Bites from Detroit

I'm  just back from a week-long Thanksgiving trip to Detroit, which is a city I'm learning to love more and more every time I go back. I've always been of the mindset that a city should have a grittiness to it---if you want safe and predictable food, art, thoughts, there are plenty of burbs for you---and, well, Detroit goes way beyond gritty.

Every time we go back we try to discover a new food, neighborhood, what-have-you. This time, the hottest thing going in Detroit was the opening of Michael Symon's (you know, the newest Iron Chef) Roast, which opened in the Book Cadillac Hotel about a month ago. Yeah, I know, an Iron Chef restaurant in a hotel. Yawn.

Thing is, first you have to understand that the fact that an historic hotel reopened in Detroit is huge news. Many of that city's historic buildings have been left to slowly decay since the race riots in the '60s, and it's not at all unusual to see stately 30-story buildings with broken-out windows plugged with graffiti'd cardboard right downtown. Imagine the Smith Tower desserted and taken over by squatters. Like that.

Plus, chains are huge out there. Think you have to seek out independently owned restaurants here? You don't. They've got chains you've never even heard of.

So Roast was on our list, and it didn't disappoint. First off, the Hotel's uplit architecture was nothing short of beautiful. And Roast, well...it's glitzy in a black/stainless/leather/low-slung furniture sort of way. Very masculine-sexy, and it was hopping. Symon's a proud meat-and-potatoes guy from Cleveland, and his beef cheek pierogi just plain rocked. We also ordered the "beast of the day"--bummed we missed the goat the day before, but happy enough to chow the suckling pig on offer the night we were there.

After the hockey game (GO WINGS) we hit an even better (read: not as much of a production) place, Slows BBQ. The whole "local" thing has caught on in Detroit, but not in a mainstream way like here in Seattle. At Slows, which is owned by a chef and is in an old brick building in Corktown, an Irish neighborhood where Tigers stadium used to be, they've got only local beers on tap (which is saying something, believe me). It's all reclaimed wood floors, smoky bbq wafting around, and loud hip hop and Zeppelin roaring. We weren't hungry, but we figured, hell, when in Detroit, and dug into a big pile of ribs (decent), brisket (good) and pulled pork (AWESOME) and some sides. Drank some brews. And I felt like, once again, we'd found a little taste of the real, newly emerging Detroit.