ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Jordan Smith ’07

5/30/2025

Mackenzie Friedman

This month the Cranbrook Schools Alumni Team sat down with CK alumnus Jordan Smith ’07, Culinary Institute of America-trained chef-owner of Coeur. Since it’s opening in 2023, Coeur provides Ferndale with a “fine dining experience rooted in tradition yet infused with a creative and light-hearted approach”. As a self-described food nerd and classically trained chef, he has a penchant for weaving classic technique and modern ingredients imbued with subtle nostalgia, creating dishes like an artfully updated chicken cordon bleu using local Michigan chicken or an entire tasting menu themed around fast food. He’s a constant student of ingredients, products, technique, and life. He believes that the learning never stops, whether it’s in the kitchen or out in the world. All of chef Jordan’s training and life experience has led him to Coeur, a restaurant which acts as an extension to his wild heart and expansive worldview. Coeur is all about manifesting those memorable, core food experiences in other people. He believes ardently in exploring one’s own creativity, celebrating freedom, and unlocking those memories within us all.

On May 14, Jordan and his amazing team hosted the recent Cranbrook Kingswood Alumni Association End of Year Gathering, leaving everyone who attended his unique space impressed by the experience, and ready to book a future reservation. The evening was nothing short of magic and left us curious as to how Jordan landed where he is now. What brought him back to Detroit after a career in notable fine-dining establishments around the country? Did his time at Cranbrook shape his career trajectory? Let’s dig in…

Bringing you back to your time at Cranbrook, was there anyone, a faculty member perhaps, that was influential or really made an impact on you? Any fond memories from Cranbrook?

“Well, I have a great story from my first time meeting Charlie Shaw my freshman year. At the time, he had a corner office with windows overlooking the Cranbrook Alumni courtyard. We had a ton of snow that year and they piled it into the middle of the alumni courtyard. So it was before seventh period, history of religion. A few of us went out there before and we were just messing around in the snow pile, climbing up and whatnot. And then somebody, I don't remember who got the bright idea, we should just go up and jump off the bridge into it. I went first and got stuck up to my chest. Then we hear the door open above us, all my friends bolt inside, look up and there's Charlie just standing there. He told me, “When you get yourself outta there, come up to my office and talk to me.” It took me like 25 minutes to get out.

Fast forward many years into my career, when Charlie was visiting various alumni in the Bay Area, he looked me up, found out what restaurant I was running at the time and came by to surprise me. I look out in the dining room and I'm like, is that Charlie Shaw?”

What a guy!

So take us now on your journey into fine dining and your decision to move into this profession… What about it brings you joy and what brought you to move in this direction?

“It was probably the first fine dining job I had. You don't realize that world, until you see it up close from behind the scenes, because I think there's the perception that behind the curtain everything looks like the movie Waiting, or some type of food network. When in reality, it's much more like an episode from The Bear. In the second season, there's an episode where they go to the restaurant Ever in Chicago. It’s a real restaurant in Chicago. That’s the setting for the episode, and it should honestly be required viewing if you want to work in fine dining. The attitude that they’re trying to explain is that in those restaurants, every day is your Super Bowl. Because when you're charging a thousand dollars for a dinner for two, you can't screw up.

It’s tough because 80% of that clientele are people that don’t necessarily care about the craft, they don't care about the time and it is most likely an everyday experience for them. But that's not who you do it for. You do it for the 20% of people that they have saved all year to do this. Or they have been stalking that restaurant online for six months to get a reservation. You do it for the 20% of people that care. I wish it was a higher percentage in today's day and age, but it's not. That's the part of it to me, when you get those 20 percenters and then you go out and you see the look on their face when you blow their mind, it's the best.

I try to maintain the mindset of that proverbial 7-year-old that found a really cool frog in the creek and is bringing it home to show mom. That’s how I feel when I come up with something random or cool or I see something interesting, and I want to try it and it works.”

What’s your philosophy on fine dining?

“Recently I went to Copenhagen with my wife when the restaurant was being built, and I would never recommend doing this, but in three days we experienced a 3-Michelin star, a 2-Michelin star and 1-Michelin star. Just for the effect that that will have on your body, never ever do that. But I will just say the 3-star; and I've been to numerous, I've worked in two; it was perfect. It was annoyingly perfect. Everything was polite. Everything was proper. There's no soul. Like you don't feel the warmth from anybody. Next, we went to the 2-star. It was the same level of food, and the diction wasn't perfect, but it had soul. That was my favorite man.

So that's I guess the part that I'm trying to take from all of that experience in fine dining and all of that, all of the breadth of my career doing the different things that I've done and sort of cherry pick what I think those restaurants in that part of the world get and figure out how to make it accessible to everybody else. When you come into my restaurant, it's a gorgeous dining room. The staff are not dressed in suits. There's no white tablecloth. You don't need all of that pretentiousness.”

Summer is almost here! Any exciting summer menu additions we can expect at Coeur?

“The fun part about the summer in Michigan is that it’s when everything decides to come out of the ground. And you get this awesome growing season. So, what I'm actually excited about is having green stuff to cook again that doesn't come from California or Mexico. Local Michigan stuff. And you only get that for like five months here. So, it's taking advantage of all the seasonal produce for sure.”

What do you want your guest’s experience to be when they come to your restaurant?

“Whatever they want it to be. And what I mean by that is, I don't care if you're coming in to have the tasting menu or if you're coming in to have a couple bites at happy hour. Or if you're just coming in to have a burger at the bar. Everything we do and the way we do everything, we just do it with a certain level that it's going to be good either way, so we'll take care of you the same if you're coming in and grabbing the garlic sausage hotdog with the rhubarb ketchup for happy hour or the five course tasting menu.”

One final question for you Jordan… what’s your vision for the future of your restaurant?

“I'm so glad you asked that question. I never planned on just having one restaurant. I'm a chef by vocation and that's what I do. That's my artistic expression, but I know I would not be happy with one restaurant, and I wouldn't be happy just cooking. I love cooking. I love the act of it. I also know I am not even the best person I have met doing that. I have met so many people that are more talented than I am. My goal is to get to a point where I can start empowering those people. Without getting too preachy, I just think that there's certain segments of this industry that need to be seen as skilled labor and earned living wages like they do in Copenhagen and most other civilized western countries. Canada has red seal programs, Europe does.

On the way up, I've made it a point to work at every single level of this industry. I have been a dishwasher, I have been a busser, I have been a server, I've been a bartender, I’ve been a line cook, whatever, all the way through. I've worked in each area and through that, I have gained an incredible amount of respect for how hard people must work in this industry just to maintain a certain style of living. I’d like to get to a place where I can affect industry-wide positive change, and the only way you can get there is to get somewhere near the top or at least be influential enough for that.

I think that's the end goal, to grow this into something, in whatever iteration that is, that can affect change. Whether that's Coeur becoming a much higher profile restaurant, or it becomes the first restaurant in a group or the Halo restaurant in a group, it's the first step in a journey to that, to the realization of that.

Not to tie it back to Cranbrook, but on my senior page, there is a quote from Archimedes… I think the line is, “Give me a place on which to stand, and I will move the earth.” That's sort of the idea.”

If you haven’t already visited chef Jordan’s amazing restaurant, take this as your sign to get in quickly. You don’t want to miss out on this unique and delicious experience.

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