City Pulse - Greater Lansing Restaurant Guide

Old Town has a new heart: Portable Feast and Friends

Portable Feast and Friends is exactly what Old Town needed.

That’s not just because all the offerings of this new restaurant, bakery and coffee house are fresh and original, its décor cheerful and tasteful, and owners attentive and delightful.

Scott VanGilder /City Pulse

Sharon Hind and Daniel Berning have a seat outside of their restaurant Portable Feast and Friends, 1216 Turner St., in Old Town, Lansing..

It’s also because Old Town needed a heart. Opened less than three months, Portable Feast has already become just that. It’s where residents can get early-morning coffee, where business people can relax over breakfast and lunch and where visitors can re-energize with dessert and latte after checking out the galleries and shops.

Even before you go inside, you know from the fresh flowers that welcome you on the sidewalk tables that the owners understand the importance of small touches.

Inside, muted colors (terra cotta and tortilla) mix with sunburst yellow on the walls, ceiling and wainscotting and the exposed brick of the 19th century building to provide a comforting atmosphere. There the owners had the help of an expert on the art of understated elegance: Robert Busby, whose Creole Gallery is next door. Busby is more than Portable Feast’s landlord. He is a guiding spirit whose vision for Old Town helped make Portable Feast possible.

Busby seized the moment when two City Market stall operators, Sharon Hind and Daniel Berning, came to him with the idea for Portable Feast. Working across the aisle from each other, they might have seen themselves as competitors, but instead they recognized their kindred spirit in about “two seconds,” Hind said.

An Allen Park native, Hind spent 20-plus years out West in the restaurant business before settling into the City Market a couple of years ago. Berning is a Lansing native who moved back from the South about the same time. They share a passion for not only making everything themselves but for using only fresh ingredients. That means real cream and real butter (but they also eschew frying, don’t have a grill and prohibit smoking).

Berning is the baker of the two (his bread goods were popular at the Meredian Township farm market). He is in as early as 3 a.m. to make sure when the doors open that the refrigerator case is full of muffins, pastries, cakes (the 4-layer, cream cheese carrot cake is a meal in itself) and such items as the Almost Better Than Sex Bar – a concoction of white chocolate, heavy cream, dark chocolate, butterscotch, English toffee, coconut and caramel spread over an Oreo cookie bottom.

You can feel almost justified in indulging in desserts after you’ve eaten most any of the main courses at breakfast or lunch. The menu is heavy on salads, sandwiches (from baked cheese to shredded pork barbeque) and wraps for lunch, and such items as burritos (with meat or vegetarian), quiche, a Belgian waffle and the Hippie Parfait (homemade granola layered with fresh fruit and organic yogurt) for breakfast. Fresh fruit comes with many choices. And check out the wallboard for specials.

Portable Feast is a full-service restauarant for breakfast and lunch. Everything is also available to go. A separate menu is available for catering. (Portable Feast and the Creole Gallery are a great combination for a catered affair.) Coming soon will be special carryout dinner items. And whenever the Creole Gallery is open for a performance, so is Portable Feast (for ticket holders). If you’re one of the lucky 400 to get tickets for Wynton Marsalis, you can plan on a light dinner at Old Town’s – make that Lansing’s – most exciting new restauarant, bakery and coffee house.