Cherie Inn

Est. 1924 · Fairmount Square Historic District

A hundred years at Cherry & Lake.

  1. 1924

    The café opens at Cherry & Lake. The same year, Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel is born upstairs.

  2. 1920s

    A young Gerald Ford meets his biological father here for the first time.

  3. 1940s

    Grand Rapids-made Stickley furniture arrives — it’s still on the floor.

  4. 1997

    Michael Kulczyk takes over the kitchen.

  5. 2024

    The 100th birthday. WZZM 13 covered it.

The proprietor

Twenty-eight years at the stove.

“We’re famous for our eggs benedict. It’s the best eggs benedict in the world. We take the time to make true hollandaise sauce that really is our secret.”
“Everybody wants the Cherie Inn to stick around. If you keep coming, we’ll keep cooking.”

Michael Kulczyk · proprietor since 1997

The room

Fresh flowers on every table, water in stemmed carafes, original tin overhead. The corner room still looks like the café it has been for a century.

Dining room tables set with water carafes, fresh flowers and ladder-back chairs
The dining room, set for the morning.
Cherie Inn’s whitewashed hanging sign with rose script and a pewter Eiffel Tower
The sign over Cherry Street.