Detroit Part 1: BBQ

My friends and I arrived in Detroit on Wednesday afternoon April 7th, and had tickets to see the Red Wings game that evening. Rather than eat arena food, we decided to find a restaurant for a pregame meal. Slow's Bar-B-Q had been recommended, and sounded nice and filling, so we figured we'd give it a try. It was about 5pm when we arrived, and I thought that would be early enough to get a table without much delay, but apparently it's a popular pregame destination and we had about a half hour wait for our table. While waiting, we had a chance to sample from a great variety of Michigan beers available on tap; I particularly enjoyed Bell's Oberon.

Once we were seated and had a chance to peruse the menu, I decided on "The Big Three," a combination of pulled pork, pulled chicken, and sliced brisket. The table had five different BBQ sauces, (if I recall correctly) sweet, spicy, apple, mustard, and North Carolina-style vinegar, and I thought this would be a good way to experiment with all of them. The entree included two sides, and I went with mac + cheese and coleslaw. The order wasn't cheap ($17.95 isn't, for instance, significantly less than you'd pay for a three-meat combo at Dinosaur BBQ here in NYC), but everything was tasty and the portions were generous. Here's the mac and cheese, which was, by the way, perhaps the best I've ever had:



And this is how much meat was left after I was getting close to full and decided to take a picture:



Everything was, as I said, very good; the brisket was, perhaps, not as good as at Hill Country, but I enjoy when there are a variety of different sauces and you get to try out different tastes in one order. Most of us had leftovers, if I recall correctly, and it was a shame our hotel room didn't have a refrigerator so that we could have brought them back with us. No big deal, though, as we definitely all had our fill of meat.

Overall, definitely a place I'd recommend to future Detroit visitors, and a great example of how someone who's interested in urban renewal can take an old building in a drab area and turn it into something exciting.