DETROIT — This city is Beirut with worse weather. However, it has better food than some major American cities I’ve visited for one reason.
Greektown.
Until this month’s Final Four, Detroit was one of three professional sports cities I had never visited. Baltimore and Buffalo are the others, and I felt safe knowing I could get hit by a Buick tomorrow and die with few regrets. Fortunately, Buicks aren’t sold much anymore, one reason why a third of Detroit seems empty or closed.
For years, my sportswriter colleagues told me that there are three things to do in Detroit: Go to the casinos, go to Greektown, or get out of Detroit. Windsor, Ontario, across the bridge, is lousy with strip joints. Because I lived in Las Vegas for 10 years, gambling and strippers are interesting for about 10 minutes, and then I’m as bored as the people working in front of me.
But I’ve visited Greece six times, and Greektown’s cuisine is better than any Greek food I’ve had in the United States. (Note to Greek restaurants in the states: Cut down on the oil and vinegar. Feta cheese should not float in your salad.)
I truly wanted to eat authentic Greek food without bringing my passport. Detroit was as bad as I expected, but Greektown was by far better than I thought. In fact, it was a lot better than the Final Four.
Contrary to what I envisioned, Greektown is not one small street with a couple of souvlaki stands and a pastry shop. On a Detroit map, Greektown is an eight-block area, but the epicenter is Monroe Street, which is lined with Greek restaurants, Greek liquor stores, Greek bars and, well, Greeks.
On a weekend night, it’s as hopping as LoDo and, by the looks of the plethora of cops everywhere, probably safer. I walked Monroe and saw the neon signs bringing me back to one of my favorite countries. Plaka Cafe. Pegasus Taverna. New Parthenon. Old Parthenon. Cypress Taverna. Athens Liquors. Olympia.
Greek music piped into the street from hidden loudspeakers. For a second, I thought I was walking an alley in the Plaka except that Athens had the good sense not to build a giant casino in the middle of it.
My first stop was Pegasus, a sprawling restaurant with vines lining the ceiling and olive-skinned waiters running the aisles. My waiter said half the staff is of Greek heritage and so were the customers. I noticed many of them mouthed the words to the Greek songs drifting around the tables.
I ordered Arnaki Pilafi, lamb simmered in tomato sauce with herbs and spices. I almost couldn’t finish it because the soft homemade bread was as addictive as s’mores. The lamb, however, came out in two huge chunks falling off a bone and it nearly melted in my mouth.
For baklava I went across the street to the Cyprus Taverna. The baklava wasn’t as good as that of Pete’s Central One in Denver, home to better baklava than anywhere in Greece, but the owner made it worth it.
Vassos Augoustis came to Detroit in 1962 from the Greek part of Cyprus where he was a pro soccer player. Between 1890 and 1917, 450,000 Greeks immigrated to the U.S.
Greektown has been around ever since. Back when Detroit actually made decent cars, more Greeks poured in. Today about 120,000 live in the metro area, and it seems Augoustis knows every one of them.
“We find better life here,” he told me. “We open coffee houses, meeting houses. We talked the language, open Greek nightclub. In U.S. they treat you very good.”
It’s not quite the same today. Old men no longer sit on stoops smoking the nagrileh, the Greek water pipe. Traditional Greek nightclubs where you can smash plates at dancers’ feet without getting arrested have been replaced by bars like Mosaic.
The rollicking singles joint is the perfect spot for an ouzo nightcap. Ouzo, Greek whiskey, is the elixir of the gods. It caused me to get thrown out of a bar on Santorini when I accused the bartender of being the Antichrist. He thought it was amusing until I searched his scalp looking for a “666.” That’s when I got tossed.
In Detroit’s Greektown, I visited Cyprus Taverna’s to try its signature appetizer, the flaming sausage and cheese. A waiter brought out two sizzling hot plates covered with 11 pieces of grilled sausage and a huge glob of bubbling hot cheese.
The waiter poured brandy and yelled “OH-PAAAH!” as it shot up in flames. A slice of sausage and hunk of cheese on that famous Greek bread was a meal unto itself.
An hour later in Greektown’s Detroiter bar, a homeless ex-con I’d stepped over earlier got chased out trying to bum a piece of bread. Yep, this was Detroit after all.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
If you go
Pegasus Taverna, 558 Monroe St., 313-964-6800
Cyprus Taverna, 579 Monroe St., 313-961-1550
