Sidewalk Seating in Greektown

[EastsideAl]

I disagree with those who say that Greektown doesn't feel like Greektown because of the new non-Greek restaurants

I'm with the "old geezers" here. The real Greektown really does seem to have disappeared. For anyone who remembers Greektown with several varied Greek restaurants [[they once didn't all have the same menu), a number of Greek food stores and bakeries, stores selling goods, newspapers, and music from Greece, coffeehouses full of Greek men drinking coffee and playing cards endlessly, Greek businesses spilling over from Monroe onto nearby streets, and a remaining small residential community of Greek men, there's very little about the current "Greektown" that seems either particularly Greek or even interesting.

It now seems to be a small and rather honky-tonk entertainment district, with a few blandly similar Greek-themed restaurants amongst the blah corporate chains, all dominated by a big life-sucking casino.

[mikeg19]

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I enjoy patio dining and how it adds to street life. On the other hand, it has to be in the right setting. Greektown sidewalks can get crowded and there's a very eclectic group of people walking the streets. It's one thing to have a beer and a pizza in that setting and another to have a full dinner when people are hovering over you checking out your entrée.

I don't know. I've had several means in little Italy in NYC, as well as in Windsor where there is a ton of outdoor seating and people walking by as you're eating your full course meal. Didn't bother us much and it was great for people watching. But I guess people have their own preferences.

[EastsideAl]

It would be nice to have a good Greek restaurant downtown, and not another derivative "Opa", Sysco and microwave-laden place. How about no more grape leaves and moussaka and bad wine, and instead serve actual food eaten in Greece? Greek cuisine is massively seafood centric.

Is there even one Greek restaurant in Metro Detroit specializing in seafood? Are they afraid Detroiters are scared of authentic cuisine, and will only eat derivative crap?

I agree with you on the long-declining quality of what's being served in our local Greek restaurants, and especially those in Greektown. A lot of what comes out of those kitchens is pretty abysmal now.

But the dishes served in most Greek restaurants in the U.S. are like those in most Italian-American restaurants. They have a lot more to do with the taste, class, and region of those who immigrated here decades or centuries ago, as well as the culinary landscape they found here in the U.S., than they have to with what is being served in those countries today.

Most Greeks who immigrated to the Detroit area actually came from Turkey, from where they were increasingly being driven out, culminating with a mass "population exchange" dislocation at the end of the Greco-Turkish War that followed WWI. When these folks, of mostly peasant backgrounds, came here, fresh ocean fish was not something you could get easily in Detroit or Chicago or other places in the Midwest [[easier to get in, say, NYC, which is why you see a lot more Greek seafood restaurants in Astoria than around here). On the other hand, meat, which had been something of a luxury in the old country, was abundantly and cheaply available here.

So, much like the meat-heavy Italian-American cuisine that developed in the U.S. [[which was not and is not what is served in Italy), Greek-American restaurants here served more meat-centric dishes based on the rural peasant foods they remembered. The fact that these meaty dishes were also more generally attractive to midwestern American diners was quickly noted as well, and certainly was not lost on entrepreneurial Greek restauranteurs.

[Honky Tonk]

Yech! Jimmy Johns in GT! That would be horrid!

Just cover it in Yoplait, it'll be fine.

[txlady]

"A whole bunch of people LOVE McDonald's"

I have to agree with both of you, if you want fast food/Applebees go to those joints. Don't dumb down a place that actually has good food on the excuse that "that's what Americans like".

[MSUguy]

This is really reflective of the changing mindset of the city in designing it around cars. I can't imagine 10--15 years ago this idea ever being floated or even approved.