about

Helen Harding was raised in Ann Arbor by parents with deep roots in the community. She went to the local public schools and Washtenaw Community College before graduating from University of Michigan with Honors and a degree in American Cultures. Helen has traveled and studied abroad, and found the experience only deepened her commitment to her home town. In Ann Arbor, with its heartland heart and global sensibility, Helen has found many lessons can be learned by just staying put. With eat, she would like to return the favor to the community that formed her, using everything she has learned to provide grounded, thoughtful and inspiring food and service.

Blake Reetz was raised on the Reetz family centennial dairy farm in West Branch, Michigan, where eating seasonally and locally was a daily way of life and hard work built healthy appetites. Community events large and small centered around family and food, the harvest, the preparation and, of course, the eating. At 19, the farm could no longer satisfy Blake's creative energy. He moved to Ann Arbor to broaden his horizons and pursue a career in the kitchen. Like Helen, his travels and experiences in kitchens across the country, have brought him full-course back to his roots on the farm. Blake found the close ties and sense of place that are an everyday part of farm life are the missing link in so much 'sophisticated' food that falls just shy of the mark. At eat, Blake brings a sense of place back to the table, coupled with a creative energy that finds its natural expression in food. Every meal becomes a feast.

Blake and Helen have known and worked with each other since they were 20 and 15 respectively. They met while working at Jefferson Market, a market, cafe and restaurant, with one foot in community and one foot out in the wider culinary world. The market, a renovated corner store in Helen's Old Westside neighborhood, was deeply local, but its menu was worldly and skilled, changing weekly. Blake and Helen were there from day one, starting as prep cook and dishwasher, respectively. Within 7 years, Blake was executive chef and Helen front-of-the-house manager. While they held the reigns at the market, they also produced its catered events, providing food for 25 to 250. At eat, as at 'the Jeff', Blake watches over the food, and Helen watches over the people. The original Jefferson Market is much missed, but its legacy lives on in Blake and Helen's friendship and in their work at eat.