One of Detroit’s most iconic sommeliers is Madeline Triffon, nicknamed “Detroit’s First Lady of Wine,” who was the sixth American Master Sommelier, the first American woman, and the second woman in the world to pass the master test. There are roughly 150 American Master Sommeliers and only about 25 are women.
Triffon got her start in the hospitality business as a bartender in Ann Arbor and fell into this career path when she was hired at the Westin Hotels & Resorts in the Detroit GM Ren Cen. The hotel opened a French restaurant, La Fontaine, where Triffon was hired as a sommelier after a staff member realized what a great French accent she had when reading the menu.
During her career, she has worked in some well-known restaurants in Detroit — The London Chop House and The Rattlesnake Club. Madeline fondly described Chef Jimmy Schmidt as a wine and food chemist with his consideration when pairing the two together, making any necessary adjustments to his dishes. Madeline was also, for many years, the director of the wine programs for the Matt Prentice Restaurant Group.
Triffon left the restaurant industry in 2011 and joined Plum Market where she is the in-house Master Sommelier. Linda Koos, who is planning for a dinner party, joined Madeline at Plum Market for a wine tasting where we were able to film how a typical wine tasting plays out.
Triffon says being sommelier is easy… explaining that the basis is very similar to food with recognizing flavors, such as sweet, savory, tartess, bitterness, etc. If you’re interested in learning, she recommends the books Perfect Pairings: A Master Sommelier’s Practical Advice for Partnering Wine with Food by Evan Goldstein and Message in a Bottle: A Guide for Tasting Wine by Tim Gaiser. One of her favorite pairings is white cracker crust pizza and champagne... yum! We are thrilled to be able to feature one of Detroit's great legends of the dining experience!
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We then met with an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and plant-based trailblazer in Metro Detroit, George Vutetakis, who has been a vegetarian since he was 14 years old. Vutetakis was the chef and eventually, owner of the vegetarian restaurant, Inn Season Cafe located in Royal Oak, which was open for about 40 years.
Vutetakis grew up in a Greek household and learned about his love for food in his grandmother’s kitchen. He eventually traveled to India where he discovered methods for traditional food preparation and immersed himself in the vegetarian and yogi lifestyle. He has a deep appreciation for culturally rich foods and often based his dishes off Detroit's immigrant communities, such as Greek, Italian, Mexican, French, etc.
The philosophy behind Inn Season Cafe was to prepare healing foods that were not only delicious but could be eaten everyday, unlike a lot of restaurants that rely heavily on flavor over health. During his career, he has wrapped his arms around quality ingredients, organic farming, the farm to table movement, food co-ops, and what it really means to be nourished by what we put into our bodies. In its day, it was not uncommon for Inn Season Cafe to have four hour wait times for dinner, and yes, the food was that outstanding.
Today, Chef Vutetakis is continuing his efforts in the plant-based economy as the Co-Founder of Plantasia Foods a revolutionary product line that consists of plant-based products only. He also has cookbook, Vegetarian Traditions: Favorite Recipes from My Years at the Legendary Inn Season Cafe.
Chef Vutetakis was so generous to provide our whole crew with a home cooked vegetarian lunch that left us all satiated and nourished. Thank you Chef George Vutetakis for your hospitality and great interview!
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After lunch, we had an interview scheduled with Artist Robert Schefman who is also a Professor Emeritus at the College for Creative Studies located in Detroit where he taught for 23 years. His work is a focus of narrative-based oil paintings.
Schefman is uniquely tied to the food industry because his wife Christina Schefman worked for Gourmet Cooking Magazine and the James Beard Foundation. He reflected on their time living in an apartment in Soho, New York, saying they didn’t have much of a living room, resulting in the restaurants and bars becoming their living rooms with all of the time they spent there. Christine was well connected to many of the restaurateurs and chefs, making for great dinners and Robert’s ability to get his artwork into restaurants. Robert and Christine moved to Detroit from New York about 30 years ago after meeting Chef Jimmy Schmidt. For many years, Christine worked with Chef Schmidt on his many cookbooks he published.
Some of you may remember his 10x20 foot mural in the now closed French restaurant, Tribute located in Farmington Hills or his collection of a dozen paintings in the Rattlesnake Club. Robert fondly remembered Les Auteurs restaurant in Royal Oak owned by Chef Keith Famie, one of Robert’s and Christine’s regular dining spots in the 90s. A unique element to Les Auteurs was the crayon club, which was a vault of 200 boxes of 64 color crayons that had names of regulars on a brass plaque in the case. Robert had his own box and while having dinner would leave intricate drawings depicting something that was currently happening in the world. In the photos, you’ll see a photo of Director/Producer Keith Famie with one of Robert’s drawings he did at Les Auteurs in the 90s of the Berlin wall coming down.
Art and food often evoke similar emotions, and Schefman’s intersection of the two has made for a destined pairing. Chefs are often referred to as artists with the way they create and present their own interpretation of a unique combination of ingredients. But not only that, the way a dish looks is very important to a dining experience since the first thing we do when we eat is see the meal — eating with our eyes first. Art and food go hand in hand.