The plates that define Detroit: what they are, and where to eat the canonical version.
The plates that define Detroit. what they are, where they came from, and where to eat the canonical version.
Detroit-style pizza is square, deep-dish and baked in blue-steel rectangular pans first used at Buddy's Rendezvous in 1946. Crispy cheese-edge crust, sauce on top.
Where: Buddy's Pizza, Cloverleaf Pizza, Loui's Pizza, Niki's Pizza, Pie-Sci Pizza
Price: $18-28 for a small square
The Coney dog is a Detroit hot dog topped with chili-style meat sauce, yellow mustard and chopped raw onion, served on a steamed bun. Greek immigrant invention.
Where: Lafayette Coney Island, American Coney Island
Price: $3-5 per coney
Paczki are round Polish doughnuts filled with prune, rose-hip jam or custard and dusted in icing sugar or glazed. Eaten by the thousand on Fat Tuesday in Hamtramck.
Where: New Palace Bakery, Srodek's Campau Quality Sausage
Price: $3-4 each
A Boston cooler is Vernors ginger ale poured over vanilla ice cream and stirred into a thick float, often served in a chilled glass with a long spoon.
Where: American Coney Island, Lafayette Coney Island
Price: $5-7
Bumpy cake is a Detroit chocolate cake with parallel ridges of buttercream piped on top, then covered in a dark chocolate ganache that flows around the bumps.
Price: $7-10 per slice
A Detroit slider is a small thin griddled beef patty with chopped onion and mustard on a soft white slider bun. Cheaper than coney dogs and eaten by the half-dozen.
Where: Telway Hamburgers, Green Dot Stables
Price: $1-3 per slider
Lebanese shawarma in Dearborn is a stacked spit of marinated chicken or lamb shaved into pita with garlic sauce (toum), pickles and a hot pepper if you ask.
Where: Al Ameer, Sahara Restaurant, La Pita Mediterranean
Price: $10-15
Polish pierogi are filled dumplings, half-moons of soft dough wrapped around potato, cabbage, cheese or meat, boiled then optionally pan-fried in butter.
Where: Polish Village Cafe, Srodek's Campau Quality Sausage
Price: $10-14 per plate
Sanders hot fudge cream puff is a choux pastry split, filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with warm Sanders hot fudge sauce. The Michigan birthday dessert.
Price: $8-12
Yemeni lamb mandi is rice cooked with whole spices under a sealed pot of slow-roasted lamb, served on a communal platter with tomato salsa and warm flatbread.
Where: Yemen Cafe
Price: $15-22
Detroit-style pizza is square, deep-dish and baked in blue-steel rectangular pans first used at Buddy's Rendezvous in 1946. Crispy cheese-edge crust, sauce on top.
History: Gus Guerra pressed the first Detroit-style pizza into a forge-blue steel pan at Buddy's Rendezvous on Six Mile and Conant in 1946. The pans were borrowed from local auto-parts factories where they held machine parts during shifts. Guerra later moved his recipe to Cloverleaf in Eastpointe in 1953; Loui's Pizza in Hazel Park (1977) and Niki's in Greektown (1980) followed. By 2020 the style was on national chain menus, but Detroit pans the original square: thick layer of Wisconsin brick cheese pushed to the edges to crisp on the pan walls, with stripes of tomato sauce on top after baking.
Where to try it: Buddy's Pizza, Cloverleaf Pizza, Loui's Pizza, Niki's Pizza, Pie-Sci Pizza
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy
The Coney dog is a Detroit hot dog topped with chili-style meat sauce, yellow mustard and chopped raw onion, served on a steamed bun. Greek immigrant invention.
History: Around 1917, Greek immigrant Gust Keros opened American Coney Island at 114 W Lafayette. His brother William opened Lafayette Coney Island next door in 1924. Both claim the same Coney dog recipe with different chili-style meat-sauce variations. The rivalry has run for over a century and the two storefronts still stand side by side. Detroit Coneys differ from New York hot dogs and Cincinnati chili: the dog is a natural-casing beef and pork from Dearborn-based Koegel or Kowalski, the bun is steamed, the meat sauce is finer than Cincinnati and beanless.
Where to try it: Lafayette Coney Island, American Coney Island
Watch out for: Gluten
Paczki are round Polish doughnuts filled with prune, rose-hip jam or custard and dusted in icing sugar or glazed. Eaten by the thousand on Fat Tuesday in Hamtramck.
History: Paczki arrived in Detroit with Polish immigrants in the 1880s. They are the Polish answer to using up lard, eggs and sugar before Lent, traditionally eaten on Tlusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday) and Fat Tuesday. By the 1950s Hamtramck's Polish bakeries collectively sold over a million on Paczki Day; New Palace Bakery on Joseph Campau, founded 1908, is the last surviving Polish bakery from the original wave. Detroit-area news stations cover the lines wrapping the block on Fat Tuesday each year, and Faygo released a paczki-flavored soda for the 2020 edition.
Where to try it: New Palace Bakery, Srodek's Campau Quality Sausage
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
A Boston cooler is Vernors ginger ale poured over vanilla ice cream and stirred into a thick float, often served in a chilled glass with a long spoon.
History: Dr. James Vernor, Michigan's first licensed pharmacist, began aging his ginger ale base in oak barrels in 1862 before being drafted into the Civil War; he came back to find it deliciously different and opened his Woodward Avenue soda fountain in 1866. The Boston cooler emerged from Detroit soda fountains in the early 1900s and is now the canonical Michigan summer drink; ginger ale and vanilla ice cream, never sarsaparilla. Vernors trademarked the term in 1967.
Where to try it: American Coney Island, Lafayette Coney Island
Watch out for: Dairy
Bumpy cake is a Detroit chocolate cake with parallel ridges of buttercream piped on top, then covered in a dark chocolate ganache that flows around the bumps.
History: Sanders Confectionery on Woodward and Gratiot in downtown Detroit made the first bumpy cake in 1913, when bakery owner Fred Sanders piped buttercream stripes onto a devil's food cake and topped them with ganache. The shape comes from how the ganache flows around the buttercream ridges. Sanders sold at 57 retail stores at peak in the 1950s, and is now part of Morley Candy Makers in Clinton Township. Bumpy cake is the canonical Michigan birthday cake.
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
A Detroit slider is a small thin griddled beef patty with chopped onion and mustard on a soft white slider bun. Cheaper than coney dogs and eaten by the half-dozen.
History: Telway Hamburgers on Michigan Avenue near the West Side has griddled sliders 24 hours a day since 1944. The Hunter House in Birmingham (1952) and the various Telway locations across metro Detroit run the chrome-counter slider canon. Sliders are the cheaper companion to the coney dog on the Detroit budget-food menu; the order is by the half-dozen. Green Dot Stables in Corktown updated the slider format for the 2010s with a $3 rotating menu of 40 builds.
Where to try it: Telway Hamburgers, Green Dot Stables
Watch out for: Gluten
Lebanese shawarma in Dearborn is a stacked spit of marinated chicken or lamb shaved into pita with garlic sauce (toum), pickles and a hot pepper if you ask.
History: Dearborn hosts the largest Arab-American population in the US, founded around the Ford Rouge plant from the 1910s onward. Lebanese immigration after the 1975 civil war and the 1990s Iraq wars built the West Warren Avenue corridor. Al Ameer opened 1989 and won the James Beard America's Classic in 2016, the first Michigan venue to do so. Shawarma here is closer to Beirut than to Brooklyn: thin pita, garlic sauce thick and white, no tahini in the wrap. Sahara on Michigan Avenue dates to 1968, the older sibling on the city's Lebanese strip.
Where to try it: Al Ameer, Sahara Restaurant, La Pita Mediterranean
Watch out for: Gluten
Polish pierogi are filled dumplings, half-moons of soft dough wrapped around potato, cabbage, cheese or meat, boiled then optionally pan-fried in butter.
History: Polish immigrants arrived in Detroit in the 1880s, settling Hamtramck around the Dodge Main auto plant. Polish Village Cafe on Yemans Street has served pierogi since 1975; Srodek's Quality Sausage on Joseph Campau has cured kielbasa and folded pierogi by hand since 1957. Pierogi run by the dozen at Hamtramck Labor Day Festival and at New Palace Bakery. The canonical Detroit pierogi is potato-cheddar; cabbage and meat varieties round the menu.
Where to try it: Polish Village Cafe, Srodek's Campau Quality Sausage
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
Sanders hot fudge cream puff is a choux pastry split, filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with warm Sanders hot fudge sauce. The Michigan birthday dessert.
History: Frederick Sanders Schmidt opened his first Detroit candy store at Woodward and Gratiot on June 17, 1875. By the 1910s Sanders shops were serving hot fudge cream puffs at counter, and by the 1950s the chain ran 57 retail stores across the Great Lakes. Hot fudge is the canonical Sanders product; the recipe survived the chain's bankruptcy and reformation, and is now produced by Morley Candy Makers in Clinton Township. The cream puff is a Michigan birthday-dessert staple.
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
Yemeni lamb mandi is rice cooked with whole spices under a sealed pot of slow-roasted lamb, served on a communal platter with tomato salsa and warm flatbread.
History: Hamtramck's Yemeni population grew through the 2000s as Polish flight made room for new immigrants. Yemen Cafe on Joseph Campau opened the canonical lamb mandi counter in metro Detroit, halal and open 17 hours a day. Mandi is the dish of the Hadhramaut region, traditionally cooked in a tandoor pit; the Detroit version uses sealed pots in commercial ovens. Saltah (cast-iron stew) is the second dish in the standard order.
Where to try it: Yemen Cafe
Detroit's signature dishes include Detroit-style pizza, Coney dog, Paczki, Boston cooler, Bumpy cake. See our signature dishes chapter for where to eat each.