Food Dance was ‘ahead of its time’ bringing farm-to-table fare to Kalamazoo, longtime patrons say

KALAMAZOO, MI — Michelle McDade described the bar at Food Dance as “the Cheers of Kalamazoo.”

“You would go there and always see someone you knew, and if you didn’t, you knew the waitstaff and the employees because they had been there so long,” said McDade, who began frequenting the restaurant shortly after it opened at its original location in downtown Kalamazoo in 1994.

Related: Kalamazoo’s Food Dance to close permanently

McDade, a longtime Kalamazoo resident, said Food Dance is the restaurant where she would always meet friends for drinks or dinner. Going out to dinner Tuesday night after hearing that Food Dance owner Julie Stanley had announced the restaurant was closing permanently on April 9, McDade said, was a strange feeling.

“Food Dance has been closed on Tuesdays since reopening (after COVID), but when my friend and I talked about where we would go, and that wasn’t an option because it was closed for the night, we commented how strange it is that we will no longer be able to go there,” McDade said. “I think there’s going to be a huge hole left, not only because of how Food Dance provided great food and sourced great food, but the social aspect that Food Dance brought to the community.

“It was sort of iconic. There’s people from all over the country who know Food Dance, from coming to see shows at Bell’s, and knowing that’s a place in Kalamazoo to go to for great quality food.”

Related: ‘We just didn’t have a path,’ says Food Dance owner about near closure of Kalamazoo restaurant

People from New York, Detroit, Denver and Chicago were among those commenting on social media posts, expressing their sadness over the news and sharing stories of times spent at the restaurant.

“Kalamazoo is a much more vibrant place than when I was at Western,” said Angela Holmes, of Saugatuck, attributing much of that vibrancy to the impact Food Dance had on the community and downtown landscape.

Holmes said she is a firm believer that a single business can have that type of impact on a community, and Food Dance was one of those places. The restaurant’s closure is a big loss for the community, she told MLive.

“I think Food Dance and downtown Kalamazoo as we know it today are synonymous,” added Jeff Breneman, Western Michigan University’s vice president of government affairs. “As a downtown resident and someone who has been around the community a long time, I can’t think of a time when Food Dance wasn’t there, from when it was in that small space in the old Haymarket.”

Breneman credited Food Dance for being ahead of its time in bringing the farm-to-table concept to Kalamazoo.

“You didn’t have that in Kalamazoo,” he said. “You had a Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, but you didn’t have that in Kalamazoo, and now everyone is focused on locally-sourced. They knew what was really important.

“We don’t do chain restaurants well in Kalamazoo. We like them locally owned and we like our locally-sourced restaurants. They paved the way for that, no doubt.”

Breneman said it was unfortunate that Food Dance will be closing as opposed to being sold, but that is regrettably what happens with a lot of small businesses that do not have a succession plan in place. For communities to thrive, he said, there needs to be emphasis on working with locally owned companies to keep them operational and independent when owners are ready to retire.

Stanley told MLive Tuesday that she listed the restaurant for sale in January but nothing materialized in the two months since it went on the market. She said she would still entertain an offer, but it would have to come quickly and be the right buyer and offer.

“It’s just the right time,” she said. “I paid my debts and I want to be done. I’m tired. I’m 69 years old. I just wish that somebody would have stepped up to buy it a long time ago.”

Food Dance, which has been rooted near downtown at its second location at 401 E. Michigan since 2007, has dealt with its share of adversity in recent years. In addition to the pandemic, a fire in September 2018 closed down the 11,000-square-foot restaurant for two months.

Stanley had talked about closing the restaurant in early 2021, but made the decision to forge ahead with two new chefs running the kitchen after spending years with the same chef at the helm. She said at the time she was ready to retire and was hoping to groom someone to take the restaurant into its next chapter.

Though no such successor has appeared, Food Dance can still claim a legacy of helping to grow the local restaurant scene.

“For me, that was the restaurant I probably learned about food from the most at a young age and started the path to me being a foodie and ultimately a restauranteur,” said Sarah Barany-Davis, who owns Kitchen Proper in Battle Creek with her husband and executive chef Tony Davis.

“When I moved there in ‘96 for college, it wasn’t as much of a foodie city as it is now,” Barany-Davis told MLive Wednesday. “And Food Dance, coming from a small town, and seeing how they really cared about the food and the community and being farm to table, as well as being involved in the community in other ways, that really inspired me.”

More than an inspiration, Barany-Davis said Food Dance has served for more than two decades as the space where she, her friends and family have celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and even divorces.

From exceptional service to food to the sense of community — to the familiar atmosphere at the bar — she said Food Dance has stayed consistently on par with any of the best restaurants she has visited in cities across the country as she’s gotten older.

“I think they definitely impacted and paved the way for Kalamazoo food scene that is now, 100%,” she said, highlighting that Food Dance was a pioneer in farm-to-table dining in Kalamazoo. “I’m really happy for J
ulie that she is going to take the time for herself, but I wish someone would carry the torch.”

In addition to her desire to retire, Stanley cited rising food and labor costs, as well as concern for health and well-being of staff over the past couple years as driving factors behind her decision to close.

“I don’t think any restaurant is making any money right now,” she said. “I’m going to miss all the guests, who I love to death. And I love our bar; I’ll miss the bar. It’s the best bar in the city to go sit at, and people talk to each other and our bartenders are really fun.

“It’s always been like that.”

For three more weeks, it will continue to be just that, she said.

Food Dance’s last day of service will be Saturday, April 9. Stanley said patrons can expect many of the items from the restaurant to be auctioned at off at some point in the near future.

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