A few weeks ago, me and a crew of my homies ventured to downtown Detroit for a bachelor party. We did the standard bachelor party activities. We took in a professional sporting event. We drank. We blew our kids’ college money at a few casinos. We drank. We spent a quick thirty minutes in a Greektown strip club (until the groom said, “Okay, I’ve seen enough naked single moms”); and we left and drank some more.
The following morning, we all woke with reasonably potent hangovers. Some of the guys I was with decided to go down to Starbucks in the lobby of our hotel and attempt to chase away their dry mouth and nagging hangover hunger pains with coffee and muffins. In my current state, I had no interest in standing in line, and attempting to speak English to a fake-language-using staff, probably made up of Starbucks usual cast of annoying types: Sad Girl, Failed Musician Guy, and others. I was far too hung over to put up with dialogue like this:
Me: I’d like a large coffee, please.
Them: You mean a Venti?
Me: No. I said a “large”.
Them: That IS a large.
Me: In what country?!?! F#ck off! I’m going someplace like McDonald’s, where they speak English….
So, unwilling to wrestle with the stupidity of Starbucks’ unbending, non-user-friendly business model, I floated the idea to my remaining still-hungry compatriots of actually getting a fulfilling (and non-infuriating) breakfast somewhere else.
I had previously seen a place in Ferndale called The Fly Trap profiled a few years back on Guy Fieri’s show “Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives”, and thought, “Hmmmm…..the next time I’m in ‘The D’, I need to try this place.” The moment couldn’t have been any more perfect. We were three hungry guys. We wanted to get out of Detroit with all deliberate speed. And we had a full tank of gas. God hadn’t given us a mission, or anything; but our stomachs sure had. So seizing the moment, I blurted out, “Guys, I know of the perfect place!”
My bro Avram had the appropriate idea of bypassing the freeway, and simply driving straight north up Woodward Avenue into Ferndale . It was a brief and interesting drive. Maybe a bit more depressing than interesting, as that parts of inter city Detroit nowadays tend to resemble “ Berlin circa 1946”, only without the glitz. But we made sure to keep our car doors locked, and we were in Ferndale in no time.
The Fly Trap. Woodward Avenue. Ferndale, Michigan.
The Fly Trap is quite conspicuous and easy to find for the first-time visitor. It’s on the right-hand side of Woodward Avenue if you’re coming north out of downtown Detroit, so you’d be hard pressed to miss it. Sunday is generally their busiest day, and we lucked out and walked in right before a line began to form. By the time we exited their establishment, a good size line of about eight or ten patrons had amassed itself outside of the restaurant. Let’s hear it for impeccable timing!
The dining area of The Fly Trap isn’t terribly large. There’s a small lunch counter and perhaps ten or twelve booths. All-in-all, they’d be lucky to fit seventy people in their establishment. The restaurant is staffed with what you’d expect in a town like Ferndale : cute hipster girls with retro-looking hair styles and lots of arm tats and piercings. A look that was fairly cutting edge in 2005, but now has turned a tad cliché. Service was helpful and attentive, but the turn-around on the delivery of our order was a tad slow on the day that we visited.
I think the whole aim of the place’s design is to look as diner-esque and possible, but to attempt to appear as if they’re not trying to look diner-esque. This premise as I’ve just described it might sound nonsensical and counter-intuitive, but if you were to step into The Fly Trap, you’d know exactly what I mean. The owners have tried hard to make the greasy-spoon look of this establishment appear “organic” and “not on-purpose”, but it actually comes off as being a tiny bit kitschy and contrived. Fortunately, the food is amazingly good, and the prices are as affordable and as reasonable as one could expect in Metro Detroit.
The Fly Trap keeps the same menu throughout the entire day, and refers to their dining concept as “Blunch” (A compression of breakfast and lunch. I’m not sure how this differs from “Brunch”, but kudos to them for being original). They aren’t open late (Tuesday-Friday 8am-9pm. Saturday & Sunday 8am-5pm. Closed Monday), so as suited as their food might be for the late-night post bar crowd, a late drunken meal at The Fly Trap isn’t an option. Perhaps the owners are themselves hitting the clubs in Royal Oak with everyone else, and therefore, keeping the restaurant open until 3am is out of the question.
Their menu uses some creative and catchy nomenclature in describing their food offerings. For instance, instead of simply listing “scrambled eggs” on the menu, they would say, “A rumble of eggs”. This depiction, in my mind, is both cute and very descriptive in an onomatopoeic sense. It’s catchy, and I totally get it. Their standard plate of eggs and breakfast meat is entitled “Eggs à la boring”. Which is both humorous, and might send the right subliminal nudge to the customer that, “Hey, you can do this on the cheap, but wouldn’t it be cooler to spend one or two dollars more and get something much more exciting?”
And for the most part, “exciting” is a pretty accurate word to describe what The Fly Trap has to offer on its menu. They offer a rib eye steak with two eggs, smothered in a “Wild west” sauce; the dish aptly named “Cowboy Curtis” (after Lawrence Fishburn’s character in Pee Wee’s Playhouse). Crab cakes are unexpectedly available as a breakfast side item. I was also quite stunned to see Pho (Vietnamese beef noodle soup) on the menu; a very interesting detour away from the diner motif that the owners are trying to put up. I’ll not give away any of the other cute and catchy names of their dishes, as that chuckling over the cheeky menu is a big part of the dining experience at The Fly Trap, so I’d rather not ruin it for you.
I ended up ordering the Red Flannel Hash, which was absolutely delicious. It combined beef brisket, potatoes, red beets and onions, along with eggs made-to-order and toast of your choosing. There are certain menu items that I’m a complete sucker for: Kobe and Wagyu beef, sea bass, and truffles can be listed among them. Beef brisket is also part of this pantheon of food items that one could use as bait if they’d want to catch me in a human-sized box trap. Sometimes, when these items are listed on a menu, I order them and get unwittingly burned (this happens often with Kobe and Wagyu beef), but other times I strike gold. The Fly Trap’s Red Flannel Hash was definitely an epic win. Everything was expertly and flavorfully prepared, and all of these basic and simple ingredients came together to create a tasty and memorable breakfast experience. I’d definitely order the beef brisket hash again. The trouble is, there’s at least a dozen-and-a-half OTHER items on their menu that warrant exploration, so I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to work my way back to it. And theirs is a menu for literally EVERYONE. There are three or four animal-products-free dishes on the menu, so it’s very much vegan friendly, as well as a great place for us standard omnivores to nosh away a hangover.
I suppose Denny’s or IHOP might be a tad cheaper, but why bother going to some big box place, when you’d only be saving maybe a dollar or two? In The Fly Trap the consumer has an artistically constructed meal, fresh ingredients, interesting surroundings, and you don’t have to worry about some disgruntled minimum wage ex-con spitting in your eggs. There are some breakfast places around, where the only time you’d frequent them is when you’re drunk. In my mind, you’d have to be drunk to ever consider passing up The Fly Trap. It’s food done right!
Chew on THAT!!
T.S.G.
