Many a young man romanticizes his mom’s home cooking, but in Bart Aniolczyk’s case, Mom was Krystyna Aniolczyk, founder of Amadeus, Ann Arbor’s refined Polish-Hungarian restaurant. Bart (whose middle name is Jake—”It’s my stage name,” he laughs) grew up eating, and helping out, in Amadeus’s kitchen.

But Bart’s Place, the tiny, mostly takeout, restaurant he opened in Dexter last fall didn’t click: “I had a European menu, but it just didn’t fit here. I started experimenting with different things, to find some fit between what people want, what Dexter doesn’t have, and what I’m able to do with my cooking skills.”

He hit on barbecue, and it was a regular item on the menu by winter. “People were just going crazy about it. People said it was the best barbecue they ever had. Now that’s hard to do,” says Aniolczyk’s girlfriend, Lindsey Unrath, marketing manager at Jake’s BBQ Shack, which is scheduled to open on June 1.

Aniolczyk took advantage of Dexter’s Main St. closure to launch the makeover, which included decorating the place with cowboy-themed relics. With one table and counter space for four, Jake’s Place necessarily encouraged takeout. Jake’s BBQ Shack goes a step further—it offers delivery.

The menu is short: baby back ribs, burgers made with beef from Ann Arbor’s Knight’s Market, and Cuban tacos (pulled pork on corn tortillas with homemade salsa verde). He’s carrying over the Warsaw salad (steamed veggies, eggs, and pickles in a mayo-based dressing) from his European menu; the barbecue comes with a more traditional slaw. He also will offer a rather sophisticated European-flavored kiddies’ menu of cheese panini and smoked ham—no chicken nuggets here.

Jake’s BBQ Shack, 8050 Main St., 426– 3663. Tues.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–7 p.m., Sat. 2:30–9 p.m., closed Sun. & Mon.

Ginny Nemchak, who moved Polly’s Paper Studio from Pinckney to Dexter just as Main St. shut down for resurfacing, sees the bright side of things. “We were alarmed at first, but with a lot of people parking on Broad St., we may have gotten noticed by a lot of people who wouldn’t have seen us if they’d just stayed on Main.”

She’s equally upbeat about the future of scrapbooks in a digital age. “Digital is nice. You can crop your pictures, and make them exactly how you want them. You get a lot better quality picture from your investment. And with the digital, you can scan your heritage pictures in, so you don’t have to use your originals in the scrapbook.”

Nemchak opened her Pinckney store a couple of years ago. A motherly, welcoming presence, she retired from a twenty-year career in retail sales to be a stay-at-home mom, but says, “As much as I enjoy my children, it soon became pretty clear that I need to get out and work. This was an extension of what I was doing at home.”

“Paper crafting,” she explains, is the new name for “scrapbooking.” New moms with baby pictures are drawn to scrapbooks, but when the kids start to grow up, elaborate scrapbooking often transitions into card-making and other paper arts. Nemchak sells only archival-quality paper, as well as all sorts of bling, stickers, and ribbons that can be applied to it.

Those who knew her Pinckney store may notice the absence of Polly, Nemchak’s black-and-white cat with the “great big beautiful green eyes.” Polly is alive and well, but the new store doesn’t have room for her kitty condo, and Polly “needs to get away by herself sometimes.”

Polly’s Paper Studio, 3238 Broad St., suite 102, 268–1109. Tues.–Sat. 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.–4 p.m., closed Mon. Pollyspaper.wordpress.com

Adnan Hourani closed Lucky Haskins on March 31. His shop of miscellaneous antiques and collectibles moved to Dexter from Ann Arbor about a year ago, but in March, Dexter wasn’t feeling like a lucky place to Hourani: the town was paralyzed by the March 15 tornado, and Main St. was dead. Then, he says, “I got three weeks’ notice that they’re going to be resurfacing. I was all geared up for a great spring and summer, and this was like the village council saying, ‘Oh by the way, you’re going to lose $15,000.'” (Speaking in April, Hourani had a hard time believing that the road resurfacing would finish in late May, as scheduled, and he talked as if the Main Street project would span the entire summer.)

Before Hourani opened Lucky Haskins in Ann Arbor in 2009, he sold in antiques malls, and that’s what he’s going back to. “Knightsbridge Mall in Northville for sure,” he says, and maybe some other places as the summer progresses.