It’s a story not unlike the origin of the thousands of paleterias across the U.S. They would go to work making and selling coney dogs and then eventually a lot of them would spin off and start their own places.” Michelle and Chris Gerard “They went there and they learned the business. “More and more Greek immigrants kept coming to Detroit with instructions to check in with the Keros brothers in Detroit to get a job,” says Grimm. It wasn’t long before others caught on to this efficient little hub for business. The restaurants were open 24/7 - none of the establishments even bothered to put locks on the doors. If one spot ran out of buns, for example, someone could walk next door and pick up more from their neighbor. The setup was mutually beneficial to the three eateries. And then they opened a third location, right there on the same block. “It was so busy, they opened another restaurant right next door,” says Grimm. Then they struck gold after pivoting and transforming the downtown, flat iron-shaped space into a restaurant. A stint cleaning hats from the corner of Lafayette and Michigan Avenue. The pair tried their hands at a few different jobs: selling popcorn from a horse-drawn wagon on Belle Isle that didn’t last long. The setup was simple enough and the population of Detroit had skyrocketed so rapidly - from about 285,000 in 1900 to just under 1 million by 1920 - that there was a big market for quick, affordable food options to feed the droves of factory workers.Īmong the first innovators in this new and growing business was the Keros family, specifically, brothers William “Bill” and Constantine “Gust” Keros. And they weren’t called “coney islands.” They were just simple places usually consisting of a long lunch counter with stools where workers could grab a quick handheld meal and be off to the factory, not unlike those horse-drawn carts and sit-down diners taking shape across the Eastern seaboard around the same period. At first, not even fries were available as most spots weren’t equipped with deep fryers. Likely inspired by the coney dog that came out of Coney Island in Brooklyn, just a short distance from Ellis Island where many of the new arrivals first landed, these restaurants only sold a couple of items: coney dogs and drinks. “So some of them decided to put themselves to work by opening these restaurants that had a flattop grill,” says Grimm. This forced Greek Detroiters to get creative. Grimm tells Eater that with their long, hard-to-pronounce names - at least in the opinion of less recently arrived European immigrant communities - and limited English, many in the Greek American community were kept off of the assembly lines. The first wave of Greek immigrants began showing up in the region just before the turn of the 20th century. The city became so inundated that workers couldn’t find proper housing they would rent rooms by the hour between shifts, says Joe Grimm, a journalism professor at Michigan State University and co-author of Coney Detroit.īut those coveted factory jobs were hard to come by for some recent arrivals. So how did so many relatives of Kyparissians seem to end up in the coney island hot dog-slinging business in Detroit?ĭetroit in the 1910s was a city booming with folks from across the globe all vying for factory jobs in the then-budding automotive industry. It’s an area known for its cured meats, seafood, olives, and an abundance of fresh produce - certainly not for hot dogs slathered in all-meat chili, diced onions, and mustard. No matter which coney island you’ve pledged your allegiance to, these regional chains and stand-alones can all trace their roots to Kyparissia, a coastal town in Greece’s Peloponnese region about an hour’s drive from the better-known archaeological site of Olympia. Some spots also sell gyros, Greek salads, chicken lemon rice soup, and have servers trained to present flaming plates of saganaki, while others keep their menus simple with just dogs, loosies, and chili cheese fries. Some are open 24/7 and serve the late-night bar crowd from spacious booths, while others cater to the early-morning breakfast crowds who sit down at swivel stools for eggs and toast from a modest lunch counter. Some are primarily drive-thrus where guests grab their food through plexiglass. Some, like American Coney Island, are patriotically decorated, giving an all-American vibe.
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