Charcuterie board at Empire Kitchen & Cocktails. (Facebook photo)
Michael Abrams, owner of Empire Kitchen & Cocktails, the self-styled “American-syle bistro and bar” in Midtown/Brush Park responds to a harsh review in the Detroit Free Press, telling Eater Detroit he was caught off-guard.
“I was pretty taken aback. It was a pretty brutal article, pretty brutal review,” he says.
Food writer Mark Kurlyandchik characterized the place as a “paint-by-numbers restaurant concept” and basically trashed the food.
Abrams owns 31 Five Guys restaurants and previously operated ran the sports bar chain Snooker’s Pool & Pub, as well as Southfield-based restaurants McVee’s and Mr. Joe’s. He tells Brenna Houck:
“I’ve opened 44 restaurants of which 39 are still up and running, and I’m very proud of this restaurant and we worked really hard and getting this restaurant to where it is. The fact that it’s cookie cutter — well , you know what, that’s my fault, because that’s all really I was capable of doing.”
Abrams had told Eater in May around the opening that Empire “might be unique in the fact that we’re not trying to be unique” and Kurlyandchik later referenced the quote in his review. Abrams says using the quote made the review “a little bit more personal than it needed to be,” but again emphasized that he had no designs to make an original restaurant.
“Well, it’s true. I had no intention of trying to recreate the wheel,” he says. “I thought there was a need for a neighborhood place in the Brush Park area that was, you know, I hate to use the term ‘approachable’ again, but you know, I’m going to use the word ‘approachable’ for lack of better terms.”
He adds: “[Kurlyandchik] would probably call it, you know, ‘cookie cutter’ or ‘weak,’ but that’s where our menu is. But I think our food is very good.”
