©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Spring Mill Café: food from traveling humanitarian
by LEN LEAR

Michele belies her 64 years with her youthfulness. Here she is seen climbing the red rock mountains outside of Las Vegas.

The only problem with writing about Michele Haines is that there’s not enough space to list everything that makes her special. Michele, 64, born in Paris, was a United Nations translator before getting married and moving to northwest Philadelphia, where she taught Spanish and anthropology at Germantown Friends School for seven years. (She was also a doll maker.)

But Haines, who speaks 10 languages, also has some serious cooking genes. “I learned to cook French food from my grandmother, Josephine,” said Michele, who discovered other cuisines from her Swiss-German mother and Egyptian-Bosnian father. Thus, Michele left teaching and began cooking in area restaurants and 27 years ago opened the Spring Mill Café in a picturesque, creekside property at 164 Barren Hill Rd. in Conshohocken, about five minutes from Bell’s Mill Road and Henry Avenue. She later purchased the century-old farmhouse adjacent to the restaurant, which she converted into the Spring Mill Art Gallery.

Despite suffering from lupus, an auto-immune disease that affects circulation and joints, Haines works almost 24/7 not only to produce lunches and dinners for her restaurant but on behalf of charities. Remarkably, she also probably does more traveling abroad than any other non-celebrity restaurateur on earth.

The peripatetic chef generally travels alone to exotic places without so much as a hotel reservation. In recent years she has been to Vietnam and Cambodia, and after returning home she raised substantial funds which she used to help open a hospital in Cambodia for children who had lost limbs to land mines. (In addition, she has traveled in recent years to Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Australia, Sicily, Mongolia and Serbia.)

“I love to go to places in transition,” she said. “I’m a very curious person, and I have found that countries in transition are very interesting. That’s why I went to Vietnam, Iran and Cuba. They are all changing fairly dramatically, and it’s fascinating to see the conflicts between those who want more rapid change and those who don’t want any change at all.”

Whenever Michele goes on one of her periodic trips (she always brings back recipes for the restaurant as well as memories), the restaurant is then run by her son, Ezra, 34, who has been working at Spring Mill Café since he was a child. Another son, Jason, 31, is a racing car engineer who also set up the restaurant and art gallery’s web site, www.springmill.com (Also a professional photographer, Michele usually has many photos from her travels on the web site and in the gallery.)

“The people in both Iran and Cuba were very hospitable, contrary to what you might expect,” declared Michele, “They could not do enough for me. In fact, I’ve found that people from all over the world are mostly warm and anxious to share their meager possessions with you. One family in Vietnam fed me chicken, even though they could only have chicken a couple times a year. Most of the people I spoke to in Iran spoke English and were delighted to meet an American.

“One woman in particular I will never forget. I met her through the Internet, and it was a 10-hour drive from Tehran to get to her house near the border with Turkmenistan. Her name is Louise Firouz, and we rode together through the mountains on horseback. She is a great, great lady who loves good food, horses, photography and things French.”

Regarding our most recent dinner at Spring Mill Cafe, a BYOB, we were somewhat disappointed. A salad of poached pear, goat cheese and Romaine lettuce was quite good but pricey at $9.50 An appetizer of escargots was not served hot or even warm, and snails are not something you want to eat cold. We could not locate the server to ask for the escargots to be heated up. It was also rather pricey at $11.50.

A Moroccan entree of phyllo pastry filled with shredded chicken and herbs was excellent ($22.50), and a steak au poivre was succulent but small (I’d guess six ounces) and with almost no sauce for sopping. (One of the reasons I ordered the $28.50 entree was the cognac sauce.)

I will admit I must be in the minority regarding the prices because every table in the restaurant was occupied by about 8 p.m., and customers continued to stream in throughout the evening. For more information or reservations, call 610-828-2550 or visit www.springmill.com.