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Friday, September 20, 2013

Nouvelles de Sans Souci: Le Jazz Hot

Right near Sans Souci on Harsens Island, Michigan,  maybe a mile or two down route 154, is the old School House restaurant; it is the school house which is old, and it is the restaurant which is new.

How old is the school? My father went there one winter in the 1920's. I do not know if it is the exactly same building, but the brick school has been there as long as I remember.

It is now a restaurant, and a very good one, too. I do not usually like restaurants, much less praise them. The School House has a various menu, and everything I have had was of very good quality.
In this day and age, these things constantly surprise me. I am more used to the "P.F.Chang" type of approach, which is no quality spread thinly over an ambiance that might have been to the taste of the Dowager Empress of China.

It is so good that it has a problem keeping up in the summer on the weekends. We went in June this year on a Friday evening, and we sat outside. Unfortunately, the service was slow due to the crush of people, and the longer we sat, the colder it became. (I did not stop wearing sweatshirts in the morning until July 4 weekend this year!)

Recently, the Scott Gwinell Jazz Band played there.





 The Vegetable Garden






 Break


Scott Gwinell provided music at my daughter's reception. He was there alone, at the piano, and reminded me of old films with Hoagy Carmichael as he sat in the garden room of the old Russell A. Alger house.



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