Finalist: Lyndsay C. Green of the Detroit Free Press

There were two outcomes of my job interview with Detroit Free Press editor and vice president Peter Bhatia. The most obvious, my appointment as the paper’s restaurant critic, the second, a running joke.

Sitting across from me at a table at a Starbucks in downtown Detroit, Peter inquired about my thoughts on anonymity in restaurant criticism.

“I’m 4-10, Black and I have platinum blond hair,” I said to my potential future employer with a smirk. Months in quarantine seemed a safe enough time for my first major hair color experiment, but as I eased back into social settings, the hair became tricky to hide.

“It’d be quite difficult to remain anonymous for long.”

It was a risk, bringing up race in an interview — albeit stating the obvious. It was also a risk to challenge the tradition of anonymity at a paper that has prided itself on editorial integrity for more than a century.

Anonymity allows a writer to step into a restaurant without risking an outing where the staff panders to their position of power to make or break the place. (James Beard Award-winning chef and author Joseph “JJ” Johnson once told New York Magazine’s Grub Street that sales increased by 80% when a critic reviewed his former Harlem restaurant The Cecil. And reservations for nearly all restaurants on the Free Press’s 2022 Top 10 Best New Restaurants list were booked for weeks after the winners were announced.)

When restaurant critics conceal their identities, they ensure the sincerity of a dining experience. Not long ago, Sylvia Rector, the late critic who reimagined restaurant criticism at the Free Press, just barely bared her brown eyes through the tines of a silver fork in her column headshot.

Peter, whose raspy voice up until that point had been fairly quiet — serious even — let out a hearty laugh. He agreed with the sentiment and added that the paper had shed its traditional approach to anonymity in recent years. The Free Press was entering a progressive era that welcomes columnists and critics to have a more outward-facing presence. If I were to get the job, I’d still be expected to assume a level of discretion, but aliases and disguises would not be necessary.

The next time we spoke, Peter told me that he’d shared my quip with his wife. As a petite woman, she related to the self-deprecating nudge at my short stature. And during my first staff meeting at the Freep HQ, Peter asked for approval to let the newsroom in on the joke before introducing me as one of the newest members to the team. By then, my platinum blond hair had faded, clinging only to my split ends like the frosted-tips trend of the early 2000s. But the curly afro that hovered over me like a halo ensured my hair would forever be one of my most distinguishing features.

The joke became a welcome ice breaker my first week on the job.

I’ve since learned that what was even more laughable though, was the idea that my most recognizable features would make me memorable at all. Over the next year as the Free Press’s dining and restaurant critic, I’d discover that despite my big hair and tellingly short stature, my brown skin color and oversized round glasses, my penchant for red lipstick and elaborate outfits, I’d find myself entirely incognito in the costume of my own skin.

What may have been a welcome perk for the anonymous critics of yore, has instead hinted at something deeper about how America — and especially its upscale dining spheres — views, or overlooks, Black women.

Now serving, dessert

As the title suggests, my role as dining and restaurant critic is a hybrid — I’m part private eye of restaurants and translator of taste, part reporter on metro Detroit’s dining scene. It’s a split personality of sorts, one in which I am expected to maintain a low profile to ensure the dining experience of a common diner, and another where I am an industry insider, privy to restaurant and food news before it reaches the common diner. When looking to the gold standard of each of my roles, there’s an instinct to be as renowned as food writers who have risen to Food Network acclaim and yet as inconspicuous as the critics whose photos have been scrubbed from the Internet.

It’s a tightrope act to get a restaurateur to offer an exclusive tip or a hard-hat first glimpse of their next restaurant opening, only to slip in months later to review that same restaurant undetected. As an unintentional master of disguise with a superpower of invisibility though, the latter has been easy enough.

As curator of the annual Detroit Free Press Restaurant of the Year and Top 10 Best New Restaurants list, it is my responsibility to name the city’s most accomplished new restaurants. And as host of the paper’s Top 10 Takeover, the dinner series that trails the unveiling of the list, I recite a brief speech that recaps the reasons each restaurant earned its respective spot on the coveted list and present an award to the honored chef at the helm.

In most cases, I’ve likely interacted with the winning chef at least twice at the time of the dinner series — once for background information and again for an official interview. Then there are the mutual follows on social media. We’ve double-tapped photos taken with our spouses and reacted to images shared of our latest meals.

That’s what makes what happens next so mystifying.

It wasn't my ego or the expectation that my face was plastered on a kitchen wall as in the case of critics in big coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles, but rather genuine shock during a recent visit to one of the Top 10 Best New Restaurants when the executive chef brought a plate of dessert to my table without recognizing my face. That evening, without my recorder or an award in hand, I was just another diner. The chef happily ran down the noteworthy ingredients and the garnishes on the creamy frozen treat as I searched his eyes for a glimmer of recognition.

It was dim at the restaurant; He must not have seen my face clearly.

'Who are you with?'

With my short stature and polite instinct to take up as little space as possible, I’ve used my smallness to my advantage. In grade school, the petite, well-mannered, quiet girl could never be capable of wrongdoing. In crowds, it’s easy enough to zig-zag through the gaps between bodies like a marble on a wooden maze board. And as a restaurant critic, even in a post-anonymous era, being unrecognizable is acceptable — in many ways, preferred.

As a human being, feeling invisible is an entirely new insult.

With my short stature and polite instinct to take up as little space as possible, I’ve used my smallness to my advantage. In grade school, the petite, well-mannered, quiet girl could never be capable of wrongdoing. In crowds, it’s easy enough to zig-zag through the gaps between bodies like a marble on a wooden maze board. And as a restaurant critic, even in a post-anonymous era, being unrecognizable is acceptable — in many ways, preferred.

As a human being, feeling invisible is an entirely new insult.

Backstage during New York Fashion Week, I chatted at length with a publicist. We might have even exchanged phone numbers, advancing to a new level of professional familiarity. The next day, I’d arrived at the same tent excited to see my newfound friend. She would surely forgive my running a few minutes behind and quietly escort me backstage.

“Who are you with?” she asked, stone-faced.

She searched the list of VIPs on the clipboard she was clutching for the name and publication associated with the person standing before her. I must not have looked very important.

As hurt as I was, and as small as I felt, I found myself comforting her after clumsily uttering my name. I quickly forgave her for forgetting me.

My hair was different that day. Why should she have recognized me?

My obscurity is indiscriminate. I can slip into ambiguity no matter the race of the person I'm interacting with. There was the swanky press trip to Barcelona, where I bonded with a fellow Black writer over glasses of Spanish red wine. At an event stateside a week later, she brushed past me gingerly, apologizing for stepping on my toes as she looked for her seat a few chairs down the row. No matter how hard I smiled or tried to catch her attention, she never recognized my face.

Was it that much wine? I tried to recall.

The feeling of familiarity has become increasingly foreign. Where most people expect a fondness, a smile of recognition when you see a face you know, I’ve grown to expect something far less welcoming. That awkward dart of a person’s eyes when they’re trying to evade mine, the clear look of someone desperately trying to recall why I’d dare know their name, or that tight-lipped smirk reserved only for strangers when you’re trying to be polite. Then, there’s the eventual blush of embarrassment that comes once I’ve jogged a person’s memory.

There are the countless times co-workers have mistaken me for a new employee if I’ve straightened my hair or slicked it into a bun. Or when I've spoken at length with a food entrepreneur about their pop-up business, only to go entirely unrecognized at an event or when ordering from said pop-up weeks later. Not even the credit card in my name that I hand over sounds alarms. There are the times I’ve had to reintroduce myself to a chef I’ve interviewed on more than one occasion when ordering takeout at their restaurant. I’ve learned to skip the reminder altogether and pass like a ship in the night. It’s less awkward for both of us that way.

Sitting at the bright and airy James Oliver Coffee Co. writing this very story, I’ve had to jog the memory of two diners — one, a man I’d met only recently at a dinner party, another, a woman in the food industry who I’d consider a friend. Both with the same response after what felt like me jumping up and down and waving my hands in the air as if to say, “It’s me! Can’t you see me?” At the dinner party, he’d been kind to me, and she and I had texted just days before. At the coffee shop, as I took bites of vegan chili and sips of frothy red eyes, for a moment, neither of them had a clue who I was. There was also a Best New Restaurant owner who I didn’t bother trying to flag down.

Missus Cellophane should’ve been my name.

Who do you think you are?

I’d held out as long as I could before publishing my first less-than-savory restaurant review.

I considered all that restaurant owners were burdened with as the pandemic ushered them into a new phase of perpetual trauma. Ultimately, I’d decided the pandemic pendulum swings both ways. Just as eateries are facing unchartered challenges, diners, too are making great sacrifices to eat out. The least I could do was share an honest account when a restaurant didn’t live up to its fine dining expectations.

The review was shared and re-shared, picked up and picked apart, but no one hated the piece more than the restaurant’s owner.

She knew enough about me to track down my email, but not enough to shame me effectively. She copied the editor of the paper — it wasn’t the right paper. Even via email, I’d been so unmemorable, she didn’t have the capacity to recall the publication in which she’d read my work.

“Instead of reaching out to us, and maybe getting a little insight into what is really happening in the restaurant business, you just decide to write a very snarky review of our restaurant,” she wrote.

Coincidentally, I had sat down with her.

A few months prior, we sat at an intimate table in her empty restaurant, joined only by her husband and their publicist. We spoke at length for more than an hour over coffee to discuss the many challenges the duo faced as restaurant operators in metro Detroit.

We didn’t sit down to talk for this story, per se. I was at a different outlet at the time. She must have known that I’m the same girl — right?

'Nobody notices old ladies'

In her memoir “Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise,” (Penguin Books, 2005), former New York Times restaurant critic and University of Michigan alum Ruth Reichl quoted a friend saying, “Nobody notices old ladies,” as she attempted to convince Reichl to disguise herself as her late mother for their next restaurant outing. Reichl’s costumes were dual-purposed, mainly to conceal her identity as restaurant critic at the Times, but also to provide insight on how her appearance influenced the way restaurant staffers would treat — or disregard her.

Today, I am the Detroit Free Press’s first Black restaurant critic, and it appears, one of few, if not the only Black restaurant critic at a major newspaper in the country. What does not being noticed say when you’re a Black woman — a majority in the city you report on, but a minority in Detroit’s fine dining spaces? Could it be that my superpower of being invisible when crossing the threshold of a dining space is perhaps more sinister when examined with more scrutiny?

In a 2019 Eater essay, Korsha Wilson illuminated a missing perspective in restaurant criticism: the perspective of the Black diner. At the time of the article, it seemed there had never been a Black restaurant critic at a major publication apart from culinary historian Jessica Harris, who contributed reviews at the Village Voice in the late ’90s into the early 2000s. Nearly four years after Wilson's story was published, little progress has been made.

This brings to mind the more unnerving instances when I have been noticed. Like the time I was asked whether I belonged at a ritzy private dinner held for food writers and other members of the media, or when a woman asked if I was filling in for the restaurant critic who was supposed to give a library talk.

It couldn’t possibly be me who belonged in these spaces.

In some ways, it’s a comical story. The makings of a thrilling sci-fi about how I magically disappear in plain sight when entering a dining establishment, or any public space for that matter. But upon further reflection, perhaps this story is as much a horror as the nonfiction accounts of invisible Black women in everyday life.

Yes, I'm 4-foot-10, Black and my naturally curly hair is larger than life. But anonymity is a choice. My invisibility is inevitable.

Colorful murals of Black women with ebony skin and natural hair flash past my window as I zip down the street for dinner in greater downtown Detroit, the 7.2 square miles garnering many of the city’s new restaurant openings.

I turn down streets named after Black civil rights activists and Motown legends and drive through neighborhoods that pay homage to African American inventors and pioneers. At restaurants I visit often, there’s usually a local face who has become familiar — the brown-skinned man dancing on the grass, the young Black street ministers preaching the word of God.   

Detroit is a Black city, if not for the people who have contributed to the arts and infrastructure of the city, for its very demographic makeup — nearly 80% of Detroit’s population is Black. And yet, it appears, so few restaurant consumers in greater downtown Detroit are Black.

In eateries in metro Detroit, cities like Dearborn and Hamtramck, where large populations of Arab Americans reside, new restaurants are brimming with diners reflective of the surrounding neighborhoods. Apart from the stretch of Black-owned restaurants along Livernois in northwest Detroit, however, there are few new establishments whose dining rooms reflect the majority-Black city at large.

“If you have a restaurant in a predominantly Black city and you don’t have diners of color frequenting your place, there is a problem,” said Omar Anani, chef and owner of Saffron De Twah — one of the Free Press Best New Restaurants of 2020. Minutes from Eastern Market, Saffron De Twah is one of few spaces that draw a diverse crowd in greater downtown, the collection of central neighborhoods including downtown, Midtown, Woodbridge, New Center, Eastern Market, Lafayette Park, Rivertown and Corktown.

Unexpected isolation 

Crossing the threshold into a new restaurant in greater downtown often feels like stepping into an alternate universe so unlike the city that surrounds it, it’s as though I’ve time traveled. With my Black husband as my usual dinner companion, our table for two often sits like a life raft in a sea of white diners.

Lightbulb moments flicker in the room when a person of color becomes aware that they’re the minority in the space. Those moments then become the topic of conversation in our homes, between friends and among strangers looking to forge a common bond — we all have a story of isolation.

I’ve experienced those moments for as long as I can remember — as one of a handful of Black gymnasts in elementary school, as one of two Black cheerleaders in high school, as one of three Black students of more than a hundred in a study abroad program, as the only Black editor at a magazine.

Detroit, however, whose greatest strength might be its rich Black history and landscape of Black men and women, is the last place I anticipated feeling othered.

Chefs and restaurateurs have shared their concerns about the lack of diversity in their spaces with me. Standing in a buzzing fine dining room one evening where I spotted just one Black woman dabbing her mouth with a napkin between courses, even the restaurant's white owner acknowledged the matter of race. Despite being mindful of cultivating a welcoming environment, with his arms folded across his chest, he admitted he’d never imagined his dining room would look like this, nodding to the room filled with white patrons with early reservations, likely aiming to make it back to their suburban homes before dark. (Downtown, this pattern has earned areas like the Capitol Park district the moniker "Birmingham South" for attracting herds of suburb-dwellers chasing a taste of city life on special occasions.)

And then there are the friends and family members who’ve felt so out of their element, they tend to avoid some dining experiences altogether.

Being the only person of color in a restaurant is similar to being over- or underdressed. Except in this instance, there’s no coming better prepared with a more appropriate outfit the next visit. Once you realize your out-of-placeness isn’t temporary, you might concede to the idea that you’ll never fit in. Not this dinner, and maybe not ever.

Serving the community 

It would seem intuitive, if not rudimentary to building a successful business, for restaurateurs to survey the wants and needs of a community before breaking ground on a new venture in an existing neighborhood. Instead, the fundamentals of gentrification have seemingly become more commonplace. If there is a genuine intention to forge a diverse and inclusive dining room, however, this upfront consideration of the inhabitants of a neighborhood could become the cornerstone of progress.  

If restaurateurs are not tapping into the people in the neighborhood to find out what they want in a local eatery, Thor Jones, general manager at New American tasting menu restaurant Freya and founder of Hospitality Included, says there's an issue. 

"If you're a white man or woman opening up a restaurant with flavor profiles that you grew up on in a space where nobody looks like who you grew up around, it's a simple equation."

Jones said there has to be more intention when opening a space, particularly in neighborhoods that haven't gone through the gentrification that downtown has.

Surveying neighborhoods for residents' flavor preferences is a step toward inclusion. Diversifying kitchens where Black and brown cooks lend their palates to influence ingredient choices and menu items also offers an opportunity for true cultural exchange through culinary art.

“It's interesting to weave together the African diaspora and look at how food came to the United States and how it also influenced food across the world,” said Kiki Louya, a chef, food and labor activist and former executive director of the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation.

“There are a lot of similarities with African, Caribbean and cuisines outside of the Americas, but also within the American South, which represents a huge swath of Detroiters across generations whose families migrated from the South. Allowing people to make those cultural connections through food in your establishment — even if it's just a special — is a way to connect.”

Louya cautions against cultural appropriation.

“I’m not asking a restaurateur to create a soul food restaurant — in fact, I’m really saying, please don’t, unless you have the education and a thorough appreciation,” she said. “What I'm asking for people to do is to look at how their spaces currently operate and figure out how to make them more inclusive. We all say food is a connector, so let's use it. It shouldn't just be a connector to the people who you feel are worthy of connecting with.”

Rebecca Irby said much of her work as director of programs and services at New Detroit, a racial justice organization, is based on intervention once a business recognizes its diversity and inclusion blind spots.

“If people of color weren’t in mind when the space was created,” she said, “then we’re in the position that we’re in right now. We’re trying to add things to make it seem more welcoming when its creation and its concept did not include Black and brown people.”

She looks to highly gentrified neighborhoods like downtown Detroit as areas in need of “intense intervention,” and hopes efforts to implement diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives among new businesses will be collaborative.

“Transformation can happen more easily when more people are involved,” she said.

Cultivating inclusion

Louya has seen and experienced the lack of diversity in Detroit dining rooms firsthand as a restaurateur and as a biracial diner.

“People feel comfortable and welcome where they feel represented,” she said, adding that age and sex are factors to consider when thinking about diversity.

One way to begin to create a welcoming environment, Louya said, is to diversify the service staff, the first faces a diner sees when entering a restaurant. “When you come in and you see someone who looks like you in a space, you feel at ease,” she said.  

Irby agreed. “You want your staff to be reflective of the city and the space where you are,” she said.

There are implications to consider when hiring Black and brown service workers, though. If the clientele of a space is overwhelmingly white and front-of-house workers are Black, restaurateurs risk the perception that the only place for people of color  is to be of service to white diners. 

According to The State of the Restaurant Workers 2020 report by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, Black workers are the majority, with more than 76% making up the total restaurant workforce in Detroit. Nationwide, a study by the Multicultural Foodservice & Hospitality Alliance and People Report in 2014 showed African Americans accounted for 16% of hourly restaurant employees, but only 7% of managers.

Industry professionals like Jones are developing opportunities to help close this gap by encouraging Black restaurant workers to pursue long-term career paths in hospitality. The inaugural iteration of Full Hands In, Full Hands Out, a five-day training session that launched this spring, was designed by Jones to create a sustainable pipeline for Black management and ownership.

“Don't get me wrong, walking into an establishment and seeing people that look like you working there definitely has a lot to do with making any demographic comfortable in your space,” Jones said to the restaurateurs making efforts to hire workers of color. "But if that's about as far as you're going, then you’re not doing enough.”

Carving out support 

For a Black diner, there is a level of comfort in a room where Black hosts greet you at the door,  where Black servers are jotting down your order and Black bartenders are shaking your craft cocktail. What, though, is the comfort level for a worker at a restaurant without broader methods for diversity and inclusion?

“When it comes to diversity, it's not just about checking the boxes and hiring more people of color,” Louya said.

She challenges business owners to uphold practices that are supportive of Black and brown workers.

“You can hire them, but then your practices internally are oppressive enough that there are microaggressions left and right and they are disrespected and they are not given support that is indicative of an understanding of where they come from so that they can succeed,” she said.

This oversight risks high turnover rates, or worse, a toxic culture for Black food service workers.

“What else are you doing in order to attract a more diverse workforce and what are you doing to retain them?” Louya asked.

At Freya, the support of ownership has afforded Jones the opportunity to offer input for ways to forge a more diverse and inclusive environment that is reflective of the predominantly Black Milwaukee Junction neighborhood where the restaurant resides.

“The first thing that has to change is restaurateurs believing that their sales can come from the neighborhoods and from Black diners,” he said.

The power, Jones said, is in programming.

“There are a lot of influential Black people who could pack a restaurant three times over on a slower day and would bring a whole different demographic that probably would never know about your restaurant,” Jones said. “That's what I think needs to be happening if we're talking about making a restaurant a place that reflects the community that you're in.”

On a Tuesday night in late April, hip-hop blared inside Dragonfly, Freya's next-door neighborhood bar concept. Shell Shock’d Tacos, the Black-owned Hubbard Richard taqueria, popped up to celebrate Taco Tuesday. Each table is topped with golden griddled tortillas filled with Nashville hot chicken and butter pickles and birria with cilantro and onions. Silky consommé is ladled into small Styrofoam cups for dipping. There are spicy mango Sriracha margaritas and hunks of chopped elote coated in Cotija.

Most notably, though, the space is jam-packed, and young Black diners are the majority.

The gold standard 

On any given night, under a covered patio on Detroit’s east side, Saffron De Twah diners are a kaleidoscopic vision. Black, white and Middle Eastern guests take wide bites of crispy Moroccan chicken sandwiches topped with purple cabbage curls, creamy harissa potatoes and hearty tagine dishes. Hot tea is poured in the relaxed setting.

Before becoming a James Beard Award-nominated, full-service restaurant, the Gratiot Avenue space was where Anani parked the eatery’s food trucks. It’s also where Anani engaged the Gratiot-Grand and neighboring communities well before opening Saffron De Twah’s doors.

“I had the benefit of owning my building for years before opening to the public,” he said. “We hired multiple people from the area. We did studies of the market. We did business in the neighborhood.”

Anani says he went door to door to meet neighbors — “not to solicit them, but to say, ‘Hi, I’m in the neighborhood. Come have a cup of tea.’ ”

The diverse dining room at Saffron De Twah evidences the potential of a community-first approach in greater downtown.

“If you walk into a restaurant and ask a host, ‘Who do you work for?’ they will say the name of the manager or restaurant," Anani said. "If you ask the manager the same question, they say the name of the owner. If you ask the owner, the response is, ‘Myself.’ This is toxic if you truly want to serve the community.”

When Anani poses the same string of questions to himself, he says: “I work for my leaders. My leaders say, ‘I work for the team.’ The team says, ‘I work for the guest.’”

Anani says the culture shift at Saffron De Twah is centered on the diner, not a hierarchy among the staff.

“Notice how the terms we apply — ‘leaders,’ ‘team members’ and ‘guests’ — are different than ‘managers,’ ‘staff’ and ‘customers,' " he said. "They might look the same, but the connotation is very different.”

In his prophetic 2017 article titled “The Whitewashing of Detroit’s Culinary Scene,” the cook, artist, prolific writer and former Detroit resident Tunde Wey said:

"In today’s Downtown Detroit, the majority of new restaurant ownership — along with the bulk of prestigious staff positions at these establishments — is overwhelmingly white. So is their patronage. With a few important and notable exceptions, Downtown Detroit’s contemporary culinary scene, as celebrated by popular media coverage, investment capital, and growing industry recognition, is almost exclusively white-faced in a breathtakingly black city — and adjacent to other similarly white-faced commercial and residential concerns. This inequality is the final destination for most urban revival schemes, a sad union of capitalism and structural racism that’s hard to untangle."

Less than five years ago, Wey gazed into a future not unlike the dining scene of today. A scene that is often lauded as “thriving!” “bustling!” and “up and coming!” yet riddled with segregation cloaked in smiles. What is the measure of success when the majority of people in the city are not present in these spaces? Who benefits from the restaurant boom if not the people who live here? 

These questions linger each time I step outside of a restaurant in greater downtown Detroit, and into a more realistic version of the Detroit that I've come to know. The Black Detroit where I feel I belong. 

What started as The Great Resignation soon became The Great Realization. Then, The Great Reshuffle. The Great Renegotiation. The Great Upgrade. The Great Rethink.

The terms coined to explain the mass exodus of workers who quit their jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic are aplenty, but the sentiments are the same: American workers are retooling their career standards.

And as Michigan restaurant workers, in particular, seek out opportunities for higher wages, flexible scheduling and job security, unexpected industries are luring them away from hospitality.

In search of greener pastures, servers are turning to entrepreneurship, bartenders to engineering and food service veterans are answering the ever-present call to the auto industry.

When reality sets in

There are obvious draws of working in the food service industry, and they come in the form of cotton-linen blends of currency inked in green. On a good night at a bar or restaurant, they’re a front-of-house worker’s greatest reward for attending to needy diners and parched bargoers.

“You have your $500 nights upwards to say, New Year’s Eve when you can be Scrooge McDuck, when you get out of work and jump into a pile of money,” said Nick Silas, a longtime bartender and server. “And that’s weird to say as someone who doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree or a trained skill set to make upward of $70 an hour.”

Silas nearly completed his degree, first in hospitality management and later in elementary education, but eventually, as is the case for many paying for their own education, he ran low on funds. Silas turned to bartending and developed an affinity for the social nature of the job.

“Being able to give the guest the experience they want,” he said, “I got enjoyment out of that.”

But at the start of the pandemic, reality set in. A manager at a popular Brush Park bar, Silas found himself among the 76% of bar and restaurant employees who were laid off. Time away from the bustling bar scene cleared space for introspection.

“I came to this contemplation that I didn't have a skill set when COVID hit. I didn't have something to fall back on that was recession-proof,” he said.

The revelation kicked up a dust of hopelessness in its trail. 

Three months into the layoff, Silas began to pursue a dormant interest in software engineering that his work schedule would otherwise not permit. Now, with time on his hands, he enrolled in a yearlong online coding boot camp through Flatiron School. When his employers called him back to the restaurant, he resigned and dedicated himself to the course full-time.

Since earning his certificate, Silas has returned to the food service industry, but only to earn a living while he applies for jobs in web development.

“Working in food service is brutal, mentally and physically,” Silas said. “It's fun, but it can be stressful. You’ll notice you don't see too many bartenders over the age of 45 — you do have a shelf life in the industry.”

'The world as we know it is different'

In February alone, 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s nearly 1 million more than the number who left their jobs in February 2021. And the bureau's most recent state-level numbers show 143,000 Michiganders resigned their positions in January, landing the state among the top 10 in quit levels across the country.

Terms like “realization” and “rethink” encapsulate the mindsets that are driving the workforce exodus. Employees are reevaluating the role that work plays in their lives and making adjustments accordingly.

“The Great Upgrade is probably the most appropriate term,” said Michigan Works! Association CEO Ryan Hundt. “When we talk about The Great Resignation, the perception is that it’s largely white-collar workers that are leaving their jobs to either seek other opportunities or exit the labor force as a whole. But as wages are increasing in almost all sectors of the economy, we're seeing lower-wage workers seeking out opportunities where they can receive better pay, better benefits, better work-life balance.”

Where then, amid a collective philosophical reckoning, do food service workers turn for better opportunity?

The perils of the hospitality industry are well-documented, particularly for bar and restaurant workers. Low wages and high demands; toxic kitchen cultures and pay disparities; inflexible scheduling and a lack of health care for hourly workers are just a few of the historic impediments to their quality of life. The global health crisis that started in 2020 held a magnifying glass to these issues, and added more challenges for good measure.

At the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, three of every four restaurant workers were unemployed while others, considered essential workers, were tasked with serving takeout meals to maskless customers even as case numbers climbed.

Dine-in service eventually returned, but the damage was done. During the surge of the omicron variant in January, a COVID-19 Restaurant Impact Survey by the National Restaurant Association showed that 86% of eateries saw diminished demand for indoor dining. The decline in customer traffic, in turn, left front-of-house workers with lower tip wages, and today, a universal staff shortage is burdening shrinking teams with greater responsibilities. 

“The world as we know it is different, and it’s going to remain different behind the global pandemic,” said Chris White, director of ROC United Michigan, a nonprofit relief organization for restaurant workers. “It’s made us all look at job protection safety and whether your wages are worth what you have to endure in the industry.”

If the number of restaurant workers fleeing the hospitality industry is any indication, the wages are not worth the workload. According to Hundt, the restaurant industry was impacted more significantly than any other industry — not just in Michigan, but nationwide. And accommodation and food service workers are quitting at a higher rate than staffers in any other industry.

Bars and restaurants have been slow to adopt the tenets that draw and retain employees — namely, fair wages, benefit packages and scheduling that accommodates the traditional needs of working parents. As position vacancies skyrocket in various industries, folks are loosening the tether to an industry that no longer serves them, or worse, one that never did.

“When there are 11 million open jobs across the country," said Mark Gaffney, a mayoral appointee to the Detroit Workforce Board, "you know that your chances of finding a better job is not unreasonable.”

So as their peers in other industries are resigning to seek better opportunities in similar roles at new companies, many food industry workers are abandoning the hospitality industry altogether, seeking healthier, happier, more sustainable opportunities in entirely new fields. Thus, perhaps, defining a new term in the pandemic lexicon: The Great Restart. 

Restarting and retooling

Gaffney conducted a study on the forces driving resignations in metro Detroit and found that nearly 40% of individuals opted against returning to work for COVID-19- or family-related reasons. Many among them were women.

“You've seen this enormous uptick in the number of women who are participating in The Great Resignation because in America, child care still falls more often on the female spouse,” he said.

Gaffney also found that one of the most common frustrations with the food service industry among its workers is inflexible scheduling.

“I began to see, as we were looking at the statistics for the last two years, that it was not only about pay," Gaffney said. "A high reason that people go through this stuff is because of the scheduling.”

Shana Sharrar-Smith, of South Lyon, falls into both categories.

Recently divorced — Sharrar-Smith found herself among the bartenders and waitstaff who top the list of occupations with the highest divorce rates — she sought a job opportunity that would offer stability for herself and her two young children.

“I needed something with consistency now that I was on my own with my kids,” she said.

Offered the opportunity to take on a management role at the jazz club where she worked just before COVID-19 struck, she mulled over whether the pay increase would be worth the long hours.

“I needed a job that would bring more to the table, but when you're a manager, you're there from open to close every night for so many nights a week,” she said. “I wanted to have time where I could make dinner once in a while for my kids or put them to bed.”

Ultimately, her children were the priority.

Sharrar-Smith embarked on a road much traveled by metro Detroit natives. She landed a role with Ford Motor Co., building Broncos and Rangers at Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne.

“It’s a completely different career than I was used to, but it’s a job that brings consistency and insurance and money to the table,” she said.

Coming from a long line of auto industry workers — “my Grandma used to put the fabric on vehicle seats; my uncles worked, and still work, for Ford; I’ve got cousins that worked for Chrysler” — Sharrar-Smith considered herself among the auto-kid rebellion, the descendants of line workers who vowed to never end up at the plant.

“I never thought I'd end up liking the auto industry as much as I do,” she said. “But I moved out and got a promotion, and now I work nights and 12-hour shifts and get overtime. I love my job."

'That gut feeling'

For more than 15 years, Tony Ruacho bounced between dive bars, jazz clubs and tourist bars — not to mention side gigs bartending and serving at weddings and various special events. Ruacho might have considered staying within the bar and restaurant industry had his employer provided health care. Instead, the only employer he could depend on to have his best interest at heart was himself. 

“If I would’ve been given some sort of benefits working at a place long enough that you get the kicker out of it at the end of your life, I might have considered staying,” he said. “But no — you’re a dispensable employee.”

The pandemic had a way of revealing this lack of investment in restaurant workers’ well-being for Ruacho. This, coupled with a general disillusionment toward the nature of the business — Ruacho grew to miss the days when clouds of cigarette smoke billowed throughout the bar and soon, politically incorrect jokes began to lose their charm — Ruacho had outgrown the job.

“It was a changing style of what the bar used to be back in the day when it was cool to be a bartender,” he said.

When he was laid off by all three of his employers, he was uncharacteristically relieved.

“At a certain point, I felt better knowing that I could get away without feeling guilty about having to quit my job,” he said. “I finally realized that I could work for myself.”

Ruacho invested in himself in a way his former employers hadn’t. He embarked on an entirely new entrepreneurial career in an entirely new city: Marcellus, Michigan, a quaint village south of Kalamazoo.

Ruacho and his wife, Sarah Ayers, purchased an old hardware store in Marcellus, the small west Michigan town where Ayers grew up, and converted it into an art gallery. Today, Patch and Remington is clad in works by local artists and soon, the duo will expand the industrial space into a job-force training center that provides the town's blue-collar workers with technological resources.

“As you get older, when you have that gut feeling, you go with it,” Ruacho said. The minute the door of this space opened, I knew I was out of the bar biz.”

Tapping into passions  

If Lacey Jones were to have told her parents that she was planning to pursue a career in hairstyling prior to 2020, she might not have been met with the same warm support she received when she enrolled into cosmetology school last April.

“A lot of things shifted during the pandemic,” she said.

Jones, who’d become a restaurant manager before the age of 21, counters the trope that restaurant workers don’t want to return to work. In fact, not having the option to work while laid off from her job at a Detroit restaurant inspired Jones to tap into her passions and skill sets.

“Having a skill of your own is so important,” she said. “No one can take that away from you.”

Jones reflected on her childhood ambitions and sought a role that would drive her even on her most tiresome days. “It made me think about what I could do that would make me happy and that I could make money doing at the same time. For me, it was hair.”

As a child, Jones would style her mother’s hair and continued experimenting on her own into adulthood. She studied curl patterns and learned techniques for styling natural textures. Once she pinpointed her passion, she enrolled in a cosmetology school in Royal Oak and started on the path to a new career in hairstyling.

“As a server, you can make as much money as you can with your regulars, but if the restaurant closes, you can't take those people into the next space,” she said. “Being in the salon, I can build my clientele and if the salon closes, my skills are still valued because it's my service that I’m providing."

Soon after she started school, Jones learned she was pregnant and would welcome a daughter before completing the program.

“Having a daughter, I wanted her to see that it's possible to follow your dreams,” she said. “When she’s older, I want to be able to tell her, ‘This is what I did and look at me now.’ ”

Jones is on track to complete her program in August and has already landed a role as a stylist at Hudson Styling Co., a new Corktown hair salon. 

As she contemplates a long-term vision for her career in hairstyling. Jones weighs the advantages of ownership. “I realized that nothing was going to be promising unless it was something that I could own,” she said. "It's such a powerful thing to own a business in every community, but for the Black community, it's even more of a reward to have a stamp on the city. To be able to turn the key and look at all the work that you put in that got you here — I'm not there yet, but that would be the best reward.”

Reimagining hospitality

While American economists continue to hone the linguistics of the flight of the labor force, the Australian company The CEO Institute refers to a term of the era for the employer. In a December article, The CEO Institute speaker Marie-Claire Ross wrote:

“Perceiving this time as The Great Reimagination provides you and your leadership team with a powerful lens to reengineer a workplace that is fairer, more compassionate, energetic and creative. A place where employees love their job and are healthy and productive. A workplace designed for the twenty-first century not the twentieth. And it starts with asking yourself the questions: What do we need to do to optimise our culture, so that people want to stay because they are thriving?”

Diverting attention to the systemic issues that plague the bar and restaurant industry lends an opportunity to devise strategies for correction.

“If hospitality and restaurant industries are serious about retaining talent within their companies, they're going to have to continue to offer resources, whether it's benefits, mental health resources, better work-life balance, taking a look at their wage structures or scheduling time off,” said Hundt of Michigan Works! “The competitiveness for talent is only just beginning and if any industry were serious about remaining competitive going forward, they'll have to keep on pursuing those strategies going forward.”

According to White, it’s up to organizations like ROC United Michigan to push businesses in the right direction through initiatives such as the Restaurant Workers Bill of Rights, a policy framework designed to address the challenges among food service workers.

“One in five jobs, according to the Department of Labor, comes from the restaurant industry and it’s going to be a growing industry,” White said. “We’re in a position now where we can do this right and make it where the industry grows through pragmatic and ethical approaches to doing business.”

Thoughtful systematic adjustments, White said, could lead to worker and customer retention, customer satisfaction and customer growth — results, which are perhaps far more valuable than a dictionary of terms to define the moment.

I fell in love with Detroit exactly 10 years ago.

During my first visit in 2012, I was charmed. At every turn, someone, in some way, embodied the kindness, the tenacity, the talent and the pride that folks in this city are known for. As I’ve eaten my way through metro Detroit’s dining scene over the past year, it’s apparent that even in the darkest hours, the food industry embodies the very essence of the Detroit that I came to love.

Hospitality is a selfless industry by design. Food service workers build their livelihood around the ability to comfort us with compelling meals. I’ve seen chefs watch timidly from an open kitchen as I bury my fork into an unexpecting dessert, just to see my reaction to the molten surprise waiting inside. I like to think that sometimes, a smile is their greatest reward for a meal well prepared.

No. 10: Detroit restaurant's isolated, canal-side dining experience is majestic

No. 9: Sit at the bar for best view at magnetic Detroit restaurant

No. 8: The most aptly named restaurant in Detroit

No. 7: This restaurant may have the best Caesar salad in Detroit

No. 6: Barn-turned-restaurant takes farm-to-table concept to new heights

Last year was a testament to the giving nature of local food entrepreneurs. Even when their restaurants were closed, teams of chefs continued to serve Detroiters in need by feeding those on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here at the Free Press, we call them Food Fighters.

In 2021, amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, restaurateurs rolled up their sleeves to open new restaurants with ambitious concepts. And they did it from a place of love.

The message that has reverberated throughout the food and beverage industry since March 2020 is clear: The food system is broken. With the needs of the industry top of mind, metro Detroit restaurateurs in 2021, by and large, are sifting through the rubble and responding with business models that aim to forge a healthier, more sustainable future.

Beyond plating outstanding meals and excellent service — that’s just the baseline for this crop of entrepreneurs — restaurateurs who have opened eateries over the past year are community-minded, innovating new ways to feed the needs of the neighborhood, or in some instances, the world at large. They are offering fair and living wages to their staffs. They have implemented more diverse, equitable and inclusive hiring practices. They’re eliminating food waste and building sustainability efforts into their business models. They’re finding new ways to support and engage the communities around them.

This is the Detroit Way. It’s the Detroit that I fell in love with all those years ago, and it’s the Detroit I welcome you to celebrate with me as we recognize the 2022 10 Best New Restaurants and Restaurant of the Year.

All restaurants on this list in some way are building businesses with humanitarian or environmental efforts. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, just a week away, these restaurants are building businesses with heart.

Dear readers, I challenge you to follow their lead.

In an era still fraught with tension and precaution when it comes to dining out, there are existential questions looming. Is it safe to eat indoors? Is it your responsibility to eat out or order takeout knowing your favorite restaurants might be struggling? Should you become a plant-based evangelist in an effort to save the planet? Our relationship with dining out has become complicated at best. But if you’re eating a meal at any one of these restaurants, in some way, you’re eating for good.

Enter the Free Press Dine with Your Valentine contest for a chance to feel the love and share a meal with your loved one at one of this year’s Best New Restaurants.

What’s to Come

February 7-8

Monday, the countdown of the 10 Best New Restaurants begins. We will introduce five standout restaurants that opened in 2021, followed by the top five Tuesday. These establishments are recognized for serving exceptional dishes and stellar service, all within a meticulously designed setting. They’ve also gone beyond the call by building noteworthy humanitarian and environmental efforts into their day-to-day practices. Keep an eye out for recipes for popular menu items from our top-three restaurants and our Restaurant of the Year.

February 10

Thursday, the 2022 Restaurant of the Year Classic will honor a restaurant that has cemented itself into the fabric of Detroit’s dining scene. This establishment has been under continuous ownership for at least 10 years, and its owner will be recognized with the Sylvia Rector Lifetime Achievement Award for Hospitality. This distinction is in memory of the late Free Press restaurant critic who launched the Restaurant of the Year program in 2000.

February 11

Friday, we will announce the winner of the 2022 Restaurant of the Year, a restaurant that equally excels in both epicurean and environmental efforts.

Note: To be considered for a spot on the 10 Best New Restaurants List, southeast Michigan  restaurants must have opened between Jan. 1, 2021- Dec. 5, 2021. All restaurants, regardless of opening date, are considered for Restaurant of the Year. Chains, new locations and re-openings of existing restaurants do not qualify for either distinction. All meals are paid for by the Detroit Free Press.

The irony of my experiences at La Cuscatleca Inc. is not lost on me. Here I am setting out to try a cuisine that is otherwise foreign to a vast majority of Detroiters, and yet the instant I cross the threshold into the Salvadoran grocery store and restaurant, I myself become the foreign object.

As I side-shuffle through a crowd of regulars lined up to cash out at the register at the front of La Cuscatleca’s small market, blank stares pierce into me as though I must be lost. For a millisecond, even I question whether I’ve intruded upon a private event.

I duck under the archway of the wall lined with bags of pork rinds and plantain chips that separates the grocery store from the quaint restaurant, and grab a seat at one of a handful of tables. The space is less crowded and the few faces in the room seem pleasantly surprised by my presence.  

There’s a different energy in the casual dining room at La Cuscatleca. Here, diners seemingly perk up, even if only slightly, as though a guest has arrived. They offer kind smiles and welcoming gestures that signal a glimmer of pride that I’ve come to experience a taste of their culture. A worker seated in the dining room drops his fork and sticks his neck into the nearby kitchen to let a server know that a customer has arrived.

A humble abode

La Cuscatleca is disguised as a restaurant, but really, it’s a homelike gathering place for Detroit’s Central American, namely Salvadoran, community. The room is minimal, accented with a few houseplants and an expansive banner that says “El Salvador.” A large, flat-screen TV is mounted in a back corner, hovering above a booth and playing a Spanish-language news broadcast. At times, you may have to remind yourself that La Cuscatleca is in fact a restaurant — your server may need some reminding, too.

She might come to your table to take your order — your response might be to request a menu. You’ll be expected to help yourself to the rotating fountain juices at the restaurant entrance. There may be a tangy-sweet drink that she’ll call orange juice but tastes more like passionfruit, or cebada, a spiced barley drink that resembles Nesquik Strawberry Milk. You can also grab a Kolashampan — a fizzy Salvadoran cola that is orange in color without even a hint of citrus flavor — a tropical fruit juice or a coconut milk-based smoothie from one of the refrigerators that line a wall of the dining room. At the end of your meal, you may need to peer into the back kitchen to request the ticket you’ll use to pay your bill at the register on your way out.

Much of the experience at La Cuscatleca is based on trust. To an extent, the menu is a formality. Descriptions of traditional Salvadoran dishes are somewhat vague and your server might not be able to elaborate. She might struggle to describe atol de elote, beyond it being a corn beverage, and all she may say about loroco, a popular pupusa filling, is that it’s a Salvadoran plant. There’s a chance she’ll try her best to find the English words for ingredients, and there’s a chance she won’t speak English at all.

But like dinner at an old friend's house, La Cuscatleca delivers one of the best home-cooked meals in town.

On the menu

Pupusas are savory rice flour griddle cakes and a landmark of Salvadoran cuisine. At La Cuscatleca, they're made by hand and stuffed with the filling of your choice. There are cheese and meat fillings, such as lean chicken and pork skin, and even zucchini for a vegetable option. There are also Salvadoran specialties, such as bitter leafy greens like mora and chipilín, which grow throughout Central America, and loroco, that Salvadoran plant the server attempted to describe. Loroco blossoms are small green flower buds that look like the heads of garlic scapes or asparagus tips. Chopped and incorporated into a pupusa, their flavor is reminiscent of a broccoli stalk, bitter with a hint of sweetness.

The best part of the pupusa is where white cheese has oozed out onto the griddle forming a golden brown lace on the surface of the patty like a charred doily. Inside, the cheese is stretchy and perfectly intertwined with its meat or veggie filling. Consistent with tradition, pupusas at La Cuscatleca are served with a side of curtido, which you’ll confuse for coleslaw, and a sippy cup filled with a salsa you may mistake for hot sauce. Unlike sweet, creamy coleslaw, curtido is a spicy salad of shredded lettuce, carrots, onions and peppers in a vinegar dressing. The cannister of salsa is a mild tomato-garlic sauce with no heat at all. (At the register during one visit, the cashier makes sure to remind me that La Cuscatleca is a Salvadoran restaurant — not Mexican, she says. “No spice here.”)

The plantains are perfect. They’re piping hot, without absorbing the grease from the fryer in the way that ripened plantains do. They’re firm, crispy on the outside and smooth — not slimy — on the inside. They’re sweet without being overly sweet, and dark in color, without tasting unpleasantly charred. They’re also served with a cool heap of crema and a porridge of refried beans.

Carne guisada, or beef stew, is hearty and tender from its long, slow bath in a rich, tomato-based broth. I opt for side salad in place of rice. The salad is humble — shredded iceberg is topped with large tomato rounds, cucumbers and sliced radishes, and it’s without dressing, but rather a lemon wedge. The real highlight though, is the large hunk of queso fresco that sits beside it. The block of salty, creamy, crumbly cheese, similar to feta in texture but milder in flavor, makes up for the lack of dressing. The dish is also served with two hot, handmade tortillas that are fluffy and doughy and dense all at once. I've dunked tears of it into the stew, wrapped it around chunks of the cheese and doused it with the tomato salsa until I run out.

A plate of crunchy-chewy chicharrones is crowded with fried yucca and curtido. The small bites of fried pork are tough in the way that gives your jaw a workout, as they should, and their counterparts are the McDonald’s fries of yucca fries. La Cuscatleca masters the yucca fry, which can be dry or uninteresting in flavor if not served properly. Here, thick cuts are creamy and delicately sweet on the inside, indicating the just-ripe-enough nature of the yucca. Thinner fries are salty and crispy with an airiness that offers the perfect crunch.

The sweet spot

There might be dessert at La Cuscatleca, but a cup of atol de elote is my treat of choice. I order the sweet, creamy corn drink at the start of my meal and by my last bite, it’s finally cooled down just enough to sip. It’s incredibly dense, like bisque in a cup or a hot milkshake, and on a full stomach, it only takes a few mouthfuls to satisfy my sweet tooth.

There is also an assortment of snacks in the grocery market on the other side of the dividing wall. There are chocobananas, fresh bananas cut in half, dipped in chocolate, coated in peanuts or colorful sprinkles and tossed into a deep-freezer beside Häagen-Dazs ice cream pops and frozen fruits. Salvadoran pastries, such as semitas or sweet breads wrapped in cling wrap sit at the counter and rows of packaged cookies lined up next to Goya seasonings sit on shelves throughout the market.

For the culture 

The significance of La Cuscatleca for the Central American community is evident. I’ve watched a mother tuck her two young children dressed in school uniforms into a booth during the lunch shift. They worked on their homework as I scarfed down soft, gritty tamales wrapped in boiled banana leaves and stuffed with shredded chicken. At almost 9 p.m., I’ve seen families spanning four generations stroll in for what seems like a normal weekday dinner. I’ve lined up behind individuals holding Central American candies and medication and bundles of plantains and eggs. Folks stop in to order hot cups of atol, which I envision is a nightcap — or fuel for a late night shift.

This place is home for so many. It’s where Detroit’s Central American community comes for a hot meal, for community, for cultural kitchen staples that aren’t readily available in traditional grocery stores and for household necessities. It’s where they can use wire service telephones to send funds to family members back home in Latin America.

There’s a reason it can feel like I’m an intruder at La Cuscatleca. In a sense, I am. Though the doors are open to all, it’s no accident that a place like this has remained under the radar for more than 15 years. Small, family-run spaces like these are sacred. They’re designed to serve the needs of a distinct community.

I recognize that they’ve welcomed me into their home, but ultimately, La Cuscatleca has carved a bit of El Salvador into this sliver of Detroit thousands of miles away from their home base. I’m just a guest. 

Cuisine: Salvadoran

Price Point: Entrees under $20

Location: 6343 Michigan Ave., Detroit. 313-894-4373

On the second day of Ramadan, a young man wearing thick-frame glasses sets up his laptop at a small table in the light-filled Haraz Coffee House in east Dearborn. Once he’s situated, he approaches the register.

“I’m fasting, but I don’t want to sit here without buying anything,” he tells the shop worker behind the counter, combing his fingers through his voluminous brown hair. “I’ll pay now and pick it up later.”

His shoulder brushes the pastry case lined with milk-soaked cakes infused with rose and pastries filled with cheese and scribbled with sticky honey and black sesame seeds.

At a window table nearby, I watch in admiration of the man’s restraint as I slide a cardamom-spiced latte out of the way to toggle between bites of a warm date muffin in a puddle of silky honey butter and a plate of velvety tiramisu.

I notice that I am one of the few diners feasting on the fresh baked goods for which Haraz is known. As others tap away at their keyboards and sketch thoughts into their notebooks, it’s apparent that Haraz has become less a coffee shop and more a meeting ground for the Muslim community partaking in the Ramadan fast.

After dark though, Haraz joins the Middle Eastern eateries that become like flickers of light attracting droves of metro Detroiters with empty bellies and their appetites fixed on late-night eats.  

During Ramadan, which this year spans the month of April, Muslims who observe the holiday abstain from food and drink between sunrise and sunset. In the wee hours before sunrise, Suhoor is served, a meal intended to sustain those fasting throughout the day.

Prohibited from drinking even a glass of water or herbal teas during the fast, many will incorporate ingredients such as chia seed and coconut water into the Suhoor, intended to help hydrate and retain water. After sunset, iftar is served, the meal that breaks the daytime fast.

In Dearborn, and at many Muslim-run eateries in Hamtramck, Detroit and throughout southeast Michigan, extended business hours encourage fasters to continue breaking bread well into the night. Beginning at 10 p.m. at Haraz, a crowd forms as members of the Arab Student Union drop whole bananas into a hot skillet and serve up boats of crisp, fried bananas rolled in cinnamon-sugar and topped with ice cream, airy whipped cream and fresh fruit or handfuls of nostalgic cereal flavors for a crunch.

Nights at Haraz, much like midnight dinners at Hamtramck’s Yemen Café or iftar takeout meals from Saffron De Twah, offer a glimpse of the after-dark energy within metro Detroit’s Middle Eastern communities during Ramadan. A food crawl of such late-night haunts is like an appetizer, but the main course is the Ramadan Suhoor Festival.

The weekly attraction transforms the old Sears parking lot at Fairlane Town Center into a bazaar of more than 50 food and beverage vendors, booksellers and clothing merchants.

As I approach the mall parking lot, just minutes from Haraz, Arabic music blares and hungry people hand over dollar donations as they file into the open-air market by the thousands. Women in hijab are seated on carpeted ground at the entryway under twinkling strings of light with ornate trays of tea and sweet treats at their feet. They look up at the passersby marveling at the magnificence of the scene. Food trucks are parked along the perimeter of the space next to food stalls and merchants walk customers through their offerings from underneath the white canopies that anchor the festival.

To no one’s fault but the Michigan weather, the antagonist of many an outdoor event in early spring, the inaugural night of the Ramadan Suhoor Festival is equally magical and miserable. At 30 degrees, scattering rain prickles my cheeks and drenches my coat. Puffs of vapor billow through the air, some from the steam rising off hot grills, others from laughing guests as their breath hits the cold wind. 

The excitement of the event trumps all discomfort. Around me, a diverse crowd files into long lines that wind around wooden picnic tables drenched in rainwater to order dishes from their favorite vendors. My tactic is to follow the crowds. As the line inches forward at Corn on the Corner, a popular Dearborn food truck best known for its shaved corn, I stand on tiptoe and crane my neck for a glimpse of the menu. The festival menu is an abbreviated version of the truck’s usual offerings of hot, cheesy sandwiches, boneless wings and crisp fries. Here, Corn on the Corner sticks to its signature: corn with a range of toppings from cheese to Hot Cheetos. A mouthful of the 7th Heaven, shaved sweet corn topped with tangy lemon pepper and a scrawl of Sriracha, sets my palate ablaze. Wishing I’d ordered a bottle of water, I inhale deeply with my mouth agape, hoping huffs of cold air will chill my taste buds.

The tenets of the Ramadan Suhoor Festival are evident: Unity, community and charity. The $1 entry fee will be donated to local nonprofits. Unity and community manifest in the lines that demand hourslong wait times. At Tornado Potato, the festival’s most popular stall, guests of all ages, ethnicities and religions unite in pursuit of crispy twisted potatoes coiled around wooden skewers like edible corkscrews. Once we’ve gotten our hands on the helixes dusted in Cajun seasoning, barbecue sauce or ranch dressing, sounds of delight echo in English, Arabic and a hybrid of the two.

At Halal Tacos, I bond with a Toronto couple. We pack together tightly to form a human shield against hasty festivalgoers breaking the line to reach their next food stall. I cheer another new friend with hot birria tacos with their ruffled, griddled tortillas stuffed with fresh cilantro and spicy raw onions. At Blazin’ Burgerz, a mother dances with her toddler to keep warm and a quartet of college-age kids squeeze their faces into the frame of an iPhone for a TikTok video.

Desserts at the festival are plentiful. Knafeh, the vibrant Middle Eastern pastry soaked with perfumey rose water and sweet sugar syrup and filled with melted cheese that stretches as far as arm’s length, are available at AbuKnafa, a family-owned business that has been crafting the dessert for three generations.

There is Castle Creamery, where colorful waffle cones are molded into chewy taco shells and filled with dense scoops of vanilla ice cream and an array of toppings. And at Dough Dreamz, mini marshmallows and flecks of dark chocolate chips peek through mounds of sugar cookie dough. By far though, King Kone Ice Cream’s debut of its Jallab flavor is the festival’s biggest hit. The Garden City ice cream shop’s specialty waffle nachos layer medallions of waffle cone like chips; three large scoops of date syrup-flavored ice cream; fluffy whipped cream; a dusting of crushed pistachios, golden raisins and pine nuts; and a maraschino cherry topper.

The Ramadan Suhoor Festival is no gluttonous food festival. It’s a religious celebration in observance of the holy month of Ramadan. Though all are welcome, midnight prayers, Arabic song performances and Quran recitations anchor the event as reminders of the occasion’s true meaning: that in the Islamic faith, unity, community and charity can be honored through food.

Take-home tips

I consider myself a martyr for all who intend to attend the Ramadan Suhoor Festival. I’ve done everything wrong so that some festivalgoer can navigate the event with ease. Here are my tips for getting the visit right:

Go early

The festival draws great crowds — the first weekend alone brought nearly 55,000 visitors to Fairlane Town Center. Arrive as close to the start time as possible before lines start to pile up.

Start small

Vendors, such as Tornado Potato and Corn on the Corner, will begin to attract customers quickly. If you find that there are already long lines at the vendors you're interested in, grab small snacks at merchants with little to no wait time, then nosh on your appetizers as you wait in line for the more popular bites. If the weather is cool, grab a cup of hot tea or espresso from Qamaria Yemeni Coffee Co. — it'll keep you caffeinated into the night and dual as a hand warmer as you wait for your food.

Bring friends

It's important to divide and conquer if you want to sample multiple dishes. Bring a friend or two — or more — to ensure you try as many vendors as possible.

Ramadan Suhoor Festival

Dates: Thursday, April 14 and Fridays and Saturdays through April 30 

Time: 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Location: Sears parking lot at Fairlane Town Center, 18900 Michigan Ave., Dearborn