My week started with a Brew-Ha-Ha!  Yes yes, my first-ever inaugural launch tour (are there any more words I can add that mean “first”?) with Discover Detroit Dining happened on Sunday.  In celebration of Michigan’s top-tier craft brewing industry, we visited three noteworthy local breweries and sampled their beer as well as their food.  Bastone, Kuhnhenn, and Sherwood were gracious enough to host our group, especially as the beer kept flowing freely!  BTW, Kuhnhenn ain’t kiddin’ when they talk about their special strong beers: the Pumpkin Braggot clocks in at a whopping 14% ABV…and tastes like sipping pumpkin pie!  I have yet to meet a beer I don’t like there, and have recently discovered that I quite enjoy their sours…this place is trouble.  Capital T.

Monday I was off to Table 5 in Northville for Clean Plate Club recon.  This contemporary restaurant takes the spot an old Northville icon, but does well to maintain the community vibe the old McKinnon’s was known for.  The menu is cross-section of regional American fare with pan-cultural fusion elements, and Chef Brandon Wolschleger is doing some interesting things with green risotto.  Look for that to print in a couple of weeks!

Tuesday Logan Siegel—you’ll know his name in a couple of weeks, don’t worry—and I headed over to the Detroit Science Center to film another episode of “Nikki Does Detroit” for Do Detroit TV.  (A special thanks to Kelly Fulford for making it all happen!)  We ran around like little kids (as much as we could get away with), and I realized something: the Science Center is RAD.  Take their current exhibit, for instance: The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato.  This is the first exhibit that the Science Center has actually built themselves for touring.  It is also the first time that these mummies have been outside their native Mexico.  The exhibit itself is a painstaking recreation of the graveyard and tombs in which the so-called mummies were found (in reality, there were simply extremely well-preserved), right down to the words written on the walls of the tombs.  Deeper inside the exhibit you also get a full forensic examination of the bodies, as well as the bodies themselves, many with their almost-perfectly-preserved clothes still on.  The detail put into this soon-to-be-traveling exhibit is impeccable, right down to the tiles used in the mummies’ cases which are from that same city of Guanajuato.  The exhibit runs through April 11, 2010, before it begins its three-year national tour.