Ever-Changing Ethnic Neighborhoods

THE SOUTHWEST: MOST DIVERSE, LEAST KNOWN, BEST FOOD

Southwest Detroit is the city’s most diverse area but perhaps the least well known. It has been traditionally a working-class area with men and women who filled the auto plants. It continues to be a mix of people who have included immigrants from central Europe, South America, Latin America and the Middle East. While never wealthy, the Southwest is filled with hardworking entrepreneurs, community spirit and lively street life. The area boasts more than 130 restaurants, 30 bakeries and 25 markets and specialty food stores.

It is a walkable neighborhood. Vernor Street is a narrow, two-lane urban street that wends its way like a river through the district lined most of the way with grocery stores, taquerías, churches, bakeries, tortilla factories, coffee shops, bars, drugstores, cellphone shops and whatever else make up people’s everyday needs. There are some chain stores intermingled, but most businesses in the Southwest are small, independent establishments.

Mexicantown is the most well-known destination in Southwest Detroit and brings in visitors from throughout the region with its bright, gaudy buildings, colorful murals, hand-painted signs, strings of plastic chili pepper lights and, seemingly, more restaurants per square foot than anywhere on the planet. Mexicantown’s borders provoke unending debates, but it does include Bagley and Vernor and begins at the old Michigan Central Station off Michigan Avenue and ends at (or includes) Clark Park.

Detroit’s Southwest side, beginning with Mexicantown.

Most Holy Redeemer’s impressive architecture dominates the neighborhood from the corner of West Vernor and Junction. At one time, Most Holy Redeemer was considered the largest Catholic parish in North America and probably the largest English-speaking parish in the entire world.

The most historic church in Detroit is Ste. Anne’s de Detroit Catholic. It is located at Ste. Anne’s Street (Nineteenth Street) and Howard very near the Ambassador Bridge. Ste. Anne’s is Detroit’s oldest still functioning church, founded in 1701 two days after Cadillac arrived. It is the second-oldest Catholic church in the United States (St. Augustine’s in Florida is older). The current Gothic terra-cotta structure was built in 1886, making it the eighth home of the oldest Roman Catholic parish in the nation. In addition to displaying the oldest stained glass in the city, it’s also home to the remains of the cherished local hero Father Gabriel Richard, who died in 1832. It also includes the wooden altar that Father Richard used in the previous Ste. Anne’s, built in 1811. While originally built for a French congregation, the dominant language at Ste. Anne’s has been Spanish. The first Spanish Masses began in 1940 as the old church served people who came to Detroit to work in factories during World War II.

A lesser-known part of the Southwest area is the Hubbard Farms Historic District, located off Vernor on one of the old plots that used to be a French ribbon farm, along the Detroit River. It maintains an array of well-preserved Victorian-era homes. Currently home to a large number of Detroit’s Latin American immigrants, this district has gone through many changes in its history, which dates back to Detroit’s founding. In 1993, this district received its official historic district designation.

The food in the Southwest is known for its variety. They say that you have never really tasted a taco until you try them off the taco trucks that can be found throughout the area. Mexicantown, while touristy, nevertheless has some outstanding places for great Mexican food, like Casa Lupita’s on Bagley. Other countries from Central America are represented in the Southwest. Dishes from Guatemala, Colombia, San Salvador and Cuba can be sampled in the district. Pupusería is an excellent Salvadoran restaurant that is well worth the trip. Off Michigan Avenue and Junction, El Barzon is one of the best restaurants in the city, combining Mexican food from the state of Pueblo with an excellent Italian menu. If it sounds odd, don’t worry—both sides of the menu are done well.

PUPUSERÍA Y RESTAURANTE SALVADORENO

A pupusería sells pupusas. The pupusa from El Salvador is a thick, hand-made corn tortilla made using masa de maíz (corn flour) that is stuffed with one or more of the following: cheese (queso, usually a soft Salvadoran cheese called Quesillo), fried pork rind (chicharrón), chicken (pollo), refried beans (frijoles refritos) or queso con loroco (loroco is a vine flower bud from Central America). There is also the pupusa revuelta, with mixed ingredients, such as queso, chicharrón or bacon and frijoles. Some more creative pupuserías found in western El Salvador serve pupusas with exotic ingredients, such as shrimp, squash or local herbs.

Detroit’s Pupusería is at the junction of Livernois and John Kronk Street. The décor is not why you go. You enter the building and are greeted by a large open space with a painted cement floor that may have once been a gas station garage. Walls are painted deep ocean blue, with lots of Latin American flags and velvet paintings of Salvadoran farm life. This space leads to a dining area with tables, booths, the ubiquitous Hispanic television show and smiling families speaking Spanish. The staff at Pupusería is helpful and very friendly. The homey décor just ensures that the food must be outstanding and cheap, and it is on both counts.

Pupusas at this pupusería are delicious. Many if not most of the entrées are under three dollars. The revueltas (mix) of squash, cheese and chicken are particularly outstanding, as are the cheese with beans and pork. In El Salvador and at Detroit’s Pupusería, the pupusa are served with a mildly spiced tomato dipping sauce, and they are traditionally served with curtido (a pickled cabbage relish that sometimes includes hot peppers) on the side. The Salvadorans eat pupusas by hand.

Other common ingredients include fried plantains. Chicken, pork and tamales de elote (sweet corn tamales) are wrapped in banana leaves to stay moist. Other ingredients not seen in Mexican dishes include fried or boiled yuca (cassava) mixed with chicken or pork or served alone. Unique stews are worth trying. They include shrimp stew, beef and rice and chicken and rice. Mojarra frita is a tilapia fish prepared in the traditional Salvadoran way, fried whole and served with rice salad.

HAMTRAMCK: THE BEST CITY IN DETROIT

The first thing you see as you enter Hamtramck is the enormous American Axle Detroit Plant. Driving up Holbrook, your eye catches the old Kowalski sign of a red sausage stuck on the end of a fork and an abstract black-and-white art mural on the Kowalski building. Despite the art and murals, this is a working man’s neighborhood. The memorable architecture is Catholic churches. (Detroit was once called the “City of Churches.”) Hamtramck is loaded with beautiful churches, like St. Florans, with its American flags and Polish banners, nestled in its residential neighborhood.

The city is considered the best in the state of Michigan for walking, according to Hamtramck’s website. Narrow side streets are jammed with two-story flats, so close together you’ve got to turn sideways to get to your backyard, which is the size of a bathroom mat. It’s lively with moms and kids, elderly people, busy traffic on Joseph Campau and cars parked bumper to bumper on the street; everything feels jammed together in Hamtramck. Main thoroughfares offer a weird mix of traditional if not tired-looking storefronts, gas stations, common businesses, workingmen’s shops and beer bars. But recently, this mix includes Bosnians, exotic and colorful Bangladesh clothing shops, Yemeni grocers selling spices and gigantic bags of rice, artists and hipsters. While you are admiring an imposing Polish Catholic church, you hear the midday Muslim call to prayer. As of the 2010 American Community Survey, 14.5 percent of Hamtramck’s population is of Polish origin (in 1970, it was 90 percent Polish). The Hamtramck school system deals with children speaking twenty-eight different languages; in two-thirds of the homes, English is not the primary language. Like the neighborhood churches, Hamtramck High School is wedged among small side streets. There’s no sweeping grassy lawn or football stadium; the walls of the building come within two feet of the sidewalk. The beauty of all this is that somehow it works happily in Hamtramck.

However, the city was founded not by Poles but by German farmers and named after a French Canadian military leader who fought in the Revolutionary War, John Francis Hamtramck. In the early days, Hamtramck was in the country, far from the bustling city of Detroit. It was far enough away from the Detroit police that farmers complained about the violence, drunkenness and “cocking mains” (cockfights) at the roadhouses. In 1914, things changed when the Dodge brothers, John and Horace, opened an automotive forged parts plant on the south side of Hamtramck at the Detroit border. By the 1920s, the Dodge brothers were building entire cars. The plant grew until it eventually became the gargantuan Dodge Main, with thirty-three buildings and 5 million square feet, taking up sixty-seven acres of land. At lunch or at fifteen-minute breaks, assembly line workers would run from Dodge Main across Joseph Campau Avenue to the bars, where bartenders had lines of shots and beers already set up for them. The city put up a traffic light to try and reduce the number of men hit by cars as they raced across the street.

The plant closed in 1980 after seventy years of production. But by 1930, Hamtramck had a population of more than fifty-six thousand, mostly Polish. There were so many Poles working at Dodge Main that the working language at the plant was Polish.

Eventually, Detroit’s borders pushed out and engulfed the city, so that now Hamtramck has become an island surrounded on all sides by Detroit.

Hamtramck has its kitschy side as well. Nowhere is this more visible than in the “Hamtramck Disneyland.” The amazing spectacle is located in an alley off Klinger Street. To get there, take Joseph Campau Avenue north, then turn right on Commer and then down the alley between Sobieski and Klinger Streets. It is in the alley that you see a sign that reads, “This way visitor to Disneyland.” What you experience is a giant collage of colorful pinwheels, flags, rockets and stuff beyond words, mounted on top of two garages—one person said that it is all reminiscent of that old board game Mousetrap. It is getting a bit tattered, but it is still worth seeing. It was built by a retired Ukrainian autoworker, Dmytro Szylak, who is now in his nineties.

For a night out, you could visit Planet Ant Theatre. It’s not Polish, but it has been a staple in Detroit’s improv comedy scene. Planet Ant Theatre boasts some of the finest talent in the Midwest. The theater is a rehabbed Hamtramck row house across from the Hamtramck Public Library. The place is intimate (very small) and cheap; seats to a brilliant show with some serious talent are only five to fifteen dollars. You can also bring your own booze.

You can immerse yourself in Polish culture in places like the Polish Art Center, originally founded in 1958 and owned by Raymond and Joan Bittner since 1974. (In fact, Joan is not Polish but Scottish. Poland is her adopted home, she says.) Located on Joseph Campau in downtown Hamtramck, it is a small Polish import shop loaded with beautiful Polish folk art from all corners of the country. Raymond tours the Polish regions every year and has made friendships with the artists, bringing home their beautiful work. The couple also offers classes on some of the Polish cultural traditions.

While the people of Polish descent have declined in numbers in the city, the culture still dominates. The food reflects that demographic change, becoming more diverse. Of course, there are Polish favorites, like restaurants Polish Village and its neighbor Polonia, and Polish markets like Srodek’s, but now Yemeni food shops line Conant Street. Somehow it all works out.

EATING AT YOUR POLISH GRANDMA’S

Eating in Hamtramck’s famous restaurants—either Polish Village Café or neighboring restaurant Polonia—is like a step back not only to Poland but also to old Detroit, before hot sauce and deep frying, dinner served straight-forward and with large portions, brought out hot and sometimes still served by no-nonsense Polish ladies. And all very good.

The Polish Village Café in Hamtramck.

Polish Village began in 1925, when a man named Pilecki built a hotel for men only with a rathskeller at 2990 Yemans Street. His customers were Polish immigrant men who worked at one of several Detroit factories, such as Dodge Main or Fisher Body. In the 1940s and ’50s, Hamtramck’s population surged to more than fifty thousand as more immigrants arrived. Hamtramck’s main thoroughfare, Joseph Campau Street, was then the second-busiest shopping district in the nation. In 1974, Ted Wietrzykowski bought and renovated the rathskeller to open the Polish Village Café. The tradition of welcoming immigrants and their descendants continues to this day. Carolyn Wietrzykowski now manages the famous restaurant with some of the original cooks in the kitchen, making what Carolyn describes as “food your grandmother served”—if she were Polish.

Polish Village is the Detroit that many grew up with—Americanized European-style décor and a beautiful bar that looks like hundreds of bars that were once in fixed-up basement rec rooms throughout Detroit, with dark wood paneling, Christmas lights strung up during the holidays, Victorian-style stained glass behind the bar and rows of bottles of American and Polish liquors.

Appetizers are huge, made with pork, mushrooms and vegetables. Savory pancakes are commonly served. Of course, the go-to appetizer standard is the pierogi sampler. Pierogi are all made locally in Hamtramck and include fillings of cheese, sauerkraut, potato and two dessert versions with sweetened cheese and blueberry and strawberry fillings.

Polish soups are also unique. Traditional Polish soups include dill pickle soup, which is fragrant with dill pickles but creamy and satisfying. The czarnina, or duck blood soup, is a surprising sweet soup made with duck’s blood but also vinegar and sugar, as well as cut-up plum to add fruity sweetness and tiny noodles.

Main courses include Polski Talerz (Polish Plate), a “Taste of Poland,” with stuffed cabbage, pierogi, kielbasa, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes in gravy. Another favorite is the Surowa Kielbasa with Sousie Piwnym—fresh Kielbasa in a beer sauce. Or you might try an old-time classic Detroit favorite, City Chicken, which at Polish Village Café is skewers of pork braised in a delicious gravy-style sauce.

BAKERS AND BUTCHERS: HAMTRAMCK’S CULTURAL FOUNDATION

New Palace Bakery has been in Hamtramck for more than one hundred years. It is a small bakery with a faded awning on Joseph Campau Street. Inside the bakery, it is unassuming, with wood-paneled walls, American and Polish flags, framed photographs, yellowed newspaper clippings and handwritten signs here and there telling customers what’s available and the prices. It is run by manager Vicky Ognarovich and three other ladies except during holidays, when they bring in about one hundred people to handle lines of customers that run outside the bakery and down Joseph Campau—there’s a two-hour wait at Christmas, on Fat Tuesday before the start of Lent and at Easter.

This is the place to come for every Polish treat you have ever heard of: angel wings, flat flying saucers, French sticks, lemon shorts, chocolate rolled cakes with crème, poppy seed roll cakes, little cookies called “chocolate boys” or “vanilla boys,” coconut snowballs, almond rolls, lemon tarts and kolackzi—just some of the endless varieties in glass cases that surround the shop. Its biggest seller (excluding paczki, pronounced punch-key) are angel wings that are piled high in a bin. They are sweetened crusts with powdered sugar—light and delicious, especially with espresso. The French donuts with custard are also luxurious treats. They make custom cakes, coffeecakes and Dutch fruit pies.

Many treats are specially made only during holidays, such as honey rum bapka, a poppy seed almond cake and mazurka at Christmas—as well as, of course, the famous paczki on Fat Tuesday. These are deep-fried jelly-filled donuts. You can buy them any time of the year at hundreds of shops throughout Detroit; however, that is not how it’s done at New Palace Bakery. On Fat Tuesday, when it’s typically below freezing outside, one to two hundred people line up around the block to buy paczki, which means an hour wait to get in the store. Paczki Day, as it is called by some, also attracts one or two local television news vans, high school bands and cheerleaders, and just buying paczki has become an annual celebration. But the people at New Palace Bakery manning the counters stay friendly and keep things moving along.

Even if you don’t eat Polish baked goods that have been freshly baked, you should buy some to take on your car ride home. You will be amazed at how freshly baked goods makes your car smell wonderful and your look on life improve.

SRODEK’S POLISH AND EUROPEAN DELICATESSEN

Like many of Detroit’s sources for great food, there is not a lot of concern placed on the appearance of the shop. Srodek’s follows this pattern. It is a small Polish deli with a bright-red awning on Joseph Campau. Srodek’s has a reputation that is second to none, but walking into the deli, you find a small shop, really no different than any deli: glass cases, chrome metal shelving and linoleum floor. Srodek’s is owned and run by sausage makers Joe Srodek and his son, Rodney, the third generation, who arguably make the best fresh and smoked sausage in Detroit. Who cares what the shop looks like when you make so many great Polish classics? Not the Polonia of Detroit and the suburbs. Come for the food, forget the Feng shui.

If you have never had real deal Polish kielbasa, that alone is worth a trip to Srodek’s. You may also want to try Hungarian pork sausage. The real kielbasa are big, not like the supermarket stuff. When asked the best way to cook them, a Polish customer quickly said, “You boil them. Fifteen minutes. Then cut them up and put them in white borsht.”

“Are they good on the grill? What about grilling them?”

She gave me a puzzled look, “You could…”

“Any other way?”

“No. Boil only!”

Sausages are smoked behind the shop using apple and cherry wood from Wisconsin. Try the chunk veal and pork smoked kielbasa. Incredible. Also, the spot smokes a large variety of hunter’s sausages. Other meat products worth trying are minced pigs’ feet meat in jelly or a spicy headcheese. Srodek’s also makes pierogi on site. It produces about thirty varieties. Along with standard fillings of potato and sauerkraut, it offers some fun alternatives like “American cheeseburger,” as well as traditional dessert fillings.

Soups are also made at Strodek’s. Try some Polish classics, like dill pickle, duck blood, tripe and sorrel soups. It also makes its own sauerkraut (which can be bought by the barrel), honey, potato dumplings and some of the baked goods.

Along with food made on site, take a walk through the shop and try some of the Polish condiments, beets, soup packets, sauce packets, mushrooms, jams, coffee, cookies, gingerbread cookies, candy (Polish candy is one of the bestselling items), fruit syrups, juices and Polish and Ukrainian beer. Wash it all down with a six-pack of Zywiec.

A word of caution: if you decide to visit near Christmastime or Easter week, prepare for long lines and a two-hour wait.

BANGLADESHI DINNERS ON CONANT STREET

So many Bangladeshi call Hamtramck home that Conant Street is now referred to by some as “Bangladesh Avenue.” Aladdin Sweets and Café opened in 1998 next door to a Bangladeshi grocery store. When you walk in, there is a deli counter filled with premade goods for takeout.

This is one of those places that you go to for the food. The dining room has been decorated, but you sit and are served a pitcher of water, Styrofoam cups, paper napkins and plastic forks. The place on Saturday night is hopping, with diners and people coming in and out for carryout. This is a locals’ place: the English, when you hear it, is heavily accented, and locals know best. Be warned: if you have never had spicy Indian Subcontinent food, it can be extremely hot. If you do not like spicy food, make sure to let your server know this.

Bangladeshi food is your chance to try lamb, goat, chicken, beef, seafood and vegetarian dishes. Your entrée will be served with either rice or naan—the round, flat bread freshly baked on the sides of a clay oven. Naan is warm, chewy and delicious. When served with basmati rice, it makes a perfect meal.

Aladdin’s, a Bangladeshi restaurant in Hamtramck.

“Bangladesh Street” in Hamtramck. The area has had so many immigrants move to the city that the Hamtramck school system deals with children speaking twenty-eight different languages.

Goat dishes, such as the goat korma, are usually braised for a few hours, which makes them extremely tender and flavorful. The braising sauce uses yogurt, which when served is warm and rich with a slight spice for heat. Lamb dishes are delicious typically served as shish kabobs. There are also many chicken and seafood dishes.

Bangladesh is famous for its desserts and sweets. Many Bangladeshi restaurants or groceries are filled with choices; some are wrapped in leaves or soaked in caramelized sugar. They may not be to everyone’s taste, but try a few as one way to end a great meal.