Not every restaurant owner would be comfortable rehiring – and putting in charge – a bunch of former employees. But Dave Denison is doing just that as his Amical restaurant in downtown TC is celebrating 25 years next month.
 
From February 4-10, in place of Amical’s usual Cookbook Dinner Series, the restaurant will host an “Alumni Week.” For Denison, it’s a chance to see old faces, dust off a few old menu favorites, and enjoy the gifts of former Amical employees who have graduated to big things.
 
“We’re putting out a call for anyone who ever worked here, inviting them to come in and have a little reunion week,” Denison says. “We have a gift for everybody who used to work here. It doesn’t matter what they did: if they worked here and they come in, they’re going to get a gift. The whole week is just a little thank you to those people for helping us along the way.”
 
Part of the thank you is an invite to former Amical staffers to come back and work in the restaurant again, just for a few nights. Denison has been collaborating closely with a “contingent” of three former employees who have found success in the Chicago restaurant scene. Between them, the chefs – Timothy Koenig, Mikhail Schilkey, and Jan Teeter – boast a resume that includes stints at famed Chicago restaurants like Charlie Trotter’s, Longman & Eagle, Entente, Elske, Pleasantry, Girl and the Goat, and The Peninsula Hotel.
 
For Alumni Week, Amical is handing over half the menu to Koenig, Schilkey, and Teeter. The three chefs will collectively contribute four small plates and four entrees based on recipes gleaned from their years in the Chicago restaurant scene. For instance, Koenig will provide a ramen dish from Yusho, the street-food-inspired Japanese restaurant he managed for years. Schilkey will bring in the Mana Slider, a legendary brown rice and mushroom burger from Mana Food Bar, Chicago’s recently-shuttered vegetarian utopia.
                                                                       
The rest of the menu will be a sort of Amical “greatest hits,” some that have been on the menu for years and others that have been out of rotation for a while. Denison chose the dishes because they were all developed by past Amical chefs.
 
Schilkey sees the menu almost as a timeline, chronicling not just Amical’s history, but also the “epilogue” of what he, Koenig, and Teeter have learned in Chicago. For him, it’s also a homecoming: a chance to return to the restaurant where he got his start as a teenager washing dishes and where he continued to work and grow throughout his college years.
 
“[Working at Amical] was like being part of a family,” Schilkey says. “Even if I was only working there a couple months out of the year, it still felt like a home base. So, it’s a very cool notion to be invited back, and for the three of us to be appreciated and have our work recognized by Dave and the larger Amical family.”
 
It’s not just the recipes or chefs that will represent ties to Amical’s past. On February 10, the final night of Alumni Week, former Amical host Gary Gatzke will be reprising his old job for one night only. In honor of Gatzke, who now serves as interim executive director and principal double bassist for the Traverse Symphony Orchestra (TSO), Amical is making the evening a “TSO Night.” 20 percent of all proceeds will be donated to the orchestra, and there will even be violinists and other TSO members on hand to serenade guests.
 
When asked about the 25-year mark, Denison is reluctant to make sweeping claims or take any credit for how Traverse City has evolved into a “foodie” destination. Many of today’s local chefs or restauranteurs are Amical alumni, including Patty Hickman of The Dish, Nate Crane of Rare Bird Brewpub, Jonathan Dayton of Sugar 2 Salt, Michael Evans of The Good Bowl, Joe Hess of Low Bar, and Zak Pater of Peninsula Grill. Denison says he’s loved watching these former employees thrive and succeed but thinks they would have gotten there with or without his restaurant.
 
“Believe me, we didn’t show them anything,” he says. “They actually helped us more than we helped them.”