Restaurant Review: Detroit's Empire Kitchen & Cocktails has no clothes

Mark Kurlyandchik | Detroit Free Press

In an era of exciting culinary experimentation and personality, Empire Kitchen & Cocktails is banal to the bone.

Its arrival to Brush Park in mid-May was greeted with media buzz, but Empire's vanilla vision offers a dreary look into Detroit's potential culinary soul.

So let this be a warning ...

The new restaurant is located on the ground floor of the Scott at Brush Park, a two-year-old $65-million luxury apartment building currently for sale by the developer, according to Crain's. A two-bedroom apartment in the 199-unit building will set you back about $2,200 a month and includes amenities such as pet-grooming, 24-hour concierge, a fitness center and a “four-season outdoor lounge & spa with heated deck, fireplace and hot tub,” the building's website boasts.

Also new on the block are a bakery that sells a kaleidoscopic array of Parisian-style macarons; an outpost of a tacos-and-tequila chain founded in Ohio that bears a dusty California city’s name; and a bright, Scandinavian-inspired Third Wave coffee shop that declares its fondness for "intentioned simplicity" on its website. I didn’t see a single yoga studio nearby despite encountering more than one group of the ancient discipline’s newest acolytes on the sidewalk outside.

It’s hard to sip a $13 cocktail on Empire's covered, all-season patio on the corner of Woodward and Erskine — a stone’s throw from a homeless shelter — without feeling like the scene is a longtime Detroiter's gentrification nightmare playing out in real time.

This isn't entirely Empire’s fault, of course, but the restaurant's uninspired and reductive offerings somehow add to the offensiveness.

If anything distinguishes Empire from any other new Detroit restaurant, it’s that the owners also run all the Five Guys burger joints in Michigan, with more than 30 locations across the state. Otherwise, the venture reads like a paint-by-numbers restaurant concept — the modern Detroit dining equivalent of the Brooklyn Bar Menu Generator.

Let's get to filling in those culinary colors.

Is there a burger? Check.

Pizza? Check.

Mac ‘n’ cheese? Check.

Kale, cauliflower and “craft cocktails”? Check, check, check.

All prepared by a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef? Right again.

But are there roll-up garage doors that open to an outdoor patio? You bet.

Is it a casual, come-as-you-are atmosphere anchored by a long bar with an impressive spirits display? Got that, too.

Are there black leather banquettes and dark wood paneling, and was the place designed by Ron Rea? Check, check, check.

“Cookie cutter,” is what they used to call it, but “approachable” is now the genteelism du jour.

At least that’s the word chef and operating partner Aaron Lowen used to describe Empire, which was touted in a widely publicized news release (here, here, here and here) a few months back as an “American-style bistro and bar.”

Notably, it’s located right around the corner from Grey Ghost, an already popular American-style bistro and bar.

“We might be unique in the fact that we’re not trying to be unique,” Empire co-owner Michael Abrams admitted to Eater Detroit ahead of his restaurant's mid-May opening.

Translation: There’s nothing worth coming here for that you can’t already get somewhere else.

Case in point: In addition to jejune entrees such as pan-seared salmon with farro ($26) and a roasted half chicken with Brussels sprouts ($22), Empire’s menu also includes a cheeseburger, chop salad, N.Y. strip steak, chicken wings and cauliflower — all of which are already available a mere 150 yards away at Grey Ghost.

That's not the extent of the local inspiration, either. Empire Kitchen & Cocktails also owes something — if in name only — to Chartreuse Kitchen & Cocktails, the 2016 Free Press Restaurant of the Year, located a mile down Woodward.

And Empire's interior has more than a couple things in common with downtown's Central Kitchen & Bar, including almost identical barstools and a similar dining room layout.

Spotless execution could forgive some of these appropriations, but that was lacking across my multiple visits timed about a month apart.

A cursory glance at the menu would have likely sent Italophiles and eagle-eyed editors into a tizzy. Pappardelle had been misspelled as "parpadelle" for almost the first two months the place was open, despite staff being alerted to the error early on. (It was finally updated recently and renamed "Mushroom Pasta.") A minor quibble, perhaps, but a telltale sign of laziness or lack of care or both — a visible crack in this ship's tightness.

The funny irony of it all is that the pappardelle ($19) is one of the better dishes on the menu, its fresh wide noodles drenched in an earthy and rich wild mushroom Marsala.

Empire isn't a small plates restaurant, by the way. The menu is delineated into the highly recognizable apps, salads, pizza, entrées, sides and desserts.

My dining companion on one visit, a former restaurant critic, remarked after a glance at the menu that it reminded her of a hotel lobby restaurant.

A number of New American restaurant menu clichés are ticked off in the apps section, which features blistered shishito peppers ($10), a charcuterie board ($22) and roasted cauliflower with Indian spices ($12) — all presumably chosen for their faint but nonthreatening exoticism.

The dry-rubbed wings ($11) aren't bad — hot and crispy as promised and served with a side of ranch. Ours also came with a dollop of ignorance from the server.

"Is this ranch?" I asked as the wings were being deposited.

"That's a buttermilk dressing," he said in a corrective tone, obviously oblivious to the provenance of ranch.

From the salad selection, you'd do well to avoid the charred chopped Caesar ($11), which came neither charred nor full of much flavor, topped with stone-solid croutons that will no doubt one day send someone on an unexpected dentist visit.

"This is like bagged salad you get from Kroger," my companion noted.

We fared better with the kale salad ($14) — a cumin-spiced bouquet of baby Tuscan kale with toasted pepitas, pickled onion and sweet potato cubes in a slightly sweet dressing. On another visit, the Detroit chop shop salad ($14) managed to not offend if not exactly impress.

You'd think the burger would be a sure hit here considering the pedigree of the owners, but they've instead opted for a $16 bistro-style offering that's heavy on white cheddar and caramelized onions but somehow still light on flavor. The underseasoned meat and the lack of punchy pickles are the likely culprits here, though the peppery side of skinny fries slightly makes up for it. The spicy chicken sandwich ($16) is a better option between bread, largely thanks to pimento cheese and the inclusion of pickles. The controversial "buttermilk dressing" also helps.

Other than the lack of creativity on the menu, my biggest beef is with the pizza and flatbread. I took one bite of the house flatbread ($7) during a media preview and noted an almost moldy taste — like laundry that had been left in the wash too long. I shrugged it off and gave the kitchen the benefit of the doubt in those early goings.

But that off flavor showed up again in the pizza ($12-$15) six weeks later. It couldn't be masked by the old-fashioned pepperoni slices that curl up into delectable little grease cups. There must be something in the water ...

We sampled one dessert on one visit, the monkey bread ($8), which didn't inspire another visit to this portion of the menu again.

"This is like a single lady dessert that you make in a coffee mug in the microwave," my companion noted.

Except it would've fared better cooked that way. Ours came out rock solid on the perimeter with gooey, raw dough inside — a dreadful exclamation point capping a menu of mediocrity.

No one in the restaurant world is truly original. Everyone borrows from elsewhere, chefs inspire other chefs, remixing ideas and executions with the hope the final product will transcend derivation.

Empire fails to transcend, offering a watered-down version of an increasingly too familiar experience. It wouldn't be so bad if the creative concessions came with a steep discount, but the pricing here is no gentler than at more exciting venues.

Empire is their hollow echo, parroting back a faded, carbon-copied version that takes no risks and contributes little to Detroit's dining scene dialogue.

Luckily for Empire, many people — the majority of the dining public, I presume — don't give two hoots about the "dining scene dialogue," and those words in that order will likely elicit loud groans and long eye-rolls from them.

It can be argued that one restaurant that so boldly flouts whatever presumed responsibility it has to deliver something special to its guests is of little consequence to the greater scene. But the trouble is that we are entering an era of rampant mixed-use developments, with dozens of projects in various stages popping up around the downtown core. Almost unfailingly, the ground floor is reserved for retail and restaurants.

If people turn out for Empire in its current form in droves, that only means many more like it will soon be on the way. Copies of copies of copies until there's nothing left but a faded memory of what was once an exciting town to dine out in.

The real danger Empire poses is the potential spread of the unremarkable.

And that's not a future I want to celebrate.

Empire Kitchen & Cocktails

3148 Woodward, Detroit.

313-315-3131 and empirekitchenandcocktails.com.

Dinner daily; brunch on weekends.

New American-style bistro with straightforward menu and full bar.

Reservations accepted

Contact Free Press Restaurant Critic Mark Kurlyandchik: 313-222-5026 or mkurlyandc@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mkurlyandchik and Instagram: curlyhandshake.