Quiana “Que” Broden’s goal has always been to bring healthy food to the hood. She did that in 2015 when she opened her vegan-centric restaurant The Kitchen by Cooking with Que in the New Center area. Now she’s got her sights on a second location on Detroit’s Avenue of Fashion.
Que is planning to open the new spot at 6321 W Seven Mile Rd. in the spring of 2024. The roughly 1,900-square-foot space is located inside a new development featuring upscale lofts and other shops at the corner of Seven Mile and Livernois Avenue.
In addition to the vegan and meat-eater-friendly cuisine we’ve come to expect from Que, this location will also serve cocktails and mocktails.
“We’ll have low-cal champagne, vegan wines, craft cocktails, and mocktails with fresh natural juices, nothing canned,” Que tells Metro Times. “Don’t come asking for a rum and coke, cause you not getting no rum and coke here. We’re getting a liquor license, not because I want to feed the hood alcohol, but because I think it’ll be a nice surprise and something different. We’ll have healthier options.”
Like its flagship restaurant in the New Center area, this outpost will change its menu based on what’s in season. Diners can expect some of Que’s staples like smoothies, salads, and vegan burgers plus a few new items.
“Our smoothies are fire but now we get to expand our menu with more coffee and tea too,” she says.
In addition to serving alcoholic drinks, the Seven Mile Road location will also have a small kitchenware boutique and a large vestibule to accommodate more diners. The New Center location used to have a small selection of kitchenware available, but it’s moving over to the Avenue of Fashion spot.
“If you wanna buy kitchenware you have to drive to Meijer, or somewhere out in Novi. So I thought let’s put an upscale kitchen store in the neighborhood because there isn’t one,” she says. “The goal is to have people sit down, prepare a meal, and eat together because people don’t do that anymore.”
Que says she signed her lease last year and secured her license and is just completing the build-out. She recently received a $50,000 Motor City Match grant to open the new location.
She says she had difficulty funding the new location, similar to her struggles opening the New Center restaurant, because investors wanted her to open in the suburbs instead of Detroit.
“If I ask for a liquor store in this neighborhood you’ll fund it. In the hood, they approve Kentucky Fried Chicken, Popeyes, anything that’s not healthy, no questions asked,” she says. “They’ve been begging me to put a Kitchen in Oakland County, but I don’t want to be bought. We should have healthy food in every hood. The burbs already have everything.”
She adds, “What you’re not gonna do is tell a little girl from Detroit that I can’t, because I can.”
Though the goal is to open in the spring, Que says she’s putting it in God’s hands.
“God do what he want so I just be like alright,” she says.
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