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Silas,

Do you work at Electric Cheetah? If not, what was your experience there? Because aside from Joe's thoughts and my friend, alexpkeaton, I have heard similar reviews and alexpkeaton and Joe are incredibly nice. I ran into another UP friend there and he said, "knowing Cory, things will improve greatly." I hope so but my first visit it seemed the servers were even lacking the very basic training.

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I'm surprised to read a comment about the place lacking character. I think it has lots of character - I mean, just start with the idiosyncratic name. The mural above the bar, which looks like a simple grassy setting, actually contains carefully crafted depictions of all the herbs used in their food - and speaking of herbs, the rosemary for the fries is grown in the window boxes in the front of the restaurant. The unisex bathrooms (which is great, because you can see both of them that way) are, as partially mentioned, covered in puzzle-coated puzzles for one and US patent documents in the other. The centerpiece votives all follow the same red-glass theme but are each styled differently -- sure, I realize these might be subtle things, but I really appreciate those kinds of quirky touches. As do I appreciate the music - on my first visit it was some fantastic piano jazz and on the second it was Neil Young. Both were a pretty welcome addition to my lunch.

The food's a little expensive for me to eat there every day on my budget, but I sure love the things they are doing with great local ingredients... for cryin' out loud, the last time I went I had a potato-and-goat-cheese bisque with beet chips, and chef's special hand cut russet fries cooked in duck fat with rosemary and a truffle aioli. I don't mind paying a little more than TGI Friday's for stuff like that.

As for Silas, I can't tell if people are piling on because he's a first poster or what, but he didn't do much more than correct a factual mistake - I've delurked on threads for that kind of thing many times. And the difference between an 8 dollar sandwich and a ten dollar sandwich, in today's economy, would be enough to make me delurk to correct it, especially since a ten dollar sandwich is the kind of thing that can keep people away from a place.

Disclaimer: I live near the Cheetah and my girlfriend just got a job there, but I've been looking forward to it and following the Electric Cheetah blog for over a year in anticipation. I think it's off to a pretty good start... my first visit there, a fellow guest commented on how quickly you feel comfortable going there by yourself, and some foodie-types came in who enjoyed their food so much they made a point to call their daughter from across town to come and join them.

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Hi there everyone.

I just wanted to tell you a few things about what I am trying to do and clear the air about The Electric Cheetah.

First, it is really hard to open a restaurant and the project was extended by more than a year due to construction delays and I have been hanging on trying to maintain my financial obligations and it has been tough. I opened this place with almost no money to my name and I apologize if the service was bad, but I did not have enough money to bring a full staff in and go through weeks of training. I also am trying to hire within the neighborhood as their are several people who live here in East Hills who were jobless and that meant giving some people, who had never had server training before, a chance to learn and I would have thought that people around here would have been sympathetic to the fact that everyone needs to start somewhere. The service issues are being addressed and I continue to work with them everyday so they can become more efficient.

As for the interior I did my best. The entire restaurant was built with a very small budget, I have no loans, and my family and I spent this past year taking old equipment and refurbishing it. If you come in and things look new it is because of the months I spent gathering used equipment and refinishing it to look new again.

I am trying to offer a quality product and I do respect the fact that one may think that $8 is too much for a sandwich. I just have to say that I use local meats, eggs, produce when I can. I have heard that I am not doing it enough for some and it is hard to please everybody. That $8 sandwich would become a $20 sandwich if I added up all of the time money spent to get "everything" locally. I too wish that the growing season here was longer, but the fact is, we live in Michigan. My meats are roasted in house. I do not use "lunch meats" or "cole cuts". When you get a turkey sandwich it is real turkey that is put in an oven and then sliced and put on a sandwich, same as the corned beef from Creswick Farms, which currently is only available at my restaurant. I think that $8 is fair for that kind of food and if I charged any less for it I would go out of business. I am not looking to get rich, granted I own a restaurant, but I have worked for it and it is my first one, but I hope that I can offer quality food at a good price and I spend 18 hrs a day sometimes doing everything that I can to expedite that process.

As for the bull horn incident. I agree that was a better way to handle that. The same day other business owners in the neighborhood had been complaining via email about the same guy intimidating women for money, one even called the police. I did not want to see anyone arrested as it is anyone's right to stand on public property and ask anyone any question that they want, just as it is anyone's right to refuse that person request, but when I heard that it had been going so far as following women to their cars and demanding money, reading emails about it, staff members saying that they had been approached, customers coming in and saying that they were harassed, on top of my new business running with a pretty full dining room and all of the questions involved on one of the first few days of business, I overreacted, and yes with a bull horn but in a very polite way asked him to stop insisting that people give him money. I certainly meant no harm and did not celebrate the fact that I had taken care of something that I know will never stop. And I have taken the bull horn off the premises.

Please come back and give us another try. Our full menu starts on Wednesday and it will be ever changing. I have started the different soup and some of them will be vegetarian, and even vegan, but I am not a vegetarian or vegan restaurant, nor do I intend to be, but there is a Thai salad on the menu that is offered with grilled marinated tofu, which is appropriate and entirely vegan and we do have a few vegetarian options as well. I also do fresh Lake Michigan Lake Perch on Friday night and my fries are not as crisp as some places because they are simply raw potatoes that remind me of the kind of fries that you would get on the boardwalk at a carnival, which I and many others happen to love. Be sure to check out all of the sauces that we have to dip them in as well and your fries will become not just one dish, but change with each dip you make.

I do not have an alter-ego that thinks it is an "Electric Cheetah".

I lived at 933 Wealthy St before this boom of business and have watched it grow and I thought this would be a nice place for me to showcase my art and I know I can not please everyone, but I will try my best to offer a quality product and certainly take criticism into consideration and I continue to tweak my menu.

Michigan Asparagus specials all week!

Very sincerely,

Cory DeMint

Owner and Chef

The Electric Cheetah

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Thanks for checking in Cory. Sounds like you've really had an uphill battle. I would think that most people here didn't know that you hired local people with no jobs and no restaurant experience. Without that information, I too would have thought it was just poor service or opening pains.

I didn't read anything on here about the bullhorn incident. Sounds pretty interesting though. :)

And nobody's piling on wituski, but silas' remarks were a bit snarky over a $2 mixup.

Good look guys!

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g-rad.org has some things about the bullhorn posted.

I am trying to fit in answering any questions that people might have despite the fact that I have a restaurant to run and just like our unique community, I am trying to run my place differently than most restaurants: scratch cooking, local employees who walk to work, re-using, recycling, etc. We have a man who picks up our used fryer oil and makes bio-diesel out of it, we give our coffee grounds to a farm that composts the filters and all, we recycle all of our cans and plastic and bottles and anything we can, I make stocks from leftover vegetable scraps, anything can be made into a soup, low temp dishwasher, 99.7% efficent water heater, you know, I am trying.

I have worked in several places where the big metal cans get tossed in a plastic bag and thrown into the fill and it just kills me to do that. I also picked plastic to-go containers that can be taken home and washed and re-used, or at least rinsed and recycled. I charge $.50 for take out to cover the cost, but well worth it to ensure that things like that get handled properly. And for the little leftover I have paper doggie bags that will decompose naturally.

I can see how things like this could go overlooked coming in and taking a quick glance and making a snap judgment based on one lunch, but if you look closer you can see that not only the food is homemade, but most everything in the restaurant was put together by the hands of my brother and I without deep pockets to dig into.

I encourage anyone to come in to the Cheetah and talk to me about any concerns that they have had with their service, their food, the neighborhood, or even if you just want to talk about food. We all love it and all have individual tastes and I think it would be great to have an open line to deal with these issues.

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Mr. Cheetah,

I'm not going to lie, before you came on I had already passed judgement on your restuarant before even trying it. However, because you have defended yourself successfully I will definitley give your restaurant a shot. Welcome to the neighborhood.

-Sean

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Looks like we got a big pile-on from g-rad.org. ;) The thing I find funny is that people are pissed at a food review. I think I was quite fair and balanced. I travel this stretch several days a week and am happy to see another bright spot in the neighborhood. As I said before, I hope Electric Cheetah improves and succeeds. No need for the g-rad.org contingent to come over and want to rumble (silas, numbersinthedark). Feel free to stay on your own playground.

Personally, I find the bullhorn story to be amusing. I wish I had one so I could say "You and your buddy did not just run out of gas. Please move along!". ;)

And for the record, I didn't say the menu was too expensive. I just said the fries substitution seemed a bit much. Not the overall cost of the meal (it came to about $11, not bad in my opinion but $15 w/ fries is approaching pricey).

Joe

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I dont think there is any reason to apologize for the whole incident with the bullhorn.

That guy was rude and was being a jerk. Just because he was homeless doesn't make him some lovable fuzzball. His behavior was noted by too many people as being offensive for someone not to tell him to take a hike.

You are putting people to work, and contributing to the local economy. Heck, you even built your own building!

He was being a pain and making people miserable. Good for you for standing up for your customers!

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Looks like we got a big pile-on from g-rad.org. ;) The thing I find funny is that people are pissed at a food review. I think I was quite fair and balanced. I travel this stretch several days a week and am happy to see another bright spot in the neighborhood. As I said before, I hope Electric Cheetah improves and succeeds. No need for the g-rad.org contingent to come over and want to rumble (silas, numbersinthedark). Feel free to stay on your own playground.
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Thanks for that bit of info on the meats. I had the reuben and particularly noticed how tasty the corned beef was. My only complaint was that the meat to cole slaw ratio was too low. The sweet potato fries were also very good. It was obvious the server didn't have much experience so I gave her a pass. I'd expect the staff would improve with a few weeks under their belts, so I'd wait a little bit before passing judgment.

I also had not heard of the bull horn incident, but it sounds like a good story. I don't think you should apologize for that.

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Admittedly, I have not eaten at the Cheetah yet, but I have had numerous dishes prepared by Cory at some of his events over the last few months and he has also catered an event that I attended that was done superbly.

While the reviews seem fair, I think it is important to keep in mind that anytime a restaurant opens that there are going to be glitches - particularly (and this is the important point) when the restaurant owner and chef is doing things differently than the industry standard. It is far easier to plug into some system where all food is sourced from one conglomerate and prepared as a commodity.

He is using local meats - which in and of itself is a huge difference than buying your meat from some national distributor who gets it from a feedlot in Wyoming. He is using local and seasonal produce. He has hired local people. He has built the interiors with his own hands. This restaurant and its philosophies are what buying and living local are all about.

If that means there will be a few hiccups then so be it. If that means that a sandwich is going to cost a few bucks more or that fries (labor intensively hand-cut) are going to cost $4.00, then that is simply the price of doing things right. It also happens to be the true price of good food, not the commodity price of food-like substances. Living locally and supporting local, as many of us know, does not always mean that it is the cheapest easiest route, in fact - most times it is not.

At some point, as more places like the Cheetah, Corez, Winchester and Art of the Table infiltrate our neighborhoods, these places (true local sustainable commerce) may become the norm rather than the exception.

We should all just settle down and not throw this place under the bus before it is given a chance.

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I don't live in GR but I'll be visiting family in August and will definitely do my best to stop by the Electric Cheetah. All of this discussion is raising my interest. That's sort of near my childhood home, too, since I spent the first 10 years of my life on Paddock just off Lake Drive (East Hills). I'll bring along some of my family, too, if I can. I'm just so intrigued by watching an area I grew up in, go through the various cycles it has over the past several decades and gratifying to know there are such optimistic and persistent people working so hard to revitalize that area. Thanks!

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I got to sample the expanded menu today. Got the bread appetizer...the red pepper cream cheese ... I would buy a jar of that. Got the cranberry chicken salad, the wife got the turkey sandwich. It was all fresh and tasty, and not that watery deli turkey. Tortoise cookies for dessert. I'll be back.

Oh yeah, there's a coupon in the Local First coupon book for them too. That I forgot to use.

I missed the bullhorn bit...? Is it all at G-Rad?

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Just to chime in, my wife and I stopped in for a quick dinner last Friday and had a great experience. Our server was great and definitely scored points for helping us choose the sauce we might like best for the fries!

My wife is a successful personal chef and her exact comment after eating half her sandwich (mushroom and asparagus) was "This is the best sandwich I've ever had!"

I enjoyed the clam and corn chowder as well as the sweet potato fries quite a bit.

Personally I find the atmosphere very interesting and inviting, then again I've also listened to Cory tell me the adventure behind almost every aspect of the restaurant. So, my recommendation is to go check it out and don't leave with out saying hi to Cory and catching at least one story about the art going up on the range hood or the puzzles in the bathroom or the planter boxes or the concrete counter top built by Kendall students or... you get the idea.

Congrats to Cory for opening up (finally), and G and I will be returning to the Cheetah again soon.

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