This charcuterie board costs $22 at Empire Kitchen & Cocktails. (Facebook photos)
It's rare to see such a blisteringly harsh review of a restaurant poping up in Midtown or downtown Detroit
Corned beef hash ($13) is served at weekend brunch.
But Mark Kurlyandchik of the Detroit Free Press filets Empire Kitchen & Cocktails on Woodward in the Brush Park-Midtown area, calling it "banal to the bone."
It's hard to sip a $13 cocktail on Empire's covered, all-season patio on the corner of Woodward and Erskine — a stone’s throw from a homeless shelter — without feeling like the scene is a longtime Detroiter's gentrification nightmare playing out in real time.
Kurlyandchik describes a "vanilla vision" and says nothing there is worth a visit because it's available elsewhere.
A Freep reader, Brian Ambrozy of Detroit reacts on Twitter:
I LOVE this review of one of the endless "new modern American restaurants" in Detroit. Finally someone calling these places out for their inane, uninspired bullshit.
