[Real Detroit Weekly] Brunch of Champions

"To paraphrase Joyce Kilmer, I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as brunch. Maybe it's because you can only get it once (sometimes twice) a week. Or maybe it's because it's the only time it is socially acceptable to binge-drink before 3 p.m. in polite company. Or maybe it's just because we love eating breakfast foods at non-breakfast times. Regardless, brunch is not a meal. It is an art. Here's some of our faves..."

Read the full article here.

Palette Dining Studio: It's Still a Buffet

I just love it when a restaurant has an anniversary (or, in this case, an entire casino complex)! 50% off is my middle name this week as I celebrate landmark anniversaries for both Opus One and MGM Grand Detroit! More on Opus One later (I look forward to cashing in on some $25 caviar tonight), but for now: Palette Dining Studio, take two.

They call themselves a "tapas-style" restaurant, but there really comes a time when you just need to call a buffet a buffet. If a heat source is needed to keep food items warm when they are prepared in the kitchen and brought out in large catering pans that are displayed on long counters with placards containing the names of said food items, it's a buffet.

As far as boo-fays go, Palette is be-yoo-tiful. With a thoroughly modern motif which echoes the look of the casino's other fine(r) dining establishments, Palette is certainly no Old Country. And at a regular price of $28.00 per diner, you can certainly expect main dishes a little more upscale than meatloaf.

Well, they did have meatloaf, but what I'm saying is that it's more than just meatloaf and mac & cheese. I mean, they have mac & cheese, but...oh, forget it.

Now through August 31st, diners can enjoy HALF OFF all buffet purchases (except for Wednesday nights, which is Alaskan crab leg night), excluding gratuity and alcohol purchases. This half-off special also applies to MGM's Breeze Dining Court and IGNITE Sushi Bar--which might not have the best sushi but the atmosphere is incomparable. All of this is in honor of MGM's 10th anniversary, so take advantage of the low prices while you can!

Truth be told, I wouldn't have bothered with a second trip to Palette if it weren't for the half off value. Is the upscale buffet dining experience worth $28.00? Hells no, but I'll pay $14.00 for it, sure.

The choices are varied enough: at the Asian "Far East" station, you have stir-fry, fried rice, gyoza, spring rolls, and select dishes like Kung Pao shrimp. "Fresh" gives you a selection of soups, salads, and breads--I tried the buffalo mozarella and the raspberry vinaigrette salads and was disappointed with both. The raisin sourdough bread--which you can get grilled over at the "Char" station--is great, though. Unfortunately for me, this is the station that once offered cheese tastes, but no more...sad face. "Char" is where all the meats are (as well as side fixin's like mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, and creamed spinach); expect bratwurst, BBQ ribs, BBQ chicken thighs, a prime rib carving station, beef brisket, pork chops, lamb chops, and more. "Sea" is the best of the bunch, with a spicy lobster pasta, a hearty seafood pot pie, tasty fried calamari, sushi, peel-and-eat shrimp, deep-fried shrimp, and those once-weekly crab legs with drawn butter (almost worth the extra $14.00).

And finally, "Indulge"--greedy gluttons will grab platefuls of each eye-catching confection...and feel shame as the Hindi server clears their mostly-uneaten plates with a look that says simply, "Wasteful Americans." Perhaps next time one shared plate would suffice.

While the desserts are the most visually tantalizing part of the Palette experience, don't be surprised when appearances prove to be deceiving. The gelato is okay, the pastries an imitation of Goldilocks with "This one's too rich" and "This one's too bland" (though I never did find the one that was "Just right"). You can also get made-to-order crepes, and I believe there is also the occasional chocolate fountain. The desserts look amazing, as do the intricate chocolate sculptures on display above them, but after a thorough taste test I found them mostly meh.

For real, that's chocolate

Like any buffet, the key is in the timing. If you're paying full price, make sure you have the time to wait as fresh dishes are brought out (instead of eating what's left in the bottom of the pan that has been sitting out for 30 minutes). Also, consistency isn't always the case: my friend grabbed some of the remaining beef brisket which looked lean and juicy, but when the next batch was brought out it was considerably more fatty. Expect other ticks natural to this style of large-batch buffet-cooking: the lamb was overcharred, the prime rib tough. But for now through August 31st, for $14.00, it's worth the price and the patience. The only thing this buffet is missing is pizza...because pizza makes things better.

Detroit Synergy Supper Club Aboard the Detroit Princess Riverboat

Located directly behind COBO Center, the Detroit Princess is Detroit’s newest addition to the beautifully renovated waterfront. The Detroit Princess opened in June 2005, and is cruising for a wonderful 5th season. The former Louisiana casino has been lovingly renovated into a 5 story dining experience complete with brass ceilings, chandeliers, and engraved mirrors. Come take a step back in time as you experience the sights of the beautiful Detroit/Windsor skylines, enjoying a live Motown show on a dinner cruise.

The boat is enclosed with heating/air conditioning as needed, with outer decks for observing the gorgeous views of the Detroit and Windsor skylines from a unique perspective. Come witness the beautiful changes along the riverfront first hand!

Chef Rickey Hussey, formerly of Intermezzo’s (Harmonie Park), heads up a team of impressive cooks on board. For private cruises, the menu is flexible based upon the desires of the booking party. For this two and a half hour cruise, we will feature our most popular dinner menu selected by many parties aboard, also regularly featured aboard the dinner cruises.

June’s Supper Club will be held on Wednesday June 10th, 2009. Boarding begins at 6:30PM, Cruise will depart at 7:00 pm and return at 9:30 pm. The Detroit Princess is offering to Supper Club members VERY SPECIAL cruise price of $30, which includes tax and gratuity (regular pricing is listed on www.detroitprincess.com so you must call the office at 1-877-338-2628 to book with the Synergy Supper Club pricing). Cash bar available on board.

Wednesday June 10, 2009
Boarding: 6:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Cruising: 7:00 pm- 9:30 pm
1-877-338-2628

Captain's Five Entrée Dinner Buffet (included):

Prime Rib
Chicken Florentine
Teriyaki Grilled Salmon
Chipotle Apricot Glazed Pork Chops
Vegetarian Lasagna
Potato Dauphinoise
Cheese Tortellini with Pesto Cream Sauce
Wild Rice
Caribbean Vegetable Medley
Assorted Salads, Dinner Rolls
Dessert

Entertainment (included):

2 ½ hour cruise of the Detroit River
Live Motown Revue show by the Prolifics
The wonderful company of Detroit Synergy members!

Option:
If you would like to pre-purchase drinks, we will run a special rate for Detroit Synergy members – 2 drink tokens for an additional $8. If you pre-purchase, you can pick the tokens up at boarding. These drink tokens can be redeemed at the bar for a beer, wine, or well drink. Drinks are still available for purchase with cash on the day of, but will be just at normal bar rates, depending on the drink.

Feel free to pass this information on to your friends, family, and coworkers and purchase your ticket for June’s Supper Club event on the Detroit River Princess by calling the office directly at 1-877-338-2628. We will not be doing online booking for this special event at this price as this is a very special rate.

Space is limited, seats will be reserved on a first come, first serve basis. While tickets are non-refundable, they may be transferred to another guest should you be unable to attend on the date you purchased your ticket for.

If you have any questions, please e-mail supperclub@detroitsynergy.org

Taste of Ethiopia...Or Not

For months--nay, years--I've heard about how great Ethiopian food is. I've heard rave reviews of Ferndale's Blue Nile and Southfield's Taste of Ethiopia--how different, how healthy, how very ethnic. Despite this, I've never done the Ethiopian thing; no particular reason, just haven't. So finally I decided to expand my gastronomic horizons to include this popular cuisine, and off I went to Taste of Ethiopia's second location in trendy Eastern Market.

Now. Restaurants in Eastern Market tend to be over-hyped and over-crowded as it is, largely because of Eastern Market's popularity amongst trend-conscious coinosseurs of locally-grown organic produce and those who wish to support the local agricultural movement in sustainable cuisine, and so on. Russell Street Deli is good and all, but to line up outside for anything other than a paczki seems preposterous to me, and there does come a point where a (eight dollar) corned beef sandwich is just a (eight dollar) corned beef sandwich. Vivio's? Overrated, right down to the watered-down Bloody Marys. Supino Pizzeria? Has mysteriously dodged the Eastern Market-ishness and has yet to see a line out the door on a sunny Saturday, though it is the only place where such a line would make sense. (Seriously--that pizza is really effing good.)

Walking into Taste of Ethiopia, I knew only that many veg-heads had raved about it and that it always seemed to be empty (when it wasn't outright closed). I had heard of that spongy bread called injera and that the food would be, uh, mushy and probably rather spicy. I also knew that Ethiopian food is all the rage right now, like sushi was some 7-ish years ago (and look what we did to that).

I found a place that was mostly empty--no big surprise there. The hostess/waitress/cashier/food preparer(?) recognized our lack of familiarity with the cuisine, though for someone trying to convince us to stick around she struck me as a bit aloof. The food is all served from a buffet, and I only discovered later that the food is actually prepared in the Southfield location and then trucked over. Which is, um, you know, gross. Mostly because (a) buffets are completely unsanitary to begin with, though if you're anything like me you can eat pizza 36 hours after it has been sitting out without being refrigerated and thus have an intestinal tract of steel, and (b) buffets are the absolute worst way to experience any cuisine, due to the loss of flavor and freshness from the whole storing/reheating process, the condensation and requisite degradation of texture and form as a result, as well as the sauces separating, cooling, and hardening from sitting out. In other words, gross.

These thoughts ran through my head as the waitress/server/hostess/bus girl waited to find out if we were going to order and a random woman nodded enthusiastically in approval and said, "It's really good."

Honey, you're really wrong. Now let's get something straight: I am ALL FOR ethnic cuisine. And while I can bemoan the lack of authenticity at any American restaurant purporting to be ethnic this-or-that, this gripe becomes increasingly irrelevant the more often it is used. What I don't like is when people jump on the ethnic this-or-that bandwagon simply because it's ethnic and it gives them some sense of self-satisfied cultural open-mindedness. (See: Thai, sushi, Indian.) Bottom line: just because it's ethnic doesn't mean it's good (or, more to the point, that it's a good representation of that particular ethnicity).

Case in point: the buffet at Taste of Ethiopia. The rice that was dried out. The chicken that was pink inside (and I don't know much about cooking, but I do know chicken IS NOT supposed to be pink inside). The lamb stew that was green. The fish that was really, really fishy (and no one wants to eat a fishy fish). In keeping with everything I've heard of Ehtiopian food, it's best to stay away from the meat, which is typically just stewed and then doused in spices.

Speaking of spices, I was under the impression that Ethiopian food, which is big on berbere (a kind of African all-spice with a red chile pepper base), would be, you know, spicy. Yeah, not so much. Everything I sampled was bland, except for the vegetable sambosas (a take on the Indian samosa which is more properly spelled as "Sambussa" when referring to the Ethiopian variety of this lightly fried triangular dough filled with vegetables and sometimes meat), which were dry but otherwise the only thing I was willing to fill up on for $9.45. There were also lentils (i.e., carrots and green beans), split peas and collard greens (both popular in Ethiopian cooking). It all looked like sludge. It didn't taste much better.

Traditional Ethiopian cuisine is consumed by scooping up the various sauces and stews with their special spongy flat bread called injera, which is made from a cereal grain and contains two to three times more iron than wheat or barley. The consistency is odd, and the bread (which is rolled up and kind of looks like a wet hand towel) has a slight tang that some say is reminiscent of sourdough, though I don't entirely agree with that determination. This bread was neither bad nor good; just spongy.

To take this restaurant as being representative of Ethiopian cuisine is an insult to Ethiopian cuisine, and I say that as a lesson to those who crave authenticity and who perhaps secretly in their heads were unimpressed by the place but didn't want to say so amongst their enthusiastic vegan friends. It's okay, guys: not liking the food at Taste of Ethiopia doesn't make you a close-minded white cuisinacist; it just means you have honest tastebuds. And while I can't overlook the appeal this place surely has for the veg-heads (Ethiopian food is heavy on vegetarian dishes, as they celebrate a number of fasting periods and meat restrictions in their country), as a happy carnivore I was left hungry and more than a little grossed out. And after speaking to a genuine bonafide for really-real Ethiopian, who said that he found the food there to be an offense to his culture and his people and he was personally insulted that people believe that it is authentic Ethiopian cuisine, I just know that I'm right in my supposition that this is not indeed the best thing since the California Roll. And at $9.45 for a lunch buffet, the price isn't all that tantalizing either.

One thing I did like about the place was the wall of hand-written compliments, which added kind of a fun vibe to the otherwise freakishly quite and sparsely drab environment. And free Wi-Fi is always nice, no matter where you go. Not to mention the authentic Ethiopian coffee and the Mango smoothies. If you're thirsty, stop in. Otherwise get in line at Russell Street Deli.

Taste of Ethiopia is located at 2453 Russell St. in Detroit, and also at 29702 F Southfield Rd. in Southfield. Hours vary by location; credit cards are accepted and both locations are BYOB. Above photos by Sean Gabriel Photography.

"C" is for Cardboard

I have a weakness for pizza. I know that this information will probably make me the laughing stock of epicureans everywhere, but there it is. My love affair with pizza is almost as bad as my love affair with cheese (and in fact is probably heightened by it).

That being said, my love of pizza is indiscriminate, and I will sample pizza in the seediest bars, the dankest airports, and the most blase buffets.

And so it was that last week I ended up at CiCi's Pizza Buffet in Madison Heights. I had driven by on multiple occasions and was always curious--in fact, was even excited after seeing the commercials on cable television and finding one so very close to home. A buffet?!? Of pizza?!?! Surely this must be the greatest thing since kneeded bread...

Or not.

To be fair, the price is right: $5.29 (tax included) gets you in the all-you-can-eat pizza, pasta, salad, and dessert buffet (with non-water beverage it is more). You most certainly get your money's worth when you go in on an empty stomach...which isn't to say that you'll leave terribly satisfied, but at least you'll be full.

The pizza: cardboard. Carboard slathered in a special-recipe heartburn sauce. Several different flavors of it, too--no meat, one meat, and many meats. Mmm-mmmmmm!!!!!

The cheese bread: soggy. From what? From grease.

The pasta: one kind of generic noodle, two kinds of generic sauces.

The salad: iceberg with vats of your choice of liquified fat to drench it in.

The dessert: the brownies were chewy and chocolately, but the rest was blah and even kind of bleck.

The people at the counter were friendly, and the manager remembered my name and asked me periodically how I was doing. He complimented my coat: bonus points. It's not his fault the food his corporation serves is on par with high school cafeteria food.

And it is, oh but it is. In fact, I actually seem to remember my greasy, cheesy, cardboardy gut bombs from the lunchroom to have been more flavorful that CiCi's...but I was 15 and my palate was not yet fully developed.

Heh, I've come up with their new ad campaign. It's not fully developed yet, but it will play off the idea that "CiCi's Pizza takes you back..." Maybe there will be images of high school kids horsing around in a 1980s cafeteria, then flash forward to someone sitting inside a CiCi's and smiling as they eat the pizza and remember the good ol' days...the irony would be lost on most, but I would find it high-larious.

Palette Dining Studio: It's a Buffet

There is much excitement surrounding Detroit's new high-end restaurants that just opened in the new MGM Hotel & Casino--Wolfgang Puck (who has never really impressed me but still carries a certain amount of cache I am happy to see in Detroit) and Michael Mina both have brand-new ventures inside the casino, and judging from an early preview of the menus these places are going to quickly be ranked in the upper echelon of Detroit dining.

On Friday night, we decided to be adventurous and try out one of these new venues, only to be met with a chorus of "Sorry, we are fully committed for the evening."

Well, that's partially a lie. The Wolfgang Puck restaurant told us they stop serving dinner at 10:30. When we got there, it was 10:20. Sweetheart, I shouldn't need to tell you this because this is common industry practice--if your restaurant closes at 10:30, this means you must seat people until then, and serve them their full meals until they are satisfied. This is understood across the board, and BELIEVE YOU ME when I do finally have the chance to enjoy a meal there a mention of such poor customer service on opening weekend WILL be noted in the review. Walking by, there were plenty of open tables we could have been sat at. In a larger city, such behavior from a hostess on opening weekend would have torpedoed the restaurant's credibility. But this is Detroit, where folks don't know better.

But I digress.

At this point, we're just plain hungry, so we decide to check out the still-open and not "fully committed for the evening" new "dining studio," Palette. Now, Palette was described in all preemptive press as being a "tapas" buffet. Tapas makes me presume that an ecelectic selection of "small plates" will be offered, buffet-style, but not in the classic nature of a buffet.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a buffet, people. A pretty standard, albeit higher quality, meat-seafood-stirfry-salad-and-dessert buffet. There was nothing "tapas" about it. Granted, the offerings far exceed what most buffets have to offer--grilled lamb chops, split crab legs soaked in butter, Oysters Rockefeller, marinated prosciutto, Manchego cheese, chicken parmesan in a stellar parmesan cream sauce, and a dessert station with a chocolate fountain, made-to-order crepes, and an assortment of fresh gelatto along with artfully presented bit-sized pastries all combine to make this buffet something that far exceeds the "Old Country" understanding of the word. Yes, this is a buffet worthy of Vegas (all those stories you hear about the grandeur of the Vegas buffets in the high-end casinos? They're all true.), though not quite so large in scale or diverse in offerings.

But make no mistake--this is a buffet, people. Don't let the promise of tapas make you think you're getting something more than you paid for. And at $26.00 per person, you'd better stay for a few hours and gorge yourself to the point of pain to really get your money's worth.

And they don't even have a bathroom inside. Tsk, tsk.

Palette Dining Studio, inside the new MGM Hotel & Casino
1-888-MGM-DETR