[HOT LIST] Chicken soup

Photo from the Internet.

This post authored by EID Co-Conspirator Stefanie Cobb. 

The holidays are dead and gone, flu season has come into full swing, and it’s really fucking cold outside. February’s wrath bids the temptation to stock up on NyQuil, call into work, and hibernate until the trees start budding again. In an effort to avoid the downward spiral of self-loathing and misery that Michigan winters so graciously provoke, let’s consider chicken soup. This brothy delight is an ultimate “feel better” food and reliever of wintertime’s bitterness. Many swear by its slightly-less-than-scientific ability to remedy cold and flu symptoms, but if anything, at least it’s something to occupy your chops and quit whining.

Now, you could follow Deadpin’s advice and try to make your own. Yeah. Nothing like a little chicken and snot soup to make you feel better, you wretched disgusting mess of mortality. What are you going to do, cook it on your forehead? Better to leave this one to the professionals and their magic chicken anti-viral juju soup.

As a relatively standard menu item, most restaurants tend to serve up a lot of half-assed, soggy-noodle, Campbell’s imitation cup of bullshit. Fortunately, there are places in and around the city that know chicken soup and know it well. Pay these places a little visit if you’re feeling defeated by the flu or the unwelcome cold weather blahs (or, you know, if you just like soup). They know how to make you feel REAL good.

This is where magic happens. Photo from the Internet.

#1 Los Galanes (3362 Bagley Ave, Detroit)
Those who theorize about the healing powers of chicken soup must be referring to the one served at Los Galanes. That is a magical, magical soup. The carrots, zucchini, cabbage, and redskin potatoes are insanely tender and appropriately proportioned with the broth. Oh sweet Jesus, that broth. It’s not too bland. It’s not too salty. It’s just delicious. They top the bowl off by adding chicken that’s so ridiculously juicy, it’s almost effortless to fork off the bone. Every ingredient plays an essential role in fulfilling the unity of such a glorious soup. Although no one can confirm the truth behind its alleged curing ability, I’m almost certain I spotted mini angels swimming in my bowl.

#2 Green Dot Stables (2200 W Lafayette Blvd., Detroit)
We love Green Dot, Detroit loves Green Dot, EVERYONE LOVES GREEN DOT. That is unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year. Putting all the obvious reasons for adoring this place aside, let’s talk about their Chicken Paprikash Soup. It’s really good and like everything else on their menu, its only $3. I may just be a sucker for anything with spaetzle, but any Hungarian twist on chicken soup is simply divine. Hey, if all else fails and you still find yourself seeking comfort from the cold, their drinks are still only $3 so you can get tanked to forget about how much winter blows. You could also get tanked AND eat Chicken Paprikash Soup.

Photo from Foodspotting.

#3 Pollo Chapin (2054 Junction St, Detroit)
It’s nearly impossible NOT to leave this poultry treasure box in a good mood because it is just so silly. Your dining experience will most likely be in the company of several tiny Mexican children drinking Jarritos (a Mexican version of Faygo only 9,000 times more sugary) and watching Dora the Explorer. Real life, y’all; this is not a stereotypical postulation. Their chicken noodle soup, costing something like a dollar fifty a bowl, is on point with its noodle to broth to vegetable ratio. There are few things in this world (well, at least in the world of dining out) that are more infuriating than ordering a bowl of chicken noodle soup and receiving a bowl of broth ONLY and, if you’re lucky, find a noodle and carrot floating around. Seriously, such a dick move on the behalf of whoever thinks it is acceptable to pull a stunt like that. Also, the chicken in their chicken noodle soup is, like, really chicken. It’s none of that creepy, spongy, cubed shit that sometimes makes you wonder if your body will actually be capable of digesting it. Pollo Chapin loves chicken. I love Pollo Chapin.

#4 Rosie O’Grady’s Irish Pub (279 W Nine Mile, Ferndale)
Their chicken and dumpling soup will make you question everything you thought was true about Rosie’s. It’s essentially chicken pot pie in soup form with some peppered dumplings thrown in. A hearty bowl could provide just the comfort you need to press on through a day of February blues. The catch is that this place can be a real nightmare, so it’s probably best to avoid going after 6pm on a weekend. Go on a weekday afternoon and you’ll have plenty of opportunity to enjoy a cup without having to worry about ending up wedged in between two inebriates dry humping to Ke$ha…unless you’re into that.

#5 Polish Village Café (2990 Yemans Ave, Hamtramck)
Seeing as Fat Tuesday is next week, it is only appropriate to mention Hamtown. With this one, I recommend not only ordering the chicken noodle soup, but also everything else on the menu. While my intentions are not to veer away from fact that this is a “Chicken Soup” Hot List, I simply cannot imagine going to Polish Village Café and ONLY ordering soup, especially since it comes free with an entrée anyway. In any event, this is another place around the city that owns in properly proportioning chicken noodle ingredients (not too many noodles, not too much chicken, not too much broth, etc.). If you’ve been struck with the flu bug, order a quart, go home, and eat it all in one sitting. That shit works. For real.

Bubbling under Polonia (2934 Yemans Ave, Hamtramck), Blue Star Cafe (239 W Congress St, Detroit), Christine’s Cuisine (729 E Nine Mile, Ferndale), La Feast (315 S Main St, Royal Oak)

[Edible Wow] Pierogi in Metro Detroit

When the Dodge brothers opened their Dodge Main automotive assembly plant in Hamtramck Township in 1914, the area was little more than a sleepy community of French and German farmers. When the call for work went out at the plant, Polish immigrants descended upon this tiny township (and later fought for it to be recognized as its own city). This two-square-mile area was built to accommodate tens of thousands of immigrant factory workers, resulting in densely packed housing with family homes crammed into 30-foot lots. At its peak in 1930, the city had 56,000 people in it, 83% of which were Polish.

The Polish immigrants brought with them their own cultural traditions, and soon Hamtramck was filled with hundreds of bars, beer gardens, Polish restaurants, Old-World bakeries and sausage shops.

Polish cuisine is rooted in the rich farming fields of Poland where potatoes, cabbage and beets thrived. Thus much of what we know as traditional Polish food is heavy with these ingredients: golabki (stuffed cabbage), cabbage soup and stew, sauerkraut (pickled cabbage), beet soups, potato dumplings, potato pancakes, and potato and cheese pierogi are all staples of a traditional Polish diet.

[HOT LIST] Paczki

At Elias Donuts. Covert cell phone photography by Nicole Rupersburg.

Fat Tuesday is coming February 21, and that means one thing to metro Detroiters: PACZKI. Paczki are dense doughnuts filled with any number of fruit fillings (including the less-common but more traditional rose hip and hibiscus) then glazed or covered with powdered sugar, but for me, I don't even acknowledge paczki unless we're talking custard. (If I wanted a mouthful of jam I would buy a jar of jam and eat it, the end.)

Plenty of places serve their own version of this traditional Polish pastry - an extra-rich doughnut originally made in order to use up all the remaining eggs, lard and sugar in the house before Lenten fasting began - but we all know Hamtramck is the place to go for the absolute BEST. Which is why Paczki Day in Poletown is a high holy day; check out the all-day parties at Small's (home of the Paczki Bomb!), Whiskey in the Jar (easy on the Jeyzy), a limo shuttle bar crawl leaving from Polonia (can you beat 45 bars in one day?), and whatever else. Na zdrowie!

New Palace Bakery.

#1 New Palace Bakery (Hamtramck)
I usually eschew making any end-all/be-all claims here, but when it comes to paczki New Palace IS. THE. BEST. Their paczki are big and doughy and a little lumpy and heavy and dense. Plus when you order a half dozen or dozen, they put them in a standard bakery box and use twine from a dispenser mounted in the ceiling to tie it ... which I just find Old-Worldy and cool. They have an amazing selection of breads in addition to their pastries and cookies, as well as a full deli counter and homemade pierogi. And here's the tip-top secret: they have paczki all year round, every day of the week. So you could wait in line on Paczki Day just for the thrill of it, or you could just get your paczki fix, like, tomorrow.

Flavors include standards (see New Martha Washington below) as well as raisin and rose hip, and also some custom creations: the Millennium Swirl is a chocolate + custard combo created in the year 2000 to commemorate the new millennium, the United Paczki is a strawberry/custard/blueberry combination introduced in 2002, the strawberry/custard combo was first made in 1997 to commemorate Hamtramck's 75th anniversary, and the Hamtramck Boat is kind of the banana split of paczki with strawberry and pineapple filling and banana custard covered in chocolate. Looks like New Palace got my custard memo!

#2 New Martha Washington Bakery (Hamtramck)
Smaller than New Palace (and they don't serve paczki year-round), Martha Washington has its own devoted following. Their paczki are rounder and more evenly-shaped, like fat little hockey pucks covered in powdered sugar. They started carrying paczki officially today, and on Paczki Day they'll have 14 flavors available - raspberry, strawberry, blueberry cherry, apple, apricot, lemon, prune, custard, Boston cream, chocolate Bavarian, butter cream, plain sugar and pineapple.

#3 American Polish Cultural Center (Troy)
Upholding Polish culture, customs and traditions over in suburban Troy (where there is a sizable population of people of Polish descent, the effect of Polish-American migration out of Hamtramck), the American Polish Cultural Center will sell thousands of dozens of paczki next Monday and Tuesday. They are taking pre-orders now; paczki are $9.50 per dozen if paid by Sunday and $10 per dozen after. They'll have prune, custard, apricot ,cherry, stawberry, raspberry, blueberry and hibiscus, all made from scratch in their own kitchen (which also does all their banquet catering and serves the on-site Wawel Restaurant, which serves hearty homemade Polish-American cuisine made properly by a group of little old Polish ladies and don't think I'm kidding). The building used to be an architecture and antique museum displaying woodwork from the homes of prominent families including the Rockefeller Estate. When the APCC acquired the building, many of the antiques and elaborate woodwork remained (including a stunning archway from the Rockefeller mansion) - the story goes that the rich guy who owned the building sold what he could and just left the rest, so the Center is not just a place that celebrates Polish culture but also a home of American history, a lived-in museum.

#4 Bartz Bakery (Dearborn)
Bartz is known specifically for their bread, but as a bakery with a Central European background, Bartz also makes their own paczki every year around Lent. As of last week they are now available every day, and they have a variety of different flavors ... including custard.

#5 Elias Donuts (Detroit)
Located in Detroit's Rosedale neighborhood, Elias Donuts has been around for 30 years. It has that old-school doughnut shop charm - a long formica counter and tiled floors with 1950's-style soda shop stools all the color of Good and Plenty's. In addition to doughnuts, they serve a variety of grilled sandwiches, fried fish dinners (catfish, perch and cod), burgers, breakfast sandwiches on their housemade bagel "thins" and flatbread, and ice cream from Hershey's Ice Cream, and it's all 24 hours. They also serve paczki all year round, but on Fat Tuesday they up the ante with additional flavors - blueberry, strawberry, regular and chocolate custard, and pineapple. FYI, they stick to the glazed varietals.

Bubbling under Supreme Baking Co. (Detroit), G M Paris Bakery (Livonia), Bozek's Meat and Groceries (Hamtramck), Srodek Deli and Bakery (Hamtramck)

Na Zdrowie! Polonia Restaurant

Last we spoke I referred to Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup as being like Grandma's own industrial-sized kitchen complete with antique curio cabinets and classic Americana accents. And this is still true, but only if Grandma lives in a wealthy suburb filled with 3,000 sq. ft. new construction homes that come standard with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.

If, however, Grandma is a slightly-hunched-over relic from the Old Country with hands gnarled from years of manual labor and an accent so thick that, when she does bother to speak in English, you can't understand her anyway, and she lives in a very modest pre-World War II home with peeling wallpaper and warped linoleum floors that has a certain indefinable smell to it, the smell you have come to know simply as "Grandma smell"...then welcome to Polonia.

"It smells like Grandma's house," my dining partner remarked to me as we walked through the doors. Memories of my own maternal great-grandmothers (both from Belgium) came flooding back to me...granted, the smells from a Flemish kitchen are a bit different than those coming from a Pole's, but the Old-Wordlyness and affinity for antique knick-knacks proudly displayed above forced-air radiators is the same.

The menu is packed full of traditional Polish favorites: pierogies and potato pancakes, schnitzel and sausage, kiszka and kraut, golabki and goulash. (Okay, I might be lying about the kiszka, or "blood sausage," but I did have the same "blood" soup Anthony Bourdain sampled on his visit to the restaurant last January.)

My meal began with the Duck Soup, or czernina--also known as "duck blood soup." Why? Because it's made with duck blood. Duck blood tastes like Mayan chocolate...cardamom...maybe a little nutmeg? It was rich with an overwhelming depth of flavor, reminding me in some ways of a good mole (which is a complicated sauce with many layers of hard-to-pinpoint tastes when done well...and it's hard to do well). There is a definite metalic note to the soup (ya know, from the blood and all), but it is otherwise quite robust. The fine noodles help to offset the strong flavor.

The soup was included as part of my Polish Combination Plate: stuffed cabbage with tomato sauce, Polish fresh sausage, pierogies, mashed potatoes with brown gravy and kraut. I swapped out the mashed potatoes for potato noodles and added a potato pancake...you say potato, I say potahto. Po-tay-toe. (And the one gay male reading this who has actually seen the Jennifer Saunders/Dawn French "Jordan and Jodie" bits just laughed his arse off.)

Everything was amazing. Honest, good old-fashioned, home-cooked amazing. The pierogies: potato (POTATO! heh) with Velveeta cheese, fried onions, and bacon...honestly not my favorite pierogies ever as (and I believe I have expressed this before) I don't like bacon on anything other than the side of my eggs, but tasty despite that. It was fried so the dough was just the right amount of firmness, the filling a smooth potato/cheese/bacon/onion puree. You know those potato skins you order at bars with the cheese and the bacon and whatnot? Kind of like that, only inside-out, blended, and in a noodle.

The potato pancake: deep-fried greasy crispy diet-friendly heaven. (Part of that was a lie.) The potato noodles: very dense, and a little bland, though tasty when dipped in the tomato sauce served with.... The stuffed cabbage. Or, what was called "Pigs in a Blanket" when I was growing up. Which, come to find out later, "Pigs in a Blanket" in most American homes is actually hot dogs or sausages wrapped in some sort of bread dough. Only to find out even LATER that "Pigs in a Blanket" actually does refer to stuffed cabbage in certain cultures, particularly Slavik culture. And though I am a lot of things, Slavik is not one.

But I digress.

The "proper" Polish name for stuffed cabbage is golabki, and is made with boiled cabbage leaves wrapped around minced meat (usually pork, though sometimes beef) and served with a thin tomato sauce. It is wholly untrendy, unglamorous, and mighty satisfying. Hearty, flavorful, and filling, and also chock-full of childhood memories.

And last, the Polish fresh sausage, which--along with the stuffed cabbage, sauerkraut, and pierogis--is all homemade. There is a distinct difference between pre-packaged over-processed sausage that spends months of its life in freezers and sausage that is ground and cased fresh. The casing has more of a crunch, the meat is much more tender and doesn't always keep its rigid form, and each bite tastes slightly different depending on the spices concentrated in it. This sausage had bursts of peppercorn and different spices, and was so tender it almost fell apart once cut into.

There was also the kraut but I can't tell you anything about that because I don't eat kraut. Blecky.

I think I cleared my plate save for one lone potato noodle (and that's a whole lot of potato for one meal), but I wasn't quite done shoveling food into my face yet.

I binge eat; don't judge me.

So I ordered up a lingonberry crepe for dessert. Simple yet divine. Spare the butter, spoil the eater; that's what I say. Fried up and covered in chocolate sauce and whipped cream, it was the perfect end to my 2,000 calorie meal.

The best part is: all this shameless gorging cost under $11.00. There isn't an item on the menu priced over $10.00, and that includes their generous entress. They also have daily specials, such as Tuesdays and Thursdays when you can get half a boiled chicken for $6.95. It's nice to see that the prices are as nostalgic as the decor at Polonia.

The menu is filled with other Polish and local favorites, like Goulash and City Chicken...which is apparently something of a regional rarity, which I did not know before. Thanks Mr. Bourdain! You can also pair your traditional Polish dishes with bonafide Polish beer--Zywiec, Okocim, Warka. None of it is that great, but if you're a Heineken drinker--and by that I mean, if you like Bud Light--then you'll like it just dandy. You can also sample some Polish vodkas, like Luksusowa and...Belvedere. Hm.

Polonia Restaurant has been operating in some capacity since 1927, and is truly a relic--or rather, treasure--of a former era. The murals of the Old Country, the antique plates on display lining the walls, chicken needlepoint, and all polka, all the time. (I did hear the "Pennsylvania Polka," which fans of Groundhog Day would appreciate.) Even the 20-something waitress was Polish. Not that that's terribly noteworthy but it adds to the novelty of the place.

But the bottom line is this: the food is good. Really effing good. And cheap. Really effing cheap. And much like pretty much everywhere else in Poletown, the vibe is comfortable, friendly, and welcoming, and even though you don't know everyone in the room it kind of feels like you might since its got that Old World neighborly thing going on. For the culture tourists out there, this is a great place to experience authentic Polish cuisine in an atmosphere that looks like it might have been plucked straight from the Motherland before Nazi occupation. For foodies looking for the place that has the best such and such, I guarantee you'll find such and such something here. For those who simply enjoy a good meal at a good price, this Okocim's for you. Na zdrowie!