[HOT LIST] Sliders

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

"With everything?" Yes, EVERYTHING.

Everything = ketchup, mustard, pickles and onions, wrapped in paper where they further soak in their own grease letting all the flavors marinate together (the true test of a good slider is how greasy the paper bag gets on your drive home). This is universal language for "everything" when at your local slider shack.  In metro Detroit, our little white huts of bite-sized burger worship have been around longer than most of us have been alive ... and the prices are practically the same as they were decades ago. Our slider shacks have a long history here, and the locals are fiercely protective of their favorites. Part of their appeal is their nostalgic sentimental value; the other part is their food: fast, cheap and greasy. Like relics of a former era - which most of them are (some dating back to WWII) - these slider shacks have silently shaped our food scene for decades, standing tall even as trendier and more commercial places have tried to de-throne them. Say what you will about your coneys; metro Detroit just wouldn't be the same without its sliders.

#1 Telway Hamburgers (Detroit)
Telway fans all swear they're the best, and that Motz, Bates and Greene's just don't compare. Located on Michigan Ave. in Southwest Detroit, Telway is probably the best-known of all the local burger emporiums. Part slider joint, part donut shop, they're open 24 hours and can cater to any and all of your grease, salt, fat and sugar cravings. They promise the "Best coffee in town," and at 45 cents it's pretty hard to beat. (We love $4 French press as much as anyone, but sometimes a no-fuss 10-second 45-cent cup of good 'ol American joe hits the spot.) Their burgers are a bit smaller, but at 85 cents at pop for a cheeseburger there's no reason to complain. Plus, this place is EXTRA adorable inside, even more old-timey and cute than all the other cute old-timey places. Cash only. Also in Madison Heights.

#2 Sonny's Hamburgers (Detroit)
Sonny's fans all swear they're the best, and that Telway, Motz and Bates just don't compare. Depending on your perspective, Sonny's has either the distinct advantage or disadvantage of being probably the least-known slider joint in town. Located in NW Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood, it suffers from the seclusion of not being in one of Detroit's, errrr, trendier parts. But locals know: their burgers are the best. The BEST. Meatier, greasier, just plain gooder. The neighborhood might not be the most enticing but inside Sonny's is plenty welcoming (and no, there's no bullet-proof glass, just the same old giant stainless steel counter you'll find everywhere else). Their cheeseburgers are a little "pricier" at $1.50 each, but you're getting what you pay for. Plus you can order small or large burgers AND they accept credit.

#3 Motz Hamburgers (Detroit)
Motz fans all swear they're the best, and that Bates, Telway and Greene's just don't compare. Ahhhh, DELRAY, another neighborhood in Detroit you have to be a bit adventurous to visit (though being on the edge of SW it's a little less out of the way). Named one of the best burgers in the country by USA Today, Motz is known for thick, meaty "sliders" as big as regular fast food joint burgers, killer fries (with malt vinegar on every table), and a fairly diverse menu of other cheap 'n greasy victuals including other varieties of burgers. Like the geographically-appropriate Mexican Burger. And, Veggie. Which would presumably be cooked on the same beef-grease-coated grill. Which defeats the whole purpose. Kind of like ordering a veggie burger in a slider joint in the first place. Cash only.

#4 Travis Hamburgers (Saint Clair Shores)
Travis fans all swear they're the best, and that Motz, Greene's and Telway just don't compare. Open 24 hours and serving a bevvy of gut-bomb breakfast food in addition to glorious burgers, Travis is an eastside thing, you wouldn't understand. More of a full-fledged diner than a simple slider joint, this place is predictably packed after-hours and is also known for a stellar old jukebox that kicks out the likes of Patsy Cline. You want ambiance? This place has an old-school punk appeal that only comes with decades of serving drunkards warbling along to Johnny Cash. Cash only.

#5 Bates Hamburgers (Livonia)
Bates fans all swear they're the best, and that Greene's, Telway and Motz just don't compare. It's tiny, it's white, it's got the stainless steel counter and the old-fashioned sign menus with the push-in mismatched letters. Bates is known for having a slightly bigger burger, and no trip to Bates would be complete without indulging in their thick chocolate shakes or crispy crinkle-cut fries (add chili for extra oomph). They're also known for having solid coneys, and to mix up your slider experience a bit, get your burgers on a sesame seed bun. Open Monday through Sunday, 7am to 11pm. Cash only.

Bubbling under Greene's Hamburgers (Farmington), Old Fashioned Hamburger (Detroit), Bray's Hamburgers (Westland), Carter's Hamburgers (Lincoln Park), Comet Burger (Royal Oak), Joe's Hamburgers (Wyandotte), Hunter House (Birmingham)

[Real Detroit Weekly] Sangria Tapas Cafe and Sky Club

Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

"Owner Luigi Cutraro remembers when he first opened the doors to Sangria 12 years ago. At that time, Royal Oak was a hub for locally – and independently – owned businesses, defined by its countercultural ethos and its growing visibility as a vibrant downtown destination. Now, Royal Oak is becoming more 'corporate,' he notes – as Ferndale becomes the new champion of the quirky and independent, long-time Royal Oak mainstays like Sangria struggle to differentiate themselves from the increasingly homogenized look of Main Street.

'Luckily for Sangria (and Luigi), its long history and continued popularity place it far ahead of its other competition. First, as a salsa club: Salsa Wednesdays and Latin Thursdays with DJ Cisco in the Sky Club are just as popular as ever, particularly with metro Detroit's large salsero community. But we already know about the salsa, and there isn't anything new that can really be said about it. Except that in the past 12 years since Sangria opened, there have been 27 salsa clubs that have opened and then closed. Sangria was the first and is the only one still left. And also that DJ Cisco has been the resident DJ here for the past 12 years since they opened, an almost unheard-of length of time for any DJ to have a residency in one place (if for no other reason than that most clubs don't survive that long)..."

Read the rest of the story here.

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

[EID Feature] Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza: Reinventing the Pizza Wheel

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

In 2009, Slice (a subsection of Serious Eats) proclaimed coal-fired ovens the hottest new trend in pizza, also citing Florida as Ground Zero for the explosion of the trend. This is due, at least in part, to Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza.

Tony Sacco's opened their first store in the Bonita Springs area of Florida in July 2008. By early 2009 there was a demand for franchising, and by summer of '09 they began selling their first franchises. A franchisee opened a second Florida location in Fort Meyers; others franchisees opened stores in Illinois and Indiana with more scheduled in Ohio, North Carolina, and a slew more in greater Chicagoland (yep--Chicago will FINALLY have a decent pizza franchise). There are now a total of 18 Tony Sacco's restaurants already open, sold or planned, and in SE Michigan we're about to see several more open in 2012.

Owners Chuck Senatore and Geoge Kurajian are originally from Michigan, so it was only natural that as they opened more of their own stores that they would open one here. The Novi location opened in January 2011, and brought with it what might actually be among the first of its kind in metro Detroit: a coal-fired pizza oven. (The only other local pizzeria we know of using a coal-fired oven is Tomatoes Apizza.)

The idea for Tony Sacco's came into existence as Senatore and Kurajian were looking for a project. At the time they also had a third partner, Tony Sacco, but he left the business before they even opened their first store. "We liked the name," Chuck says. "It's a cool name, and we already had the fuse lit with that name so Tony let us use it and now we own the trademark so it's our name to use." Besides, it sounds a lot better than "George Kurajian's Coal Oven Pizza" (sorry, George). "People call me Tony half the time but whatever," Chuck laughs.

In 2008 they got a good space in the largest lifestyle mall in America, and because of all the snowbirds and tourists descending on that area they were able to share their concept with people from all over the country and world, getting exposure that wouldn't have been possible if they had been located anywhere else. "It was really strange how all the pieces fell into place," Chuck reflects. "We've never even tried to sell a franchise; this has all been people who came to us!"

They decided to go with coal-fired pizza because it was a simple concept they could go anywhere with that appeals to everyone. It was also a solid concept during down economic times because pizza is reasonably priced but also gourmet in its own right. "We could see how coal was going to be the next big thing on the horizon for pizza," explains Chuck. He traces the history of pizza in America from the immigrant-owned Italian eateries who brought traditional pizza styles with them, to the mass-production corporate chains making pizzas glopped high with cheese and toppings, to the "esoteric weird pizzas [places were doing] after chains sputtered out." Chuck says, "Until you start cooking something different with a different method you’re still making the same product. We’re doing something completely different by cooking it with coal. You're not going to change the flavor profiles until you start cooking it differently."

Coal-fired ovens may seem like a "new" concept, but really it's a very old one. Chuck insists they aren't reinventing the wheel here; they're just doing things in a more traditional way that has since been all but forgotten. "We had been to some of the old authentic coal oven places," Chuck says. "We wanted to do something that was high-end, something we could run with." He identified that the trend in pizza and food was moving more towards healthier, natural, gourmet items, which is really how pizza started.  "There's always a need for high-quality, high-end product. Pizza has gotten so far away from that it was just crap. There are not a lot of sit-down high-end pizza places where you can bring your family, a date, an office party, whatever. And we also knew if we have a high-end environment with high-end product then we need a high-end cooking method."

Enter the $50,000 custom-made coal-fired oven from Wood Stone in Washington. The oven at the Novi store weighs 7,000 pounds. The oven in their new Lansing store (breaking ground on Nov. 14) will be the largest coal oven Wood Stone has ever manufactured. The oven uses only anthracite coal from Pennsylvania, the cleanest burning solid fuel on the planet (cleaner even than wood with no soot no odor). It burns at a very high temperature allowing pizzas to cook in 4-5 minutes so the crust will be crunchy but still chewy on the inside and the toppings don’t get killed.

At Tony Sacco's, there are no freezers, no fryers and no microwave ovens. Vegetables are fresh and cut by hand. They make their sauce and dough from scratch. "We aren't really being magical," Chuck says. "We're just going back to the beginning when things were done right and were high quality." They strive for a balanced flavor profile--the don't overwhelm the pie with cheese, don't over-cook the toppings, don't add much salt or sugar. "Even our sauce is just olive oil, fresh basil and ground tomatoes." Because of this, their pizza is ACTUALLY healthy; a slice of cheese pizza from a 12'' pie is only 135 calories and 3.5 grams of fat. "If anyone asked me how we could make it better I honestly don't know. Every restaurant says, 'We use the finest ingredients,' but we actually do."

Everything here is made from scratch in-house and with hearty, fresh ingredients. The antipasto salad has big, beautiful slices of tomato and huge chunks of ham and salami. The marinated chicken wings are oven roasted for a smooth, smoky flavor. The garlic rotoli are roly-poly rounds of soft, homemade dough slathered in olive oil, garlic and Romano cheese (at $5 for a basket of 8 they're a damn steal; pace yourself because you won't want to put these down).

The pizzas are true Neapolitan style--big and round and semi-thin with fresh toppings and generous amounts of olive oil. Choose from toppings like Roma tomatoes, Kalamata olives, roasted garlic, zucchini and standard meats, or select one of Sacco's Specialty Pizzas like the Margherita (made simply with crushed Italian plum tomato sauce, fresh soft mozzarella and basil), Bianco (made with olive oil, ricotta, provolone, Romano and mozzarella) or Capo (pepperoni, sweet Italian sausage, roasted mushrooms and caramelized onions). The flavors are at once light and full, fresh and colorful, and the crust is a perfect balance of crunchy and chewy, tender and resistant. The robust olive oil creates a delicate harmony between the flavors; close your eyes and imagine you're in Italy, because this is exactly what the pizza there is like.

Cap off your meal with their Sacco's Shortcake, a coal-oven baked shortcake loaded with plump, juicy berries and homemade vanilla mousse, or try the liquid version under their "Specialty Cocktails."

Inside Tony Sacco's is more upscale than your average pizzeria. The floor plan is very open and casual, but they ditch "mom and pop red and white checker cloth" look of most eye-talian eateries. "We have a high-energy, upbeat environment. That's really what we set out to do; we wanted a concept that could carry the next 20 years. There are no pictures of Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin or the Rat Pack. Kids in their 20s don't even know who these guys are! [That photos of Frank Sinatra when he got arrested,] it's in every different Italian restaurant on the planet. It's played out!" At Tony Sacco's you can come in, enjoy a nice glass of wine or a cocktail along with your pizza and be in an environment that would suit a date as much as a dinner out with friends.

Right now the Novi location is the only location in Michigan (check out their $6.95 lunch buffet too), but 2012 will see the opening of the Lansing store as well as the Ann Arbor and Rochester Hills franchisees. In metro Detroit we have pizzerias using stone ovens, brick ovens, wood-fired ovens, and good ol' gas ... now taste the difference clean-burning coal can make. (As far as stocking stuffers go, it's not such a bad deal.)

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

[Metromix] Lucky Dragon Cafe

Photo by VATO for Metromix.

"Every home needs a go-to Chinese carry-out restaurant; it is an American necessity, like late-night pizza delivery joints and neighborhood watering holes within stumbling distance. Most of the Chinese restaurants you’ll find in the city of Detroit are small, tucked away in the corner of a strip mall with sparse seating, doing most of their business in carry-outs and deliveries. Lucky Dragon is one of those kinds of places.

'Lucky Dragon Café is located near Downtown Detroit, on Jefferson Avenue just east of Chene. Owners Dan Harnphanich and Yin Hon Chan opened Lucky Dragon in 1998, and have been involved in some form of Chinese eateries since 1982 with their first venture in the Renaissance Center. Hon Chan is the chef of the operation; he cooked in Hong Kong before coming to the States, then worked in Chinese restaurants all over the country before ending up here in Detroit. The food at Lucky Dragon is in the Cantonese and Szechuan style, but catered to American palates (as much Chinese restaurants in this area are)..."

Read the rest of the article here.

[Real Detroit Weekly] Red Sauce

Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

"We all know the big restaurant names inside the MGM Grand Detroit: the Wolfgang Puck Grille, Bourbon Steak, SaltWater, even Palette Dining Studio (the fancy buffet). But there's also Breeze Dining Court, and to assume that a "food court" is akin to high-volume/low-quality fast food joints would be a serious mistake: at Breeze, Chef Chris Sokolowski and his team certainly oversee a high-volume operation but do so with the same commitment to from-scratch items using quality products as you see throughout the rest of the property. Just, you know, wa-wa-wah-wayyyyy cheaper (for those of us whose champagne dreams and caviar fantasies don't come true after a night at the slots).

'Red Sauce is one of five restaurants inside Breeze that cater to a wide range of craveable flavors, from stir-fry to classic American grill (dressed up with Black Angus Beef and specialty relishes) to housemade desserts. While the name itself isn't new, the concept is: previously an Italian-themed restaurant, it was re-conceptualized as a Mexican eatery featuring a build-your-own burrito, nacho and taco bar in July..."

Read the rest of the article here.

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

[HOT LIST] Michigan pizza chains

Domino's Pizza Wisconsin 6 Cheese. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

Metro Detroit is luckier than most when it comes to our run-of-the-mill pizza chains. Just because a place has a corporate headquarters and franchisee options doesn't mean you should have to suffer bad pizza. They may not be fancy, but our major pizza chains (many with locations throughout the U.S.) know how to make good 'ol America pie, from hand-tossed round to our very own homegrown Detroit-style deep dish. These places offer a diversity of styles and overall smashability that would make other cities weep if they knew what they were missing. (Chicago, we're looking at you. Your pizza is abysmal. Truly, truly awful. From your dried-out pie crust deep dish to your dried-out cardboard thin crust. Good God it's bad.) And blessed are the Detroiters, for they shall inherit the cheap eats: we've got some of the cheapest pizza in the country AND with the most variety. WEEP CHICAGO; WEEP!

#1 Jet's Pizza (Sterling Heights*)
Just the smell of Jet's Pizza will have us salivating like a pack of wild dogs. And as soon as that box opens we will tear into it like a pack of wild RABID dogs. That extra-thick (yet still pillowy) deep dish crust with the crispy edges, especially where the cheese runs a little over and bakes in; the stretchy, slightly tangy mozzarella; the spicy pepperoni; the well-balanced tomato sauce ... everything about this 'za is on-point. Add a side of extra-buttery Jet Bread drenched in mozzarella and parmesan and, well, let's just say that to witness the scene of our frenzied feasting is a sight no human should be forced to see.

#2 Hungry Howie's (Madison Heights)
Just because you say "garlic butter cheese crust" really fast doesn't make it an actual flavor. But it seems to work every time so we're going to stick with it. Hungry Howie's was the originator of the flavored crust, available in 8 different flavors (including "garlic herb" and, separately, "butter cheese"). Everything about their regular old round pizza is good: sauce, slightly spicy and good; cheese, gooey and good; pepperoni, crispy at the edges and good; crust, chewy and golden from the butter and good. Hungry Howie's pizzas are utterly smashable (seriously, you can just keep eating and eating and eating...). A large is considered a single-serving portion at EID headquarters so you better bring your own.

#3 Buddy's Pizza (Farmington Hills)
Many of you will balk that we dare rank Buddy's not one but TWO places after Jet's. Well, you can start a blog and build a fan base and then you can write your own list; this one is ours. We love Buddy's, we do; especially that crispety-crunchety taste of biting into that oil-soaked deep dish crust. Yep, this is a true Detroit original, the birthplace of the Detroit-style square deep dish invented around the same time as electricity and the Model T. (We're kidding, electricity and the Model T were TOTALLY invented in different centuries, and really electricity wasn't so much invented as harnessed.) Okay, so maybe not that old, but 65 years is still pretty old. The recipe has only been improved over the years, and now they've got four new signature pizzas with gourmet toppings to celebrate their golden age.

#4 Domino's Pizza (Ann Arbor)
Normally Domino's would be found in the absolute dead-last position for any pizza compilation list after years and years and years of inexcusably bad pies (and we have a *very* high threshold of tolerance for less-than-tremendous pizza), but after hearing some good buzz over their new "Artisan Pizza" line (tryin' to be all gourmet and whatnot) we gave it a shot. And it was...not bad. You've got a choice of four different styles of crust and a wide selection of specialty pies. The Wisconsin 6 Cheese on hand-tossed parmesan and asiago crust was heavy even for us, but the flavors were more or less on point (more feta and less cheddar, FTR), the sauce decent, and the crust chewy and flavorful. If you swore off Domino's a decade ago after one too many inedible pizzas, we recommend you give them another shot.

#5 Little Caesars (Detroit)
Yep, the pizza tastes like cardboard. There are no two ways around that. It's bad. But it's also cheap, and you gotta give it to the place that launched the large $5 Hot-N-Ready concept. As promised, they're hot, they're ready, and they're $5. Select locations also offer their square deep dish Hot-N-Ready from 4-8pm for $7 (call your local store for details), and these are fully decent (if not on the same level of Jet's or Buddy's). Other things we love about Little Caesars: the Italian Cheese Bread (garlic butter-soaked square pizza dough covered in melted cheeses and Italian spices) and their crowning achievement, Crazy Bread (extra sauce, extra cheese, ALWAYS). They also now have 8 different flavors of wings that sound tempting...did we mention we also love wings?

Bubbling under Papa Romano's (Commerce Township), Cottage Inn (Ann Arbor), Happy's Pizza (Farmington Hills)

*Cities denote corporate headquarter locations.

[EID Feature] Reen's Cakes "N" Things: Better Living Through Butter

Photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

Reen's Cakes "N" Things over on Detroit's northwest side (on Grand River right off the Southfield Freeway) doesn't have a website or a Facebook page. Owner Reen Jones doesn't Tweet or blog. They don't even advertise. They don't need to.

"You better get in here early, there will be a line out the door and down the block later," one of Reen's customers tells me as I walk in. Reen walks with me to the back by the glass counter full of glorious cakes and I ask her about that. "Oh YES!" she exclaims. "For the holidays we have cut-off dates for pre-orders and even though we tell them every year, every year we'll have a line going around the block with people saying they forgot."

For Thanksgiving, the cut-off date will probably be Nov. 9. For Christmas the cut-off date is scheduled to be Dec. 18 but will most likely be sooner as her pre-orders fill up and they can't take any more on - this is an all from-scratch bakery and they can only bake so much at one time.

Reen's has been open for 12 years in their current location; the company itself has been open for 17 years total (the previous location was right across the street). Reen previously worked for GM for 15 years and happily took the buy-out option in order to start the bakery and realize her dream. She has always loved to bake. "I had an Easy-Bake Oven as a child," she says with a smile. "I once had a friend tell me that [when we were kids] it would be a sunny summer day and everyone would be outside playing and I would be inside baking! I said, 'Was I really that bad?' 'Yes!'"

She went to school for cake decoration and was baking out of her home until it got to be too small. Part of her inspiration for getting into the baking business was when she would go to weddings and there would be these beautiful cakes (not to mention expensive) that just tasted awful. "They looked pretty but didn't taste good," she says - and we all know exactly what she means. She wanted to make cakes that were both beautiful AND delicious. And now she makes both beautiful and delicious "cakes for all occasions."

She doesn't do a lot of wedding cakes anymore though she'll still make smaller ones. But the daily business of Reen's lies in her everyday cakes and pies. Decadent caramel made with vanilla cake and rich, luscious stovetop-cooked caramel icing. Moist German chocolate cake with gooey caramel-coconut icing (REAL coconut). Lemony 7UP pound cake with smooth cream cheese frosting. Ruby-colored red velvet cake made with lemon cake instead of cocoa. Cookies, cobblers, cheesecakes, brownies, dinner rolls and sweet potato pie. Sheet cakes in all sizes customizable with edible paper (they can take your photo, scan it, and put it on your cake).

Also, mini-cakes. "They're perfect if it's just two of you at home and you don't want a whole cake, or maybe you have a family of five but they all want different flavors," explains Reen. At under $4.00 a piece ($4.25 for rum cake), these mini-sheets are still more than enough for two or three full dessert sittings for one person (well...depending on the person). "We've been doing these for a long time; they're huge for us." They really are the perfect portion, and once you dig your fork into that first corner and taste the edges slightly crispy from being baked in REAL butter along with Reen's UNBELIEVABLE icing (seriously, order the caramel cake), you'll never touch another store-bought cake with bland, sugary frosting again.

Everything at Reen's is made from scratch, and you can smell it as soon as you walk through the door. "We love butter here, as you can probably smell!" Reen jokes. But the rich smell of golden butter - butter baking in pie crusts, butter baking in cakes, butter baking in cookies ... beautiful, beautiful butter ... permeates the air inside Reen's. It smells ... happy.

"[When I was working at GM] I would wake up every day unhappy," Reen says. "I realized that that's not the way to live. I feel like this is what I was meant to be doing, and now I wake up every day happy!"

Reen also attributes her success to the great staff she has of dedicated, hard-working people, and also to her family. "I grew up in a family that never said you couldn't do something, it was always 'You CAN.' I didn't feel like I was taking a risk [when I opened the bakery]. This was my calling!"

Reen's is open Wednesday through Friday 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Closed Monday and Tuesday.) They accept credit and EBT cards. Items do sell out so be sure to call in advance to check or pre-order. They can also make a variety of items not on the regular menu so just ask.

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