Detroit Delicacy: A Savory Salute to Asian Corned Beef Egg Rolls

October 03, 2018, 8:58 PM by  Alan Stamm


The branch at 14820 W. 7 Mile Rd.

The caption under a Detroit restaurant group owner's photo is stark: "Kim White, genius." 

It appears with an effusive embrace of her Asian Corned Beef chain at Jezebel, part of Gizmodo Media Group. The writer, Esther Wang of Brooklyn, swoons over "a freakishly good $3.38 egg roll filled with corned beef and cheese." She calls it "the best thing you can eat in Detroit."

Asian Corned Beef, a homegrown chain with seven locations (largely in still-black neighborhoods outside of the downtown core), is the brainchild of Kim White, an immigrant from Vietnam who moved to Detroit in 1974. Today, she runs the restaurants with her son Hasan, and an eighth location is in the works.


"The best thing you can eat in Detroit," writes Jezebel of this pure Detroit delicacy. (Yelp photo)

After working at a Jewish deli and learning to cook corned beef, she opened her first shop in 1980 on East 7 Mile.

Initially, business was slow, she said. One day, White began tinkering around with her menu, wrapped thinly sliced corned beef in an egg roll wrapper, and thus an icon was born.

“At first, people were scared to eat it,” White said of the egg roll. “After they tried it, they love it.” . . .

One bite of her perfectly fried egg roll stuffed with tender slices of corned beef and melted cheese—each egg roll is fried to order—and I was in love. I can only describe the experience of that egg roll as a full-body orgasm, but localized in my mouth.

Wang frames the item, also available in "classic" style with sauerkraut and no Swiss chess, as more than a tasty treat -- though it is that, first and foremost.

The New York City journalist, no stranger to pretentious foodies and evolving neighborhoods, hails the no-frills fare at Asian Corned Beef as "a kind of egalitarian American cuisine that is increasingly vanishing—the merging of food traditions, created out of necessity, to birth something new and uniquely American, in the most generous and best sense of what it means to be American."

No one needs another pie shop or New American diner or gastropub that serves the same tired, expensive food in the same tired settings. Give me a $3 egg roll stuffed with corned beef and cheese any day.

Where to find 'em: Here's a list of Asian Corned Beef locations.


Read more:  Jezebel


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