You Can Take the Girl Out of Detroit…
...but you can’t take the Detroit food out of the girl.
I’m still in Michigan this week, but within hours of first arriving on Saturday, May 2, I’d already put a fork into a Sanders Bumpy Cake and cracked open a Vernors ginger ale. It’s part of the laws and statutes for all current and former Michiganders, under chapter somethingoranother, code thingamajiggy. My qualifications on this topic speak for themselves: I spent my first 22 years in the state shaped like a mitten (save month zero to month six of my life, which took place in the suburbs of Chicago). Either way, my foundation is about as midwest as it gets. I’ve also watched all 590+ episodes of Law & Order: SVU, which means I’m an attorney (and a detective), so don’t ask questions, just trust me on this.
There’s much I miss about Michigan. Not the winters. And not the constant construction on I-94, I-75, or I-696. I do miss the people, specifically their accents, their hardworking, not afraid to get their hands dirty gusto, and their genuine give-you-the-shirt-off-their-back charm. I miss the summers on the lakes and up north, and the turning of the leaves in the fall. I miss being in a place with undying love (and an endless sea of merchandise) for every college and national team we lay claim to: Spartans, Wolverines, Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, Pistons, whether we are at the top of our game or the worst in the league.
But by far, what I miss the most are the regional delicacies. Because in Michigan, there are food tenets that must be followed, and while my Leo sun sign might be all, “No one tells ME what to do!” it’s my Virgo rising that rules the roost. And she’s a real by-the-book type of gal, so every time I step off the plane in the McNamara terminal at DTW, whether I’m going to be in town for 24 hours or two weeks, I’m calculating my strategy for how and when I’m going to hit every item on that food and beverage checklist. And that list has not changed since I was old enough to have opinions, which, if you know me, was approximately since birth.
Roll call…
Sanders Bumpy Cake
Let’s start with the (butter)cream of the crop: Sanders Bumpy Cake.
A little history: Sanders was founded in 1875 by a German immigrant named Frederick Sanders Schmidt, who opened his first candy store on the (still) legendary Woodward Avenue in Detroit after his Chicago shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. By the mid-20th century, the company had 57 retail locations, including the original Grosse Pointe, Michigan location on Kerchevel Avenue in the heart of the Village shopping area. It was part store, part cafe, with a counter top serving not just bumpy cake but also their infamous hot fudge cream puffs.
That original GP location closed by the 1990s, though for a brief time, there was a new Sanders Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop outpost that opened further down the street on Kerchevel. That one has also shuttered its doors (as of 2020), but there are a few Sanders retail locations still open, and the good news is you can also buy Bumpy Cakes at most Kroger grocery stores (now available in three different sizes and a few different flavor variations!).
You’ll usually find them in the bakery section, where they have a smaller cooler or freezer for certain desserts. While it now often comes frozen, it’s imperative you allow the cake to get to room temperature before diving into this masterpiece: a devil’s food cake topped with thick ridges (aka the bumps) of ganache-covered buttercream and finished with fudge icing.
Fun fact: Henry Ford, before he was thee Henry Ford and still just a young mechanic getting called in for repairs, used to fix the electric motors at Sanders. I didn’t know the venn diagram of that little bit of Michigan history until this week.
Vernors
Another official legend brought to you accidentally by Detroit pharmacist James Vernor, who was experimenting with a spiced ginger tonic before the Civil War. He got called to serve, sealed the concentrate in an oak barrel, and came home four years later to find that whatever the wood had done to it was something entirely new. He declared it, “deliciously different,” which has been the slogan ever since.
The unofficial truth: his own son admitted in 1936 that the timeline was a little embellished.
The actual truth: none of this matters, because Vernors is not a ginger ale in the casual sense of the word. It is golden, faintly vanilla, and aggressively carbonated in the best way possible. In Michigan, we drink it like water (but not like Flint water). Aretha Franklin used to glaze her Christmas ham with it (you can find the recipe here), and there is also the Boston Cooler rendition, aka Vernors over vanilla ice cream, though why this wasn’t called the Detroit Cooler, I’ll never know.
Sure, I can get Vernors in other areas of the country now, including Las Vegas where I live, but it just hits different when consumed in the 313. Every time, after that first sip, my nervous system is all, “There you are!” and I’m all, “I know, I know.”
Buddy’s Pizza aka Detroit-Style Pizza
Small but important caveat before we begin the pizza TEDtalk: I grew up eating Buddy’s. Or Mr. C’s. I did not grow up eating “Detroit-style pizza.” We never called it that, or if we did, I certainly don’t remember it as such. I first heard that phrase maybe five or six years ago, when I was still living in Portland, Oregon. Don’t get me wrong - happy to see Detroit get some brand billing on this, and all for this particular regional obsession becoming a trend, because that means outposts in cities across the country. Now, whether or not these outposts actually get it RIGHT is up for debate, but I’m happy to report we have at least two spots in the Las Vegas area that have knocked it out of the park (Pizza Rock and Good Pie).
The “it” is a rectangular pan pizza with a chewy, almost focaccia-like crust, Wisconsin brick cheese caramelized against the edges of a blue steel pan, and sauce on top of the cheese instead of under it, which sounds like chaos and is in fact the only acceptable way to exist.
Buddy’s has been doing this since 1946, though truth be told, the current execution is a mixed bag depending on location (the downtown outpost near Grand Circus Park did nail it last time I was there). Word has it that Grandma Bob’s and Michigan&Trumbell, both in the Corktown area of Detroit, are on the current shiz-nitz list. Checking it out tonight in the name of science… I’ll report back.
Better Made Potato Chips
In 1930, Cross Moceri and Peter Cipriano bought a small potato-chip operation in east Detroit, with their sights set on, “How can we do this better?” And perhaps that’s exactly what inspired the Better Made (talk about straightforward) brand name, which officially launched in 1934. They have now outlasted more than twenty competitors and are still headquartered in the D with a product line that includes plain and flavored potato chips (over 60 million pounds produced annually!), corn chips, cheese puffs and curls, popcorn, pretzels, dips, and pork rinds (hard pass for me on that last one). Their tagline is “Everything’s made better with better made,” which quite frankly is just good life advice that goes well beyond snacks.
Faygo
In 1907, two Russian immigrant brothers named Ben and Perry Feigenson started a bottling company in Detroit, taking up residence in the space above the plant and delivering their goods by horse-drawn wagon. Their first flavors (fruit punch, strawberry, grape) were based on cake frosting recipes they’d brought from Russia. In 1921, they decided “Feigenson Brothers” was too long and renamed it Faygo.
Apparently the brand now offers 57 flavors, but my go-to has always been Rock & Rye. I’ve never known what inspired that name, but the University of Google tells me it was named after a Prohibition-era cocktail (a rye whiskey softened with rock candy). I’d describe the taste along the lines of cream soda’s “cool” aunt or uncle, the one who shows up to family parties with the best presents. Outside of Michigan, my guess pretty much nobody knows what the hell Faygo or Rock & Rye is, but inside the lower and upper peninsulas, we know what’s what.
Coney Island
There’s a famous rivalry between two Detroit establishments, American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island, two legendary neighboring downtown spots that have been competing since the early 1900s and about which people have deeply held, non-negotiable feelings.
Mad respect for this, but it’s a dog fight I’ve never been in, because my actual Coney formation happened at one of the several National Coney Island locations, specifically the one near the corner of 7 Mile and Mack Avenue, right on the Grosse Pointe/Detroit border. I might petition for a plaque to be made and affixed to one of the booths, commemorating the years I spent ordering chili and cheese fries (back when my metabolism could still handle such things).
The Detroit Coney dog is also its own specific thing – chili, mustard, onions, beef hot dog in a steamed bun – but never MY thing. Sorry (not sorry), but I don’t do mustard, or raw onions… or white creamy curdly (cottage cheese and mayo are grounds for justifiable homicide), red chunky, green chunky, or condiments. Period.
Now you.
That’s my list. The gold, silver, and bronze plus three honorable mentions that constitute a homing signal for me. But I want yours. What’s the food (or foods) that you make a beeline for the second you land somewhere you once called home? The regional thing that doesn’t exist anywhere else, or exists elsewhere but isn’t the same? The thing that takes you back to a specific time, place, version of you? Drop it in the comments. And if you grew up in Metro Detroit and I’ve left something off what would be your list, let’s hear it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I still have half of a Bumpy Cake left to slay.
xo,
SG
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An original Olga from Olga’s. With curly fries and a salad and maybe some snackers. The Olga’s at Eastland Mall 😉
TastyKake FTW