The New York Times Style Magazine looks at 'Detroit Food City'

An interesting article will appear in the New York Times Style Magazine Sept. 13: It's an article centering on two chefs returning to Detroit to sample the food that influenced them in their youth. The chefs are Max and Eli Sussman, and they take writer Jeff Gordinier on a whirlwind trip to such local eateries as American Coney Island, Pita Café, Pegasus Taverna, Supino Pizzeria, and Rose’s Fine Food.

We've written about the Sussmans before. Back in 2009, we reviewed their first cookbook, a primer on cooking for students going off to college. They were already pursuing culinary careers. The week after we wrote about them, they were doing a special meal at Eve Aronoff's old restaurant in Ann Arbor. We wrote about them again earlier this year. (They look a little different these days.)

This week's piece about them for the New York Times is particularly remarkable because ... it didn't make us angry. Normally, when the New York Times does a story on food in Detroit, we find ourselves ticking off all the things the writer gets wrong, or the blind spots the writer doesn't know, or the silly clichés people use about Detroit that we've grown to loathe.

But none of that's here. Maybe it's because the writer has two able guides, or maybe it's because the writer had a talented ear for local vernacular, but it's actually a charming piece that calls a coney island a "coney island" and describes Selden Standard as being in a place whose old name is "Cass Corridor." Hey, that knocks our socks off. See the piece by clicking here.