Detroit, MI
Detroit diner Rose’s Fine Food is back, and it feels like a homecoming
Detroit basks in the glory of resiliency, welcoming praise for its triumph over a series of tribulations — bankruptcy, political corruption, deindustrialization. This resilience has earned Detroit the moniker of “America’s Comeback City,” reemerging not to her former glory perhaps, but, after weathering a few storms, into an even more beautiful patinaed version of herself.
Rose’s Fine Food on Detroit’s east side is a reflection of the city in which it resides.
When it returned after a two-year shutter, Rose’s, the Comeback Kid, didn’t come back with flash or the pizzazz that some restaurateurs see as a prerequisite for dining in the age of social media. I’d argue it did the opposite.
Sure, a fresh start seemed a ripe opportunity for owner Molly Mitchell to give the tiny East Jefferson building a fresh coat of paint in a custom green that nods to the shade of the Detroit River. A pair of charging stations for electric vehicles were also added to the parking lot, but inside, things feel much the same — delightfully lived-in.
Aptly so. For nine years, guests filed into the quintessential diner, ordering the egg sandwich specials scrawled on a chalkboard and griddled pancakes browned by the flat top, which followed a recipe from Mitchell’s grandfather. When the space transformed into a bottle shop during the COVID-19 pandemic, guests would collar sparkling wine or pét-nats well before the average diner became fluent in natural wines, understanding that skin contact means more than brushing up against your neighbor at the bar. Today, scuff marks from nearly a decade of foot traffic add to the restaurant’s wear, and therefore its charm.
Visiting the new Rose’s is as if you hit pause on a classic film in VHS and pressed play in 4K UHD. The place is slightly spruced up — photos on the walls have been rearranged, ornamental mirrors added and that pink-cushioned soda fountain barstool, once anchored off kilter at the end of the 12-seat bar, now splits the counter seating evenly at the center — but the premise is the same. Diners gather around wooden tables topped with dishes that wink at Mitchell’s Polish heritage and smile at in-season ingredients.
Whereas Rose’s was once a brunch destination, new evening-only hours mean you’ll slice into fork-tender kopytka, chubby potato dumplings seared and dressed in dill and garlicky butter. Paired with zucchini spears and pine nuts, your tongue tussles with pillowy soft textures and crunch. Creamy navy beans, once served with an egg at the former Rose’s Fine Food, are now a dinner snack, glossed in a pungent broth spiked with herbs, most notably dill, which you’ll see a dozen times over — in the tomatoes and the sourdough, on the Polish nachos, the plate of pickles and the cabbage slaw.
As the sun sets, the room bounces in the light of flickering tapers, dripping wax in shades of merlot and blush down to their vintage saucers. Servers drop citrusy, umami pickle martinis with dots of dill oil floating at the surface, as if you dropped a beaded bracelet into your glass.
Rose’s exists as a reset for a restaurant scene awash with bells and whistles. Here, cooks honor the thankless work of local farmers, not rendering Michigan produce unrecognizable, but enhancing its beauty by kissing baby radishes with just enough heat to make the dish juicy, and tossing sugared peaches in a simple syrup with vanilla bean and jalapenos until they’re slippery and just spicy enough to sting your lips. The peaches, plump and succulent, are the sort of ambrosial starter that fills you with so much joy you could cry.
Red and golden beets massaged with whey caramel and sprinkled with poppyseeds are so soft they melt. My heart eyes for the beets and the overall experience at Rose’s almost blinded me from noticing the dressing was hardly a caramel, but rather a congealed marinade with a grainy mouthfeel.
On one visit, a friend and I headed to the backyard garden where Mitchell grows many of the herbs incorporated throughout the menu, lanterns lighting up the space just enough for us to see the sunflowers, dahlias and cut flowers that decorate many of the dinner tables.
Come to think of it, your welcome to Rose’s is a preamble to the experience. A wooden console, something like an ofrenda, is topped with a whimsical floral arrangement, a few menus, a shiny silver water pitcher and produce as art. A crookneck squash wraps around two twinkling tea lights, and a massive bowl is filled with a rotation of seasonal ingredients — fresh garlic bulbs filled the summer bowl, while beautiful crimson apples were piled up for fall.
In the dimness of the room, you may miss the specials scribbled onto a mirror that hangs on a wall leading to the kitchen, but a server will bring it into focus. Food and drink specials are listed, like kompot, the refreshing Eastern European fruit juice — this one, tart and mildly flavored of cherry and plum.
There’s a delicate balance of fine food, as the diner’s name suggests, and homey meals. Duck confit veers toward the finer side, a delicate duck leg served on a silver platter with a sweet-savory creamy cherry glaze spilled beneath it. The meat is seductive in the way it’s tender and flavorful, and, tantalizingly, gone far too soon.
Dishes like smoked kielbasa and Rose’s burger are more comforting — the sausage link, split down the middle, has a thick, crisp skin and comes with sweet cabbage and corn doused in a rich, heavy cream sauce that delivers decadence without guilt. The burger feels as if it could very well have come out of your own kitchen, replacing fluffy buns with buttered slices of toasted sourdough. You’ll realize it’s a bacon burger in the playful way the cured meat is ground into a smoky-sweet jam and spread onto the bread.
In the same way that Mitchell celebrates Michigan farmers with the produce served at Rose’s, she links arms with other local purveyors. The kielbasa and beef for the burger are sourced from the women-owned butcher shop Marrow in Detroit’s West Village and sourdough from Black-owned home bakery Lillian’s Loaves.
Retro cakes by Venla’s Cakes are referential to the nostalgic time Rose’s aims to conjure. A time when diners had an identity and served affordable, handmade food, like fresh baked breads and signature sauces, to regulars who’d stop in several days a week. A time well before the ’90s, when Mitchell started working in diners. Buttercream frosting with intricate, drape-y piping covers tar, lemon poppyseed and floral raspberry rose slices. A chewy piece of candied carrot pierces the frosting on a spectacularly moist carrot cake. The potency of the carrot flavor on the candy is surprising and new, and the only drawback is that it sticks to my teeth so well, I’m concerned my tooth might go with it on the release.
The return of Rose’s feels like the homecoming of a lost love, like the return of the one that got away. Sometimes, you just want that old thing back
Rose’s Fine Food, 10551 E. Jefferson Ave., Detroit. 313-822-2729; rosesdetroit.com
While Detroit Free Press restaurant critics are no longer anonymous at area restaurants, they do their best to avoid being pandered to by restaurant staff. They show up to most restaurants unannounced at least three times, and do not accept complimentary meals. The Free Press covers all meals reviewed by critics. Our journalists adhere to the USA TODAY NETWORK Principles of Ethical Conduct For Newsrooms.
Contact Detroit Free Press Dining and Restaurant Critic Lyndsay C. Green at: LCGreen@freepress.com. Follow @LadyLuff on Instagram and Twitter. Subscribe to the Eat Drink Freep newsletter for extras and insider scoops on Detroit-area dining.
Pistons vs Magic Game 1 reaction, lessons learned and what must change
Omari Sankofa II, Shawn Windsor and special guest Bryce Simon react to Detroit Pistons’ Game 1 NBA playoff loss to Orlando Magic, April 19, 2026, at Little Caesars Arena.
How in the world did things get so bad so fast for the Detroit Pistons?
In just one outing in the 2026 NBA playoffs, they went from top-seeded darlings of the Eastern Conference to punching bags punked by an 8-seed short on rest but long on resilience and toughness.
“I would say they ‘outphysical-ed’ us today,” Pistons wing Ausar Thompson said after the Orlando Magic stole Game 1 of the first-round NBA playoff series, 112-101, at Little Caesars Arena on Sunday, April 19. “One, because they got more rebounds than us. They forced more turnovers.”
Yes, this was always going to be a physical series. Though you would think the Pistons, owners of the NBA’s second-best defense and playing at home, would have a sizable advantage.
It also should have helped them that they were coming off six days’ rest, as opposed to the Magic coming off winning a play-in game just 47 hours earlier.
It didn’t help that Pistons star Cade Cunnigham was playing in just his fourth game since suffering a collapsed lung and missing 11 games. He scored a game-high 39 points, but he didn’t operate as smoothly as usual, with just four assists (far off his 9.9-assist season average) while committing three turnovers.
Another indictment of the Pistons’ worrisome play: Tobias Harris (19 points) was Cunningham’s only teammate who scored in double digits. Meanwhile, all five Magic staters did so, led by Paolo Banchero’s 23 points on 8-for-15 shooting.
And just like that, the Magic came out firing, scoring 35 points in the first quarter and never trailing.
“Yeah, just that we came out a little too tight, lax, whatever the word is, maybe both for some of us, but just didn’t come out with the right energy,” Cunningham said. “Gave them life further on. And then, you know, we had to deal with that for the rest of the game. We were better in stints, but can’t dig a hole like that.”
He’s right. The Pistons can’t dig a hole like that in Game 2 on Wednesday night. Because if they do, and they lose, the Magic would not only have homecourt advantage – they got that with Sunday’s victory – but could close out the series without another win in Detroit, with three of the next four games coming in Orlando.
That’s precisely what makes Game 2 a must-win game for the Pistons. It’s bad enough they lost the opener at LCA, where they were 31-9. But now they’ve let the Magic set a hard-edged tone in the kind of the game that could lead them to steal the series.
“I know that they feel great about this game,” Cunningham said. “This was a big win for them. They came in, they handled their business and stole one on the road. That’s what you want to do in the playoff series.
“So I’m sure that they feel great about that. Obviously, we’re sick about losing this one. It’s a long series, though. There’s no confidence dropped from us. We know that team. They know us. So it’ll be a long, fun series.”
Cunningham might be right, because the Pistons are arguably the better team. They have enough talent and more depth.
What the Pistons don’t have is the advantage of desperation. They had an excellent season from start to finish, closed with a 60-22 record, and wrapped up the East’s top seed on April 4.
The Magic, meanwhile, have been playing with fire (and not always the good kind) down the stretch, while their fifth-year coach, Jamahl Mosley, entered the postseason on the hottest of hot seats after his squad went 0-7 in road playoff games over the past two seasons.
To make things even worse, the Magic lost the regular-season finale to the Boston Celtics – well, their reserves, at least – to blow their chance at the 7-seed and homecourt in the play-in tournament. Then Orlando lost to the Philadelphia 76ers (on the road, of course) in the first play-in game before beating the Charlotte Hornets (in Orlando) to advance to a best-of-seven series – featuring four road games – vs. the Pistons.
Now, it looks like the Magic have found their form, as they routed the Hornets, 121-90, and stunned the Pistons. And just like that, Mosley went from hot seat to just plain hot.
Banchero wouldn’t go so far as to say the victory set up his team to steal the series, but he didn’t deny it was exactly the kind of start Orlando needed.
“It’s just a good win for us as a team getting it on the road against a great team and 1-seed,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we got to come back Wednesday, you know, reciprocate it, you know?
“They’re not going to lay down. They’re going to turn it up. So we’ve got to be ready for that. And it’s just one-game-at-a-time mentality, you know? That’s what it’s got to be. It’s the first of four.”
Yes, it’s just the first of four wins the Magic needs to advance. If the Pistons don’t find an answer quickly, the math – and hardly anyone else – won’t be on their side when they head to Central Florida this weekend.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
After getting absolutely annihilated in his previous start on Monday in Minnesota to the tune of 11 runs in just 1.2 innings, Garrett Crochet is set to retake the mound today and convince us all that everything will be fine as far as he and his health are concerned.
Unfortunately, he won’t just be battling the Tigers. Mother Nature is once again destined to play a roll in today’s match up, and here’s how the radar looks inside of an hour from first pitch:
The good news is the initial batch of heavier precipitation has moved out and east of Boston, but more unsettled weather still lurks to the west ahead of a slow moving front. That mess will push through eastern Massachusetts over the next several hours, filling in the current dry slot. While this incoming precipitation won’t be as heavy as what fell at times earlier today, it will come attached with colder and windier conditions, so a miserable weather game lies ahead (if they even try and play through it at all — The Yankees did not and waited around for three hours before starting their game against the Royals at 4:20pm). The other option will be to just wait until after sunset when it will be dryer, but still very cold and windy.
When they do get started, today’s lineup includes Roman Anthony leading off in leftfield, Andruw Monasterio at first base, and Jarren Duran, Masataka Yoshida, and Marcelo Mayer all starting on the bench with an opposing left-handed starter on the mound in Framber Valdez for Detroit.
OTM’s own pitching guru Jacob Roy will be around later to handle the postgame wrap and tell us if we should should be freaking out or breathing a sigh a relief when it comes to Crochet.
The Pistons have made recent moves to add more shooting, but still don’t have anyone quite as lethal as former Detroit guard Luke Kennard. On Saturday night, Kennard had a brilliant start to his postseason with 27 uber-efficient points for the Lakers in a win against the Rockets. His level of 3-point accuracy is something the Pistons have desperately been seeking all season long to bolster their offense.
Luke Kennard’s shooting makes him a dangerous playoff performer
Kennard was originally drafted to Detroit with the 17th pick of the 2017 Draft. The Pistons have plenty of draft regrets from that general era of team history, but picking Kennard has never been one of them. Despite any other weaknesses he may have, his strength as a shooter has always been enough to offset them.
In terms of pure 3-point percentage, Kennard is one of the best shooters in NBA history. He averages 44% behind the arc for his career, and shot a blistering 48% this season – the best mark in the league. Given his incredible track record, it’s not exactly a shocker to see him shoot 5-of-5 from three en route to 27 points in Game 1.
Not only is Kennard obviously an excellent standstill shooter, but he’s also a master of getting himself open with his movement. On Saturday night, he was able to play off LeBron James perfectly for a few easy looks. After that, he caught enough of a rhythm to create 3-point looks for himself, even in transition.
A player like Kennard is easily capable of turning an entire playoff game when he gets hot. In a close series, that one game where Kennard hits several threes can be all the difference his team needs to advance. If the Lakers do manage to win this series, even without Luka Doncic or Austin Reaves, Kennard’s shooting will be a major reason why.
The Pistons could use someone like Kennard
Kennard would be a perfect marginal addition for the Pistons that only makes them better without taking anything away from the team. To be fair, the Pistons do have two shooters who have been hot recently in Duncan Robinson and Kevin Huerter. But having more than one respected shooter on the court at a time is often necessary to maintain a solid offense in today’s NBA.
Given the Pistons’ current lack of shooting, any additional shooters are welcome. And Kennard is understandably one of the most feared shooters in the league, capable of bending defenses just by the threat of him taking a three. Rolling him out on the Pistons would surely open up more lanes for Detroit’s stars to attack the paint and score easier points.
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