“I guess I wasn’t done wanting to open a restaurant in this town,” says Brad Greenhill, the eclectic culinary entrepreneur behind the acclaimed Takoi in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. His long-awaited return to Ann Arbor was set to open, for lunch at least, as the Observer went to press.
Spiedo (Italian for spit or skewer) now occupies the very spot he’d once used for the temporary Katoi in Exile. As he awaited a liquor inspection in the colorful, cozy back dining room on S. Fifth Ave., the self-taught chef reflected on his circuitous career path and his hopes for the elevated casual fare made fresh from two vertical rotisseries and a flat-top griddle inherited from Chela’s.
Spiedo’s buildout was delayed by equipment supply chain disruptions, break-ins, and DIY general contracting, but Greenhill was set to open for lunch, at least, as the Observer went to press. | Photo: J. Adrian Wylie
Cleveland-born and Columbus-raised, Greenhill first came to Ann Arbor for college and started cooking as a summer job. After earning an engineering degree from U-M, he continued as a sous chef at the former D’Amato’s Italian restaurant at First and Huron. A friend convinced him to take their act to Boston, where the tiny trattoria Carmen earned accolades and major media mentions.
“I was torn about it. I was good at it, and I liked it, but I had still felt other callings,” Greenhill says, including as a music promoter, booking tours and designing concert posters. After two years, he moved back to Ann Arbor and launched a graphic design and web development business, Stereo Interactive & Design, which lasted a decade.
“About six years into it, I started missing cooking,” he says. So he began hosting multicourse “clandestine dinners” at his home and such venues as Jefferson Market and the Bar at 327 Braun Ct. “You only knew about it if you were on an email list.”
These pop-ups enhanced his chops as a chef, but chops alone weren’t enough to secure a lease. His financial backers weren’t in a position to commit to personal guarantees, so local landlords opted for what seemed like more secure tenants.
“None of the spots that they went with ultimately worked out,” Greenhill recounts, “Just not good concepts, but backed by money, you know? So at the time I started getting interest from Detroit,” where he eventually moved and still resides with a life partner who farms an urban acre to supply some of his ventures’ seasonal produce.
Katoi began as a mechanically challenged food truck outside Two James Spirits distillery on Michigan Ave. While building out a former garage nearby, Greenhill subleased the little Ann Arbor lunch counter that housed Jerusalem Garden for nearly three decades before its move to bigger digs in the onetime VFW Hall nearby on E. Liberty.
Katoi in Exile “was ultimately very successful, and we contemplated keeping it, but it was just going to be too much,” he says. “And this space needed a lot of love.”
The Corktown restaurant’s otherworldly neon aura and “Thaitalian barbecue joint” cuisine made an immediate splash and earned Greenhill a coveted James Beard Award nomination. But just days after the Detroit Free Press named it the best new restaurant of 2016, an arson fire while he was in Thailand closed it for six months.
Reopened as Takoi, it’s “been going strong ever since,” he says. His then-partnership group also added a wood-fired Middle Eastern restaurant called Magnet on Grand River Ave. Magnet didn’t survive the upheaval of 2020, but Takoi pivoted through the pandemic and made it through that, and “during that time I saw that this space came available. It was a little nostalgia—I was like, ‘I’ll sign the lease!’”
Chela’s (which still has locations on S. Maple and in Dexter) had renovated the space somewhat, and Greenhill thought the transition would be “relatively turnkey.” But ensuing complications—the need for a new water heater, equipment supply chain disruptions, two break-ins, pursuit of a liquor license, and DIY general contracting—kept pushing back the opening.
Meanwhile, Greenhill tested iterations of a mostly Mediterranean menu of house-made flatbread sandwiches and seasonal sides on the down-low at Root, the cavernous S. First St. bar recently reenvisioned as Rabbit Hole at Root (Marketplace Changes, June).
Spiedo’s cross-cultural menu, about half of which is vegetarian friendly, and with rice bowls catering to the gluten-free, will evolve and rotate in some fashion under the daily hand of chef Mike Goldberg, previously of Takoi and Magnet. A meatball gyro and a side of sweet-and-sour eggplant, for example, runs $22.
Four draft cocktails, or “adult sodas,” are designed to complement the food offerings in their acidity, brightness, and bubble, “but with the added bonus of alcohol,” Greenhill describes with a punctuating laugh. Beer options include thirty-two-ounce pony pitchers of Modelo Especial on draft.
“Half-service” seating for about forty—customers order at the counter for delivery to their table—is available in the front and back dining areas flanking the kitchen, along with the outdoor patio. Bold monochromatic panels both brighten and unite the “disjointed” space to foster a fun, casual vibe for the chef-driven cuisine. “As chefs— it kind of started in the pandemic—a lot of us are over fine dining and that style and level of service,” Greenhill explains.
While the destination-driven Detroit scene sports “a constant stream of new things and new chefs coming out,” he sees Ann Arbor as less dynamic in that sense, but with a stream of students adding opportunity for casual eateries, whether dine-in, carryout, or delivery. (Spiedo will utilize DoorDash).
“There’s a very large food-loving culture here. People appreciate creativity with food and different types of food. And so I think they get excited when they get something new. I don’t think they get new stuff all that often,” he says, with a steel-tempered optimism. “We can hope all we want, but I’ve learned in my years doing this that what I want to work doesn’t always work.”
Spiedo, 307 S. Fifth Ave. (734) 768–1080. Tues.–Sat. 11 a.m.–9 p.m. Closed Sun. & Mon. spiedoa2.com
