One of the more beautiful atmospheres among Greater Grand Rapids restaurants now sits on the third floor of the Ada Hotel.
Rix, 7415 River St. SE in Ada, greets diners at the top of a staircase, looking down to the hotel’s lobby and The Post Tavern, a more casual bar setting. Open windows look over downtown Ada and the Thornapple River. A giant patio also overlooks the river, just off the dining room with plenty of seating variations and a nifty, retro-like bar and bulbous light fixtures hanging over it.
And that setting is exactly what Chef Jason Tilmann is excited about.
“It’s a great place, a brand-new building with a new environment that’s fun and exciting,” said Tilmann, who came to West Michigan after a lengthy tenure in New York City and restaurants across the globe. “What we’re trying to do is chic, comfortable and approachable. It’s got a lot of energy to it. I always look at it as a place my wife and I want to go and spend a couple of hours just enjoying the experience.”
Rix, it should be noted is an important call-back to Rix Robinson, the first permanent settler of Kent County in 1821, when he purchased a French-Canadian trading post where the Grand and Thornapple rivers connect.
The opening menu is small and tight. Just a few items under each section: Small Plates, Sharing Plates, Main Course and Sweet Plates. Also in each section are several options for vegan and gluten free diners, and plenty of adjustments available for other items.
“The menu is clean, approachable and friendly but we’re not trying to be what we’re not,” Tilmann said.
Likewise, the beverage menu is also small, excellently curated and crafted. The drinks are unique, and the wine and beer is well priced.
For the magazine’s first visit, the salads were fresh and vibrant, and the meatballs were big and moist. The Michigan walleye was moist and well-seasoned with an incredible garlicky spinach on the side.
The grilled tenderloin was indeed tender and well-cooked, but for a chef who is keen on eating steaks at true steakhouses like those found in New York City, it might be advisable to opt for another dish.
Tilmann hopes the menu remains simple enough to keep the kitchen sharp with the items, but also workable enough to keep customers on their toes.
“It’s a great assortment, but not too much,” he said. “We want to crawl before we walk; make sure we have a great base of customers. Then they’ll be excited to see what we do with seasonal tomatoes, for example, because they know we want to be creative.”
That will be fairly easy for Tilmann, a self-described seasonal modern American chef who is excited about the bounties found in Michigan agriculture.
Whether it’s Grilled Otto’s Chicken from down the street to the walleye and or Ferry Farms Bacon on the Bone or the potatoes used across the menu, Tilmann said the products available in Michigan make it easy to build a quality menu with local ingredients.
“There’s no way to do 100% local every seating, but we want it to be a local, state-inspired menu,” he said. “Like dairy, it’s a great dairy state. Everyone wants to talk about Wisconsin cheese, but there are great cheeses made here in Michigan.”
Coming back to Michigan
Tilmann was born in Ann Arbor while his father was in dental school before the family moved up to West Branch. He spent time at Culver Military Academy before heading to Central Michigan University for a year, walking onto the football team.
So, Michigan is in his heart. But Central Michigan was not meant to be for his path.
“I was lost,” he said.
So, he moved down to Florida, enrolling to Indian River Community College for general studies before eventually enrolling into culinary arts.
“I had never thought about it and decided to give it a try,” he said. “When I got a taste of it, I was hooked.”
Once graduated, he began a long career working in a long trail of big restaurants and with some of the hospitality industry’s biggest names, like Masaharu Morimoto and David Burke. He launched off as executive chef at Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod, where he met his future wife who lived in New York City. That had to change and realized in 2001 he had to move to the Big Apple. A week after September 11, he received a call from lauded restauranteur Danny Meyer, offering him a junior sous chef role at the renowned Union Square Cafe and working extra shifts at Daniel.
As the executive chef, he opened NYY Steak, the New York Yankees’ steakhouse. He was living a fast-paced New York City chef life. He found his way onto Iron Chef America and Chopped. He helped open the four-star Hide Yamamoto in Singapore and the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo.
Tilmann regularly made appearances on NBC, ABC and CBS. He was also asked to cook at the James Beard House.
“I was very fortunate and blessed with who and where I had opportunities with,” he said. “But it didn’t come without its consequences: long hours, missed Christmases.”
As the family began to grow, the need of more residential space made the family move about an hour north of the city. He and his wife, Marija, who owned several dance studios, commuted back and forth for two years before hitting a wall. They started looking back to the Midwest: Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota, where Marija is from.
They settled on Wayland, Michigan, in 2017. Tilmann took a contractural job with Cafe 36 at Kalamazoo’s Sawall Health Food store to get his feet wet in Michigan, then moved to Cannonburg, but was derailed when Covid-19 struck and headed to Texas where he helped open five restaurants in a year and half before AHC Hospitality came calling with the Ada Hotel opportunity.
His life now is much calmer than when he was in New York, and he’s OK with that in this stage of life.
“There are pros and cons in both NYC and West Michigan, incredibly different and not always bad ways, not always good ways,” Tilmann said. “In NYC, I was trying to become who I am today and wanted as much knowledge as I could to get where I am. They say in New York, people are rude, but they’re just driven and motivated and have a sense of urgency to get to the next place.
“Here, it’s more about being in a different place in my life. I still have phenonmal goals and aspirations and have children to make proud. But here, it’s also about slowing down and spending time with my kids.”
And now he’s turned his attention to helping further establish downtown Ada as a culinary destination of sorts in West Michigan, joining restaurants like Myrth, Nonna’s: The Trattoria and Zeytins.
“I don’t care about stars or anything, but I’d love to create longevity and sustainability at Ada Hotel, Rix and Post Tavern,” he said. “Success to me is looking three months down the road and being booked every Friday and Saturday because our product is great and consistent.”
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