Oryana Café

Way to grow!

By Janice Binkert | May 20, 2017

For all of those who lament that — despite its growing reputation as a dining mecca — Traverse City has few ethnic cuisine options, some good news: We have a restaurant that serves not only Indian specialties but also Greek dishes and Moroccan fare — the newly remodeled and expanded Oryana Café, on East Tenth Street, just a stone’s throw from downtown’s Front Street district.

You Can Please All the People
Here, those and other international flavors appear in myriad guises alongside a plethora of more familiar — but no less interesting — foods. Want a juicy burger? A crunchy vegetable or grain salad? A bowl of two-alarm chili? Oryana has those too.

“Practically everything is made from scratch, with the focus on fresh, fair trade, local and organic ingredients, and there are options for everyone — meat eaters, vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free,” said Danielle Zimmerman-Tiedeck, the café’s prepared foods manager. “We offer a tremendous number of choices, and our staff is very well educated on which ones are appropriate for certain restricted diets or allergies. That said, I want to emphasize that when people come into our café, they aren’t walking into the gluten-free place, or the vegan or vegetarian place, or the place for people who have allergies. They’re walking into a place with healthy, delicious food for a wide range of tastes — and in many cases, it’s also really decadent food.”

Go with the Flow
Formerly known as Lake Street Café, Oryana Café is still inside Oryana Natural Foods Market, but now within a bright and much bigger. Seating capacity has doubled to 40, not including an outdoor picnic table area and soon-to-be-completed green-roof gazebo.

Why the changes? “We needed a little more breathing room, because — and granted, this was a good problem to have — we just kept getting busier and busier. It was really customer driven,” said Stephanie Mathewson, marketing and communications manager for Oryana. “Our team has been really great about taking suggestions from customers all along and incorporating them, adding or changing things to make them better. As we grew, we heard a lot of requests for more seating and a better flow, and now we have that. It can also now be more of a community gathering space. All of the tables and chairs are lightweight and moveable, to accommodate different-sized groups.”

Changes also have been made to the café’s menus and service delivery. In addition to an even larger “grab-and-go” deli case, the café offers an expanded hot bar, a separate soup bar, a section for fresh baked goods, and made-to-order items galore: salads, sandwiches, juices, smoothies, and specialty coffees or teas. A second register has been added, and food runners will be present during peak hours to help speed up service.

For folks waiting on to-go food, the café this summer will provide pagers, enabling customers to shop around the store until their order is ready. Customers also can call ahead for pick up or order via the Chompler app or website (a local service that delivers within a five-mile radius for a small fee). “It’s very ‘millennial,’” said Zimmerman-Tiedeck. 

Spoiled for Choice
Putting the Oryana Café or its food into any particular category isn’t easy. The deli case offers premade selections as diverse as Mexican lasagna, sweet and sour chicken, roasted beets with lemon and ginger, Gruyere mac ’n’ cheese with bacon, and peanut-tofu spring rolls, as well as quiches, sandwiches, salads, and take-and-bake pizzas.

The hot bar has a different theme for its entrées every day (see sidebar). “Every day we update the hot bar menu. It’s the most clicked link on our website! And we hear about it if we don’t change it quickly enough — we get phone calls asking ‘What’s on the menu today?’”

FYI: Last Wednesday it was Mediterranean stuffed red peppers, chicken Merlot with mushroom-leek sauce, parmesan smashed red potatoes, Italian meatballs with marinara sauce, cider-glazed root vegetables, and roasted butternut squash lasagna. Soups are also big sellers, and recent soup offerings included fire-roasted tomato-kale and old-fashioned chicken noodle.

The café has been doing breakfast foods for a while, but staff have steadily added new menu items like roasted potatoes and an array of tasty frittatas, as well as baked French toast. “We’d like to expand on that even more — especially on Sundays so that it’s more of a brunch,” said Mathewson.

Up Next: Frozen Food, Hot Roof
One unique service the café offers is taking orders for easy-freeze entrées of any portion count. “Our lead chef, Maggie [Zimmerman], who is the driving force behind our culinary standards and kitchen operation, not only creates all of our cooked dishes but also knows which of those are most suitable for freezing,” said Zimmerman-Tiedeck. “It can be handy in the summer when you suddenly have unexpected guests arrive. We can also do healthy frozen meal options portioned for just one or two servings. That’s especially popular with people who live alone or who are older and maybe don’t want to cook that often.” Bonus: Oryana offers a 5 percent discount on Wednesdays for people over 55. Got kids? You’re in luck too; a special children’s menu is coming this summer.

Customer response to the new space has been great, according to Mathewson. “They say it is not only more comfortable, but more sophisticated, and they like the open and airy atmosphere with all of the windows. It was a very well thought-out design. We worked closely with Keen Technical Solutions, who have the same values as we do, and over a hundred other local subcontractors to create it. It was green built and is silver LEED certified. And it’s not going to stop here. Among other things, we are talking about solar panels on the roof to offset some of the power usage we have. We love reinvesting into our operation. We’re always thinking about that — what’s going to be the best way to sensibly and sustainably grow? Whether it’s people or food or community or business or spaces, we want to do it in the right way.”

Oryana Café is located at 260 East Tenth St. in Traverse City. For more information, call (231) 947-0191 or visit oryana.coop/lake-street-café. Rating: $

Starter Seed
Oryana now and then
Oryana Café is located inside Oryana Natural Foods Market, an institution in Traverse City since 1973, when a small group of like-minded people who wanted more transparency in their food’s origins formed a private cooperative. Originally operating on a back porch, the cooperative was built upon a simple business model: buying food in bulk and splitting it among members. Now, 44 years later, Oryana’s back-porch business has morphed into a $16 million, 9,000-square-foot food cooperative that boasts more than 7,000 member-owners, as well as a large and loyal public following.  

Around the World in Seven Days
Oryana’s hot bar
Oryana Café’s hot bar always boasts an array of foods, but its daily changing ethnic specialties get top billing — and rave reviews. Plan your week now, thank us later:

Sunday: Chef’s choice

Monday: Asian

Tuesday: Indian

Wednesday: European

Thursday: Greek and Moroccan

Friday: Latin and European

Saturday: Global