Venetian Food in Detroit (Michigan) by Ruth Paget
I ate my first Venetian meals in Detroit (Michigan) at Syros Restaurant, which was located behind my apartment building on Griswold Street. The island of Syros is Greek, but at one time it was part of the Republic of Venice, which explains the restaurant’s Venetian dinner specials.
My neighborhood’s Catholics, the priests from Saint Aloysius Church, the rabbis from the downtown synagogue, and fashion district workers all ate one or two meals at Syros thanks to reasonable prices on liver and fish dinners.
I used my allowance on fegato alla veneziana (liver with caramelized onions) and baked fish made with lemon, olive oil, garlic, halved cherry tomatoes, and chopped parsley. Both dishes came with a side of peas and rice (risi e bisi). Detroit’s large Eastern Market kept produce from warmer climates available all winter long.
Those two dinner items came with a cup of soup or a salad. The soups were chicken noodle or meatless minestrone. I liked the minestrone for the pinto beans, which tasted good with grated Parmesan. I never ate dessert, but they always had custardy rice pudding with vanilla and cinnamon available. I drank iced tea with my meal in summer and coffee with cream in the winter.
These dinners are nice weekday meals. They are inexpensive and easy to make at home, if you learn how to handle the ingredients. Liver is rich in iron. There is a good recipe for it with grapes, sour cherries, and polenta, if you do not want onions, in Venetian Republic: Recipes from Veneto, Adriatic Croatia, and the Greek Islands by Nico Zoccali.
For more information about the history and culture of Venice, readers might be interested in the book Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization by anthropologist Meredith F. Small.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
