To sit at a restaurant’s bar is to partake in a peaceful revelry. The bar is a safe place, an incubator for boozy, intimate conversations. It’s a place to get to know your local restaurant staff, and to boot, the bar is usually the best spot to snag a seat without a reservation. In Detroit, I like Selden Standard on a Monday evening. My modus operandi there is to order a Negroni and whatever seasonal tartare and pasta is available. I’ll finish with a second drink, text a few friends that I miss them, and walk out feeling refreshed, having indulged in my little weekday evening treat.
Mabel Gray, Supino Pizzeria, and Forest are also among my favorite restaurant bars in metro Detroit. But I may just have a new favorite stool to make my home on a Monday night, and it’s at Rose’s on the east side of Detroit.
Rose’s, you may recall, was once a popular diner slinging pancakes and breakfast plates from 2014 to 2023. Having shut down for a couple of years, the new Rose’s has been talked about as a comeback, but I see it as more of an arrival. Again helmed by chef Molly Mitchell, Rose’s has ditched the brunch service and instead darted toward a dinner menu focused on local sourcing, delicate Polish influence, and the type of warm, nourishing dishes that, frankly, I wish were more prevalent in Detroit.
Though Rose’s utilizes Michigan’s seasons and bountiful produce, the menu is steadier than you might think. Mitchell often reimagines classic dishes with a bit of Polish flare and thrifty imagination. Take the cabbage Caesar salad — presented here with chunks of chopped, crispy green cabbage nestled snuggly into a clam-shelled cabbage leaf. The crunchy, cruciferous vegetable is dressed with a citrusy anchovy dressing and poppy seeds, served with a flaky Parmesan cheese disc baked into some local sourdough. The salad is refreshing and crunchy, and I have found it to be even better the next day after some further marination in my home fridge…