17.05.12

Mike Bleil had a career in restaurants before he started a small seafood market in Nixa in 2002. Meanwhile, the previous owner of the current Mike’s location was running a pizza restaurant there. More recently. Bleil was thinking about getting back into the restaurant business, and he learned that the pizza purveyor was looking to downsize. The businessmen swapped locations.

Bleil opened Mike’s in January 2010, moving his seafood market to the current location and putting his own stamp on the existing menu, adding seafood and Cajun items.

Above all, Mike’s clearly serves as a platform for Bleil’s creative culinary instincts — all menu items are made from scratch. Here are some samples:

Crab salad sandwich ($5.99) with a choice of fresh fruit, coleslaw or potato chips (as with any sandwich). The sandwich contains surimi crabmeat, which includes pollack, a whitefish with a fairly strong flavor for its type, to allow diners to enjoy crab at a reasonable cost, Bleil said. The mayonnaise-based dressing includes hardboiled egg and chopped celery with a classical French herb seasoning blend. Bleil said he processes the herb mix through a coffee grinder to create a fine powder. The pickles that come with the sandwich also are house made, beginning with a bushel of small pickling cucumbers, he said. The pickles have a touch of Creole spice for a little kick, plus onion and garlic. For those who want their crabmeat straight, Bleil sells several varieties in the seafood market segment of his business, including blue, snow, king, Dungeness and soft shell.

Source: Springfield News-Leader