![]() ![]() If I didn't include something, it is for no particular reason other than it didn't pop into my head. Here is a not-all-all-comprehensive but still meatier than most list of new places that opened in 2013 smattered all throughout greater metro Detroit. Next year Detroit City Distillery, Dave Mancini's Supino extension, and the restaurant currently known as Frontera all open, which will just further underscore this point. Midtown is great, the DIA is pretty, it is completely feasible to walk from, say, Rodin to the Bronx in the middle of the night in the middle of winter (/sarcasm), Corktown is nice with its 12 bars along a mile-long stretch of Michigan Avenue and all the barren lots in between, yepyepyep all great. High profile/much-buzzed-about restaurants, local artisan shops, local food vendors, scores of hand-made and ethnic items from soaps to spices, art galleries and artists studios (dozens! or at least a single dozen which is still a lot!), makerspaces, old-timey letterpress studios (TWO of them!), easy access to the Dequindre Cut greenway which will be further expanding and connecting to other city greenways, and and and SHED 5!!!! and so much more. I keep nutting over this because here's the thing you may or may not realize: for all the buzz that Midtown and Corktown get, Eastern Market is the one district in Detroit that has the potential to be Detroit's definitive tourism draw, a singularly unique experience that travelers cannot easily replicate elsewhere, a place that is entirely walkable with a host of options for dining, drinking, shopping, exploring. #3 Eastern Market is just fucking awesome. Among its many features will be a pimp-ass community commercial kitchen, a 200-seat patio, an 18-hole golf course*, I can't even keep track of it all. ![]() ![]() Suffice it to say, by the time it's done it is going to be A.MAHZ.ING. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a 5-star luxury all-inclusive resort now? Or something? So the Shed 5 renovation has been in the works for some years and there has been a steady stream of foundation money flowing in to fund this or that part of it. #2 Eastern Market got one bajillion dollars for its much-touted Shed 5 renovation. This of course didn't stop people from whining about it and whining about how people were praising it and whining about people who were whining about praising it because that's just what you people do, but the fact that a grocery store opening incited so much "dialogue" and took over the Internet for interminable weeks (…months, YEARS) is all the proof I need that this was hands-down the biggest story of the year. And this validated the "Detroit Renaissance" narrative in so many ways. While some people will debate what the best new restaurants were, to me the interesting question to ask is, what were the biggest things that happened in food this year? Here's my answer.įucking deal with it. Some things got everyone talking, though what they said often came across as hive mind shoutiness. New places opened and old places closed, while others still rebranded. In the end though, trends that have been developing for years now continued to grow and evolve. There was more news with more people covering it, making it even more difficult to keep track of everything as it all started to sound like so much white noise. This was quite the year as far as years go, amiright? While last year's "BEST YEAR EVER" recap was relatively easy to put together - everything that happened rather thoughtfully happened in easily-identifiable themes - this year was kind of schizoid. ![]()
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