Midtown’s BasBlue Cafe has a new Chef in Residence bringing red beans and rice, po’ boys, and other Louisiana styled dishes to the table.
BasBlue is a membership-based women’s club in Midtown Detroit with a cafe on the first level that is open to the public. This summer the cafe’s menu has been redesigned by Ederique Goudia, the new Chef In Residence, through the end of September. The menu highlights her Louisiana-style cooking and features turkey and chicken gumbo, fried green tomato sandwiches, and variations of po’ boys.
“With me being from south Louisiana, their menu is very heavily Creole and Cajun influenced or inspired,” Goudia told BridgeDetroit. “Also, I wanted to collaborate with as many other women-owned food businesses across the city, as well as farmers,” she said.
The menu features a number of local businesses including Estella’s Vegan Cuisine and Desserts, Dillicious Canned Goods, Detroit Food Academy, Nurturing Our Seeds and others.
“I love collaborating and just providing the opportunity for other food businesses to be seen,” said Goudia, BasBlue’s second Chef In Residence. The first Chef In Residence was Cat Shapiro of Thyme and Honey.
Goudia’s footprint on Detroit’s food scene can be seen everywhere from intersections of food, environment, youth, and culture.
She co-founded In The Business of Food, a food consulting business, and Taste the Diaspora, an annual event to celebrate Black food in Detroit and across the African diaspora. She formerly worked as the youth program manager for Detroit Food Academy, a nonprofit that inspires Detroit youth through food entrepreneurship. At Make Food Not Waste, a nonprofit that creates solutions to keep food out of landfills, Goudia sits on the board and previously served as head chef. She also works with ProsperUs Detroit, a program that supports new entrepreneurs.
Another exciting project Goudia said she’s working on this summer is The Deco – the rehabilitation of a beauty school in East English Village into an apartment building and retail space. The project is expected to be complete by the end of the year and feature a food and beverage area on the ground floor.
Goudia said she acted as a consultant to engage the community around what they want the food space to look like.
“We did a lot of community outreach, asking the neighborhood what type of food and beverage business they wanted to be in that space, format, as well as price point, hours of operation, those types of things,” she said. “Based on their feedback, we went and looked for food businesses to fit what they said that they would support,” she said. “I’m very excited to be moving forward with that project.”
In the meantime, Goudia said last week’s launch of the new menu at BasBlue has been exciting.
“The cafe staff said that it’s gotten a really great reception so far,” she said.
In addition to the new food, BasBlue’s operations manager Tiara Tinnin said that the club’s cafe has other changes on the horizon.
New this month, BasBlue’s cafe is open on Saturdays and plans to host special brunch theme events featuring food pop-ups, women DJ’s, booze on the patio, and other activities. To pair with Goudia’s menu, one theme in the works is a “bounce Saturday” featuring hip hop style music born out of New Orleans.
Tinnin said they hope to rotate the Chef In Residence every quarter and possibly open up the kitchen as a shared commissary kitchen on weekends in the future.
Tinnin stressed that the cafe and the new brunch Saturdays are open to the public.
“Anyone can come in and utilize that space, you don’t have to be a member,” she said.
The BasBlue Cafe is open Tuesday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays for brunch from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.