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Sherri DeCamp provides inside perspective on the hospitality industry as co-founder of Professional Guest, a hospitality-industry consulting firm. The company provides detailed evaluations of restaurants, lounges and guest services for a nationwide clientele of luxury hotels and resorts. The company was bought out in 2002 and is now based in Atlanta. Prior to that she was for six years national sales manager and director of sales at Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City, following a 20-year career in elementary and outdoor education and executive training.

Graydon DeCamp is a veteran journalist who wrote entertaining, authoritative, pull-no-punches restaurant reviews as Senior Editor of Traverse magazine in the early 1990s. This followed retirement from a long career as a politics columnist and editor for Cincinnati's daily newspapers. He has written books about the U. S. Naval Academy and his former newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer (Old Lady of Vine Street) and was editor of the official history of Michigan's Mackinac Island State Parks. He also writes for Food Arts and other magazines.

The DeCamps live in Elk Rapids, Mich., and are active in the region's arts community, having served between them 18 years on the Traverse Symphony board and six with the Traverse Area Arts Council. Sherri has also served as a volunteer for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Graydon formerly was on the Goodwill board. They have both been active as well as volunteers and vestry members at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Elk Rapids.

ADVENTURE attracts people to Northern Michigan, whether it means sailing a new course, hiking a new trail, or seeking out a new artist. The region also delights the culinary adventurer with its interesting restaurants and the fresh, seasonal products of farms, wineries, cheese makers, and specialty food shops. Gone are the days when good restaurants operated mainly in summer for the benefit of resorters, and "gourmet" dining meant a clean tablecloth. Northern Michigan has become a culinary marketplace, complete with its own highly regarded wine appellations.
      The region's restaurants still range from knotty-pine casual to white-tablecloth elegant, and with so many choices people often ask our advice about where to go -- or send visitors. We try in our books to answer that question by applying standards we apply when we dine out. We want them to be assiduous and inventive in the selection, preparation, and presentation of food; we seek gracious, welcoming, knowledgeable staffs and owners who are present every day in the kitchen or at the door.
      Cuisine need not be haute to be fine, and we include many simpler cafes and taverns. If you don't expect them to be something they're not, we think none will disappoint you. Northern Michigan is also highly seasonal, and many restaurants streamline service and simplify menus in the off-season, and you may well have a different experience in April than in July. (Nothing keeps a restaurant on its game better than a lot of customers, however, and in slow seasons, we stick to places that stay busy all year.
      At any season, however, we encourage you to seek new experiences in places you've never been. That's what adventure is about.

YOU'LL FIND FOOD ADVENTURE in Northern Michigan today without going near a restaurant. Vineyards and wineries have proliferated Up North in the last 15 years. So have bread makers and cheese makers,  patisseries and delis, wine stores and specialty food shops. Many roadside fruit stands have become full-scale farm markets, offering a wide range of fine, home-grown produce. Much is produced on community-based farms for a pre-paid clientele, and by dedicated organic growers. Many towns now also have weekly market days, when farmers and orchardists sell their produce from stalls and trucks. Seeking and sampling this bounty is a  pleasure as unique and rewarding as the lakes and the dunes themselves.

A WORD ABOUT EDITORIAL INDEPENDENCE: We treasure ours and guard it jealously. Some so-called guides are little more than advertising, and some make restaurants pay to be included. We value our reputation far too much for any such nonsense. Let us be very clear about this:

  • No restaurant pays to be in our book.
  • No chef tells us what to say.
  • We pay for every bite we eat .
     
      Only in this way can we be free to report and write objectively about the restaurants where we eat.
       Some critics seem to write for chefs and owners rather than for readers who spend their hard-earned money in restaurants. While we know our way around the kitchen, we certainly don't pretend to know how to run a restaurant and are only dimly aware of the rigors of preparing fine cuisine for hundreds of fussy patrons day in and day out. What little we do know makes us respect and admire the chefs and owners we write about. We regard them with awe.
      But we never forget that the audience we write for consists of paying restaurant patrons just like ourselves.

-- Sherri and Graydon DeCamp
Elk Rapids, Michigan, May 2004