Brome to bring healthier burgers to Dearborn
A new healthier-burger restaurant opens Friday in Dearborn, serving never-frozen organic and all-natural premium beef, non-GMO house-cut fries, fresh salads and more in a handsome, airy dining room featuring sustainable materials and living walls of green plants.
Brome Burgers & Shakes is the second restaurant concept founded by Dearborn native Sam Abbas, 29, who lived for several years on the West Coast and missed its emphasis on healthier foods and sustainable living when he returned to Dearborn.
Rather than open a so-called health-food concept, he decided to focus instead on America’s favorite food — hamburgers — and make them and other dishes on the menu with higher-quality ingredients that he believes are better for consumers. The organic beef is grass-fed; in fact, the restaurant is named for a type of hay grown in the West for animal feed. The all-natural beef comes from small Midwest Amish farms and is raised without antibiotics or hormones. (Both organic and all-natural beef are offered in order to give consumers a choice of price points.)
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Most ingredients used in the restaurant are certified non-GMO, Abbas says, meaning they have not been genetically modified.
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His goal, he says, is “to give people better options for food they’d go out and enjoy no matter what."
Invited in for a pre-opening look and taste of Brome earlier this week, I was impressed by the quality, freshness and flavor of the food.
A towering mushroom burger was loaded with umami flavors from juicy beef, freshly sautéed mixed wild mushrooms, sweet braised onions, Swiss cheese, baby arugula and house-made aioli. The french fries were hot, crisp and clean-tasting. A strawberry milkshake — with a house-made base of vanilla bean frozen custard — was thick and creamy.
My favorite dish was the Farmers Market chopped salad — a colorful mix of fresh vegetables, Kalamata olives and crumbled chevre, dressed with a delicious fresh-herb vinaigrette. The aromas were mouth-watering and the flavors were just as good.
The menu is by executive chef Zane Makky, 25, an Art Institute of Michigan culinary graduate who also worked at Greektown Casino-Hotel as chef of the High Limits Players Club and sous chef at the fine-dining Brizola restaurant, among other roles.
The restaurant offers seven beef burgers with toppings including sautéed wild mushrooms, braised onions, beef bacon, candied turkey bacon, a wide variety of fresh greens and vegetables, and numerous house-made sauces and dressings. Chicken, haddock and vegetarian burgers are also offered. No pork is served; the restaurant is Halal.
The skin-on fries are cut in-house from Kennebec potatoes, a non-GMO variety, fried in sunflower oil. The five salads — prepared when ordered, Makky says — range from the aforementioned Farmers Market to Citrus Caesar and Kale Crunch. Other dishes include all-beef split-and-grilled hot dogs, sweet potato fries, house-smoked brisket sliders, and house-made chili to top plates of chili-cheese fries.
All-natural burgers are $8.50 to $10.50; organics are $2 more. Salads are $5-$12.50, depending on size. Shakes are around $5. Kids' meals are $5.
The restaurant’s bright, airy interior, designed by the Hallarsan Group (previously called HUI Design Group), was created with sustainability in mind, said Oliver Nasralah, the firm’s cofounder.
Its most striking features are the two living walls of organically grown ivy and other vining plants growing in 168 individual containers, each connected to an automatic watering system. The tables, seats, metalwork and banquettes were all fabricated by local or Michigan companies, and the tabletops by Reclaim Detroit were made of salvaged wood. A dining patio on the side of the restaurant is surrounded by planters and illuminated at night by overhead strands of Edison-style lights.
Abbas hopes to open other Bromes but isn’t committing just yet. “We’ll see how it goes,” he says. His first restaurant concept, Yogurtopia, now has three local stores and two in Arizona.
Brome will open to the public Friday with a party featuring live music, tastings and specials, kicked off by an invitation-only VIP event from 4 to 6 p.m. before opening to everyone from 6 to 9 p.m. Regular hours will be 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. (22062 Michigan; 313-996-5050 and www.bromeburger.com)
Contact writer Sylvia Rector: 313-222-5026 and srector@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @SylviaRector.