small-town necessity: a Main Street breakfast restaurant. Both breweries, says VanDuinen, can’t bottle it fast enough to meet demand. On the other side are the more antiseptic, closed fermentation tanks of North Peak. And bar snacks, but, since tap houses are not restaurants, VanDuinen’s staff can’t prepare food: “We can’t even cut a lemon.” Hence, he explains, the irony of a g&t made with small-batch hibiscus lime gin and served with bottled lime juice on the side instead of a lime wedge.Įventually, VanDuinen says, Null hopes to offer tours of the breweries out back–the two operations are entirely sealed off from each other, communicating only via a “decontamination room.” On the Jolly Pumpkin side, uncovered tanks bubble away, the air a yeasty, sour miasma. So here’s what’s on offer: thirty tap beers (half Jolly Pumpkin, half North Peak) chardonnay, dry Riesling, pinot grigio, cabernet, and old vine zinfandel from Bonafide and a few dozen distilled spirits ranging from the traditional sour mash whisky to lunatic fringe infusions like chipotle peach moonshine and pumpkin walnut rum. The craft beer people in Michigan are playing the long game to get Michigan on the map as a beer destination and tend to wave away petty distinctions like who owns what. Bonafide is their wine … Jolly Pumpkin Mission Table are their restaurants.”īut enough genealogy. Civilized Spirits is their line of liquor.
Or, as Carlson puts it, in a patient, but basically unapologetic email: “clear as mud–right? … Northern United Brewing Company is the ‘company,’ Jolly Pumpkin and North Peak are their beer brands. In the back of the tap house are actually two breweries: Jolly Pumpkin and North Peak. Null is a tasting room for all these products. Then, several years ago, he rejoined the Grizzly Peak founders, Jon Carlson, Greg Lobdell, and Chet Czaplicka, who now partner in countless food and drink operations promoting Michigan terroir.
Jeffries was the original brewmaster of Ann Arbor’s Grizzly Peak Brewing Company before he struck out on his own. Though it periodically let people stop in, “It wasn’t a tasting room. You might remember the Jolly Pumpkin brewery on Broad St. NULL is an acronym for Northern United Liquid Libation Jolly Pumpkin, which brews on the premises, is “still owned and operated by Ron Jeffries,” says VanDuinen. When Null manager Dan VanDuinen explains it, it sounds easy. The confusion is of no small significance, because the founder of Jolly Pumpkin, a nationally renowned, small-batch, open-fermentation brewery, is Dexter native son Ron Jeffries.
In addition to its out-of-the-way location, Null has an “are they or aren’t they?” relationship with Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. There’s a big, new pub in Dexter–the Null Tap House–in a place you wouldn’t expect to find one–the industrial park off Dan Hoey Road.
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