[HOT LIST] Best of Southwest (Cinco de Mayo edition)

Las Brisas. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

Cinco de Mayo is this Saturday, and if your idea of Cinco de Mayo celebrations is a mariachi band in a sports bar with the Corona girls giving away free beer and plastic beads, you need to head southwest to see how it's really done. No need to find your passport and book a flight; look no further than Southwest Detroit and discover for yourself some of the lesser-known restaurants and watering holes that make this one of Detroit's most viable, walkable, vibrant neighborhoods.

Southwest Detroit is full of fantastic taquerias, restaurants of various ethnic Latin cuisines, bakeries, cafes and markets (and taco trucks!), but for the purposes of Cinco de Mayo celebrations this list is all about bars. Let's face it, this neighborhood is robust enough for more than one "Hot List."

#1 Donovan's Pub
AKA Southwest Detroit's Official Hipster Bar®. Being just on the other side of of I-75 on Vernor, Donovan's is sort of the Gateway to Southwest and catches what is presumably a lot of Slows spillover. It's hipsterific but the booze is cheap and service friendly and familiar. It's Polish-owned, located more or less in Mexicantown and crawling with men sporting mustaches un-ironically. It doesn't need to make sense; it works.

#2 Giovanna's Lounge
Giovanna's is a small dive bar with friendly service and cheap booze, but the best thing about it is their huge outdoor patio in the summertime. They don't serve food and it's cash only, but the atmosphere can't be beat.

#3 Las Brisas
By day it's a restaurant with a cheap lunch buffet and homemade Mexican and Mexican-American dishes; by night, it's one of Southwest's hottest spots for live music and dancing. The space is huge with separate areas for dining, dancing and a big, beautiful bar. They bring in popular music acts from all over Mexico with hundreds of people forming a line out the door on weekends. Cover and drinks are always cheap and food is served until 4 a.m. on weekends.

#4 Abick's Bar
A true neighborhood bar in every sense of the word (in that it is actually located in a house in the neighborhood, and that it is also a no-frills, divey kind of place where the crowd is mostly regulars and the locals all hang out), this pre-Prohibition bar is loaded with history and character. Grandma Manya (one of the sole old Polish hold-outs this far outside of Hamtramck) isn't as involved as she once was (she's not cooking those huge dinners for family, friends and guests anymore), but the bar is still comfortable and cheap. Manya is relatively sure Abick's is the oldest family-owned, continuously-operated bar in Detroit; no argument here. Stepping inside this place is like stepping back into history, when bars were social and community centers and not places to get who-do-I-need-to-apologize-to drunk.

#5 Mexicantown Fiesta Center/Lounge/El Club
First off, don't let the name fool you - this place isn't actually in Mexicantown. And the only reason this place doesn't rank any higher is because they don't keep regular daily hours (Fridays are pretty consistent but beyond that you may want to call ahead before making a special trip). But if you're lucky enough to catch this place when it's open to the casual passer-by, it's a small but fantastic bar with friendly locals and staff (which includes the owner Dolores Sanchez who also owns El Central Hispanic News, a free weekly paper that is Michigan's longest running bi-lingual Hispanic newspaper) and really cheap booze. If it's nice outside, be sure to check out the backyard. The space is also available to rent for private events and they host salsa dancing classes.

Bubbling under Kovacs Bar, Los Galanes, Armando's Mexican Restaurant, El Chaparrel, Stempien's Sidestreet Lounge, Corner Pocket Lounge, El Zocalo

[EID Feature] Las Brisas: "Breeze" on Down Vernor for the Place That Has Everything

(All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.)

Southwest Detroit has been receiving a lot of attention lately. Sure, they have food trucks (LONG before it was "cool"), but the Southwest neighborhood has also been hailed by the Freep as one of two "thriving" neighborhoods in Detroit (the technicality of that point could be argued but whatevs, at least they still have concentrated street retail and foot traffic) and adventuresome types looking for an "authentic" experience have lately been taking up the mantle of SW urban explorers.

The fact is, Southwest Detroit offers something that no other neighborhood in the city can offer: a highly concentrated ethnic population that has made Southwest Detroit synonymous with "Mexicantown" (one small corner of the area at Bagley and 24th) and even reminiscent of the cultural diversity of the American Southwest.

There are a lot of popular go-to spots for urban explorers: Mexicantown Restaurant, Los Galanes, Xochimilco, Mexicantown Bakery, Armando's, Cafe con Leche, those newly-appreciated taco carts. But if you drive just a little bit farther down Vernor - outside of the population density, which tends to get damn-near claustrophobic on weekends (SW gets pretty bumpin'), a ways past Clark Park to just west of Springwells - you'll find a little-known gem called Las Brisas.

Las Brisas has been here about 25 years, but in 2005 the original owners sought to retire and sold the business to Ricardo Lopez, whose family owns the Aranda's Tire chain (which had a store right across the street from Las Brisas).

And then, the economy ... well, you know all about that. The Lopez family owned another restaurant which they had to shut down, but through it all continued to operate Las Brisas. But things are looking up now: most recently the restaurant went through a massive remodel which moved the bar, raised the ceiling, increased the space and updated the look. Outside it looks like a regular, unremarkable building on Vernor, but inside it is a warm and spacious restaurant with lots of natural light and one of the largest nightclubs in the area with live music and dancing every weekend.

By day, it is a restaurant serving popular Mexican-American food. They've got all the favorites - tacos, enchiladas, burritos - and everything they do, they do very well. Mexican-American cuisine gets a bad rep - some people want to gripe over a lack of "authenticity" (ironically these people are almost never Mexican), while others have the impression that the food is just plain bad, an impression well-earned by lackluster Mexi-merican joints with sub-par fare. At Las Brisas, you get the very best of both worlds: traditional Mexican items catered to American palates (i.e., lots of cheese, lots of deep-frying) and all of it done exceptionally well.

The kitchen team gets in early every single morning to make all the dishes for the day, so everything you eat is homemade fresh daily. During the week you can stop in for their lunch buffet from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, for only $6.50 you get all-you-can-eat buffet items which include build-your-own tacos, deep-fried beef tacos (all the awesomeness of deep-fried mini tacos only homemade and fresh, not frozen), chicken flautas in crisp fried shells, chorizo-and-cheese burritos (drained of all that excess grease), creamy fresh-made guacamole and a variety of other items. Off the regular menu, their Mexican sandwich and tortas are their most popular signature items; you can also order extra-large family-style combo plates of tacos, burritos and enchiladas with beans and rice for dine-in or carry-out. They have different daily specials for carry-out, dine-in and the bar in addition to their lunch buffet.

The food may be simple and not treading any new territory, but when simple dishes are done well they far surpass their bland counterparts. Las Brisas may be a bit off the beaten path from the high-traffic stretch of Vernor, but the food here is 100x better than what you get at some of the better-known, more popular places that make up Mexicantown. As an added bonus, they have their own private parking lot that's guarded by security during all hours of operation, assuaging any concerns over safety for visitors.

On weekends, the place becomes a full-blown nightclub, bringing in popular singers, bands and DJs from all over the different states of Mexico (as well as mariachi bands earlier in the evening). It gets packed at night, bringing in crowds of 250+ people who will line up around the building to get in. Cover is only $5 for DJs (bands and singers will cost a little more), and the party goes all night. Afterwards, you can even stick around for your post-party late-night fried food feasting until 4 a.m., ending your evening in the same place you started it with dinner so many hours ago. (This is why they call themselves "the place that has everything.")

If you're having a party, they can cater, deliver, or you can even hold it at the restaurant starting at only $7.50 per person with all the food and service included, for anything from business meetings to birthday parties to weddings.

While the well-known hotspots of Southwest and Mexicantown certainly have their own unique appeal, try broadening your horizons a bit with a place with great food and top-notch international talent. Las Brisas ("the breeze") is well worth the journey off the beaten path.

Want to see more? Check out the Flickr set here.