The wine and beer offerings are impressive.

So here’s a happy sequel to the Detroit ruin porn post a few weeks ago: The restored Westin Book Cadillac is a beautiful, beautiful place, a $200-million restoration of the hotel that first opened in 1924 and closed in 1984. The Ferchill Group in Cleveland and the city worked together on its restoration, and it’s been open for just over a year now. Its ROAST restaurant (why all caps?) by celebrity Iron Chef Michael Symon is wonderful on its own, with a lovely interior, tasty menu and extensive wine and beer list. The Detroit Free Press named it 2009 Restaurant of the Year.
Many of the principal plates were less than $25, including the $17 pan-roasted chicken I had, and the salmon Sam had.

For me, though, the best surprise was the beer menu, which had several bottles of Belgian beer from the Drie Fonteinen small family restaurant in tiny Beersel that we loved to visit when we lived in Brussels in the ’90s. I ordered a 750ml bottle of Kriek, which is a cherry lambic. The lambic means it’s naturally fermented with wild yeast that populates the Brussels area. It makes a tangy, tasty brew. Roast also had several Belgian Geuze beers from Drie Fonteinen and the more famous Cantillon brewery, which are even tangier, verging on sour. The young sommelier stopped by and asked if I was enjoying the Kriek. I raved to him and thanked him for putting it on the menu.

Tomorrow's roast beast: Goat? pig?

“Roast beast of the day” was roast suckling pig, about 10 ounces of it. “It’s not very fat,” the waiter told us. “Because, you know, it’s a baby.” I couldn’t help but think of the adorable piglets we saw at the Fieldstone Farm outside of Straford, Ontario, this summer. We did not choose the suckling pig, but saw tomorrow’s roast beast in the next room on the rotisserie spit. Let us not be coy about where our meat comes from, people! We started with the charcuterie plate, then got the pan-roasted chicken with root vegetables and the salmon with capers, both very good. We didn’t have room for dessert, but the Guinness ice cream with chocolate pretzels and caramel sounded great. Next time.

If you get a chance, go visit Roast, and be sure to take a look around at the rest of the hotel. It looks like a rare happy ending for Detroit.