I used to know Downtown Detroit perfectly, but I was in high school then, and it has changed so much for the better. While Ms. Yoga was in town, one of her girlfriends booked a reservation for nine at a new restaurant in Detroit called Parc. I was kind of the odd one there, as I was the only male at the table, but the lady that had booked it, told my Bride that I would love the restaurant, and she was right. The odd thing was, as we were driving around trying to find the restaurant, is that I felt like the proverbial farmer coming to the city for the first time. I could not place the restaurant, and neither could my Bride who used to work Downtown only a block or two from our destination. We finally found it and it made me feel old. The location was what I knew as Kennedy Square, the site of the old city hall and the park was named after John F. Kennedy who had delivered a speech near there when he was running for the presidency. The name clicked for me, the structure was the pedestrian entrance to the parking structure that was located under the square. Parc was for “park.”

We had a seven o’clock reservation on a Sunday night and the restaurant was packed, which was a great sight for me, remembering the ghost town that Detroit had become for years after I had graduated. The huge Christmas tree was lit, and there was an ice arena for skaters either at the square or the adjacent Campus Martius, as I was losing my grasp of the area, as it had changed so much. There was only a short wait for our table and I got a chance to view this spacious, but cozy restaurant with a nice bar in the center. There is no way that I could relay all nine dishes that were ordered, as my Bride and I were at the end of the table and Ms. Yoga was at the other end, so I will only discuss our meal. My Bride had the Organic Scottish Salmon with crispy skin, Israeli Couscous, grilled rappini, curried carrot puree and yogurt. I had the eight-ounce Creekstone Farms Filet, dry-aged, with Marsala Veal Jus, roasted potatoes with an onion and pepper ragout. We also shared a side of Wild and Local Mushrooms done in white wine and herbs. After dinner we all shared a regional and holiday themed Baked Alaska with green apples and pumpkin mousse that was flamed with an apple-jack brandy.

Parc took advantage of the former parking structure that they were in, because the wine cellar was two stories below in part of the old parking garage which I am sure was all reinforced concrete. The restaurant carries twenty-five-hundred bottles of wine, of which there were three-hundred different red wines and one-hundred-sixty different white wines. On the wine list, the last page was the Unicorn List, which featured the likes of Napa wines like Scarecrow, Bond, Tusk, Harlan Estate and Screaming Eagle while the French listings had two different DRC wines, Chateau Haut-Brion, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Margaux. While I was tempted, I did want to be married and alive the next day, so I only read the list. I had actually ordered a Beaujolais Cru for the two of us, the restaurant was out and the manager brought a Beaujolais-Villages as his suggestion, and I have to say, it was the first time that I had ever had a lower wine suggested, instead of trying to up-charge the bill. I declined his offer and ordered another Beaujolais Cru. It was the Thanksgiving weekend and we did not have any Beaujolais-Nouveau, so I was in the mood and prayed that my Bride would enjoy a different wine for the evening. We had a bottle of Pierre-Marie Chemmette Domaine du Vissoux Brouilly Pierreux 2014. The wine was called Pierreux because of the fine stone gravel that this small 1.5-hectare lot at the base of Mont Brouilly had as soil for their sixty-year old vines. This Gamay wine was aged for six months in old oak tuns and it was a delightful wine that my Bride enjoyed with her salmon and it work very easily with my filet. All in all, it was a wonderful evening and a great meal, and the ladies were already making plans to have another dinner in the future.