NARROWS DELI LIVES ON, UNDER NEW CARE

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun Staff Writer

Ice cream cones and children on vacation form a happy marriage, once again, at the Narrows Deli on the Glen Lake narrows. Their smiles and busy tongues lapping a summer treat before it melts all over their hands are nothing new to this quaint business located across M-22 from the bridge that divides the Big and Little Glen Lakes. But new proprietors Dave and Shirley Miller are new.
The Millers, who also own the Mobil Mart convenience store and gas station in nearby Maple City, have saved the Narrows Deli from sitting closed and collecting cobwebs, as it did last summer after Bayberry Properties Inc. – affiliated with The Homestead resort – purchased it from former owner Greg Nicolaou and put the business up for sale. Dave and Shirley are currently leasing the ice cream hot spot until summer’s end, after which ownership may change hands again.
“I think the Narrows is an ideal location,” says Dave. “It needs some decorations, maybe some signs so that you don’t just turn left (towards Glen Arbor) and miss it. But we can’t put a whole bunch of money into it when we know we’re leaving in eight weeks.”
Dave says that the Deli’s highlight product will be Pleva Lean hot dogs, made over in Cedar, and ice cream. The Millers will stock light food, submarine sandwiches and picnic items for folks heading out to the sand dunes. “Greg did great big food, but I’m not into that,” says Dave. To Glen Arbor, though, seeing the Narrows Deli open again is great enough.
And the Open for Business sign makes the establishment’s lineup of past owners sleep easier at night, not to mention hungry kids who crave two scoops of Chocolate Chip cookie dough ice cream after a dip in the Glen Lakes. Nicolaou, who ran an award-winning deli featuring Greek food good enough to make patrons climb onto tables and dance like Zorba, says he gets a melancholy feeling whenever he drives by the establishment he owned for two years.
“Running the Narrows Deli was probably the nicest experience I’ve had in my career” as a chef and culinary expert. “I could cook, talk to customers and meet lots of awfully nice people. They must like my food, because I see some of the same customers come in to Cavanaughs (at The Homestead, where Greg now heads the Food and Beverage department) to get spinach pie and lambshanks.”
Nicolaou says he enjoyed the freedom of having “his own sandbox” when he ran the Narrows Deli, but that he sleeps better at night making a stable income at The Homestead now, where his customers are greater in number and where he doesn’t have to run the show. According to Greg, Homestead owner Bob Kuras made it possible for the master Greek chef to run food and beverage at the mega resort just north of Glen Arbor. Bayberry, in turn, purchased the Narrows Deli, and intends to sell it as early as the fall.
“Though I enjoyed running the Deli, we weren’t cutting the fat hog, as they say,” says Nicolaou. “It was a lot of work, with little return on investment. But I think if I had stuck with it for a few more years we could have made it a lucrative business.”
Seeing his cherished sandbox all locked up last summer prompted Greg to inform his good friend Dave Miller, the current proprietor, about what a promising summer venture the business could be.
“I told Dave, ‘if you lease it for just a few months you can make money, whereas keeping it open all winter is tougher.’ The Deli sits in an absolutely prime location. It is the only spot where you can get a view of both Glen Lakes while you eat your ice cream.”
Dottie and Bill Thompson, who owned the business, then called the Dairy Bar, from 1993 to 1998, also hold fond memories of their spot on the Narrows. The Thompsons, natives of Chicago, recall festivities that unfolded during their reign, when the Dairy Bar resembled a diner from the 1950s. Elvis and Bears football memorabilia kept watch over the restaurant while a classic jukebox churned out oldies on warm summer afternoons.
The Thompsons held parking lot dances, hoola-hoop competitions and open membership to the “coffee club”, a cult of graceful old timers in the Narrows area who frequented the Dairy Bar daily and worked at solving the world’s problems while drinking out of Coffee Club mugs with their own names etched on them. The Thompsons, who now own T ‘n’T Video in Glen Arbor along with the White Gull Inn next door, also pioneered the Labor Day Bridge Walk in 1994, a well-known event in which Michigan’s former lieutenant governor, and local resident, Connie Binsfeld sometimes ambulates.
“The Dairy Bar was really fun. It grew so successful that we couldn’t handle it anymore. Yet when it sat empty all last summer, Bill jokingly suggested to me that we buy it back from The Homestead,” says Dottie, shaking her head as if negating the proposition all over again.