Mark Kurlyandchik

Detroit Free Press Restaurant Critic

Don’t let the name fool you: There’s nothing drab about Mabel Gray.

The Hazel Park restaurant glows an ardent orange during packed dinner hours, smoldering with the heady aromas of North African green harissa and pungent Thai fish-sauce caramel from its kaleidoscopic global pantry.

For a place that shares the name of a fabled Lake Michigan recluse and her legendary ghost, the restaurant is surprisingly full of life and conviviality, a serried mass of hungry patrons often crowding the 3-by-6-foot waiting area while ‘90s hip-hop blares from the speakers.

But its moniker makes sense when you realize that the restaurant is chef-owner James Rigato’s own culinary anthem, inspired more by the eponymous folk song by the band Brown Bird than by the legend of the hermit Alice Mabel Gray.

Rigato’s genre at Mabel Gray is improvisational New Americana with World influences, sometimes electrified but always with the volume turned all the way up, a chorus of frequent guest chefs adding their voices to the chef’s driving staccato beat.

“The thing I want people to realize is that Mabel Gray is about pushing forward,” Rigato says. “It’s a living, breathing thing. … It’s more than just me.”

Rigato has raised Detroit's national culinary profile from the unlikeliest of places, dishing up a daily changing menu out of a tiny former diner between a wrestling supply store and a funeral home in a blue-collar suburb that hasn’t had this much going for it in years.

Today, the restaurant is southeast Michigan’s most dynamic dining experience. You never know what you’re going to get, but you can be sure it’ll be impeccably sourced, carefully constructed, deliciously seasoned and delivered with fervent passion by a professional staff.

This level of hospitality is hard to come by anywhere, but its spillover has been a welcome boon for the sleepy inner-ring ‘burb Rigato has chosen as his main stage.

No other local restaurant is so in-the-moment and of-the-moment. That’s why Mabel Gray is the 2017 Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Restaurant of the Year.

Fine dining in coveralls

A quirky town partially frozen in the mid-century years of its heyday, Hazel Park is home to all the culinary markers of a blue-collar community with dive bars, greasy spoons, slider joints, fast-food chains and Detroit-style pizza parlors.

But it has never seen the likes of Mabel Gray.

Since its late-2015 debut across from a long-abandoned CVS, the dining hot spot has been one of the 2.8-square-mile city’s main attractions, bringing welcome foot traffic to a neglected stretch of John R, spurring new businesses around it.

For its part, the city has rolled out the proverbial red carpet, knocking down a nearby house to build a parking lot for all the new visitors.

For Rigato and business partner Ed Mamou, Mabel Gray is a bit of a departure from their previous project, the Root in White Lake, a Restaurant of the Year winner in 2012.

At the Root, Rigato was hyper-focused on locally sourced products, with the aim of helping define contemporary Michigan cuisine.

That’s still certainly on the docket at Mabel, but it's also more personal than that for the 32-year-old chef this time around.

“I grew up in a paradox,” Rigato says of his upbringing on welfare in a Howell trailer park.

He says his father wasn’t in the picture much, but he paid for his son to attend Catholic school.

“I basically was a trailer park kid in a Catholic school environment, or a Catholic school kid in a trailer park environment,” Rigato recalls. “I was always kind of on the border of one class of society. I think that’s kind of what my food is.

"If you look at gastropub, roughneck, Michigan food, I’m probably a fancy-pants guy. But if you look at Michelin restaurants, I’m definitely a ... roughneck," he says, using an expletive to explain.

"I walk that line, and I think Mabel does, too.”

The 1,600-square-foot shotgun building that houses the restaurant was once Liza’s Place diner and Ham Heaven. Its history is still preserved in the brown and tan floor tiles and scruffy walls left untouched by the designers, Ron & Roman architects.

A sleek white leather banquette runs the length of the south wall, in stark contrast to the mismatched vintage glassware and idiosyncratic grandma-style plates scavenged from local thrift stores.

The kitchen here isn’t just open, it’s in your face, with the entire hot line sharing space with the snug dining room.

In an age of ubiquitous subway tile, exposed brick and Edison bulbs, Mabel Gray feels original and charmingly homespun, another reflection of Rigato’s own working-class roots.

“I want to have the skill and finesse and delivery of a three-Michelin-star restaurant,” he says. “I want to be the absolute best I can be in my field. But … listening to Tupac, drinking MGD, comfortable, relaxed, at a price point that a lot of people can afford and in a town where blue-collar, do-it-yourself, grit … still reigns supreme.

“So we are fine dining, but very much in coveralls.”

Music of the night

By 7 o'clock on a recent Saturday, the dining room throbs with ardor and expectation, its floor-to-ceiling windows facing John R all steamed up on this blustery winter night.

Spanish octopus sizzles on the hot flat-top grill while impatient guests angle for one of the 13 coveted bar seats always saved for walk-ins.

What can’t be predicted is how many folks will risk walking in without reservations, or how many of the 100 reservations that night will order the specialty of the house, an eight-course chef’s tasting menu that unfolds over 90 minutes — the main melody of Rigato’s refrain.

At $65, the chef’s tasting is both the best introduction to Mabel’s globally inspired seasonal cuisine and an incredible value in the generally auspicious world of tasting menus. Like the a la carte menu, it changes every day, and you don't know what will be on it until it comes to your table.

Recently, it began with an earthy porcini and button mushroom bisque, thickened with creamy house ricotta and topped with whispers of shaved sous vide pork tongue — a grounding, unctuous start to the meal, tempered with a splash of sherry and a sprinkle of cured egg yolk.

Next came an updated version of what has quickly become a classic Mabel dish: apple kimchi. “Classic” is a bit of a loose term when it comes to a menu that changes daily, but this simple dish of tart Honeycrisp apples in a funky kimchi powder with candied nuts, celery and creamy yogurt has made frequent appearances since the restaurant’s debut.

A few months ago, Rigato had some extra pork belly and decided to add it to the dish to counter its tart spice with the savory protein, a crunchy slice of belly with all the fat expertly rendered out through a multiday cooking process.

This is how a plate is perfected at Mabel Gray — after organic improvisation and many cycles playing similar notes until they finally land on their most powerful melody.

As the tasting menu continued, a spicy note was struck, ringing out in the pickled serrano peppers that accompanied a lucid Hamachi crudo, echoed in the hot-pepper jelly of the Manila clams. It was subdued slightly by cooling dollops of Guernsey sour cream on the pull-apart Michigan rabbit paprikash with rye spaetzle that followed in its smoky, rustic glory.

Then, a dramatic pause: a palate-cleansing intermezzo of coconut granita with mint and quickly onto the ringing climax — perfectly seared North Dakota bison with spicy green and red harissa and a couple dollops of the Middle Eastern garlic paste toum, plus tangy pickled onion for acid and a smashed potato to soak it all up with.

This is meat and potatoes fare, the kind your grandparents might have eaten, kicked all the way up with redolent nods to the immigrant communities that have helped shape the area.

“Sometimes it’s more verse chorus verse,” Rigato says, putting his tasting-menu philosophy into musical terms. “Sometimes I throw a bridge in there. Sometimes I like to have a symphony. Sometimes I like to have an apex early and then wind it down.”

Three-part harmonies come via the balanced cocktails of bar manager Paul Fradeneck and wine pairings by sommelier Rachel Van Til, who, for an additional $35, expertly matches a beverage to every course.

The final note, though, goes to pastry chef Kristina Conger, whose decadent desserts have all the warm familiarity of Grandma’s — think: chocolate cake, butterscotch bread pudding, creamy fudge bars. Each one is beautifully plated with delicate shaved pineapple flowers, fins of sesame and flax seed tuiles or dainty puffs of roasted white-chocolate mousse, for example, and is executed with the same obsessive attention to detail as the rest of the place.

The edge of the canvas

Perhaps most remarkable is what the chef and his small staff can pull off in such tight quarters.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a limitation,” Rigato says of the bantam space. “It’s kind of just the edge of the canvas.”

The restaurant has no walk-in cooler and deliveries come in daily, largely shaping the menu du jour.

Rigato hasn’t abandoned the local focus of the Root, but Mabel’s main target for sourcing is the top of the line, whether it’s set by fresh radishes from Ann Arbor’s Sunseed Farm or sustainable Japanese Hamachi.

“High quality is the first criteria,” he says.

The limited storage space also dictates the need for constant turnover, hence the handwritten menu of about a dozen a la carte dishes that change every day, sometimes subtly, sometimes entirely. (Typically, Tuesday's menu looks much different from Friday's.)

There are days when Rigato might be excited about a particular type of pasta, so there'll be an outburst of pasta-making. The dish will run on the menu until it sells out, and then it's on to the next obsession for the restless chef.

Other times, guest chefs like Dearborn native and fellow “Top Chef” alum Mei Lin will do a week-long Mabel Gray takeover, leaving bags of jasmine rice in her wake. The rice needs to be used, so it shows up in a congee with Michigan pork belly, nippy Thai green curry and balled apple kimchi on Rigato’s menu a couple weeks later.

One day there might be rib eye or a burger, or neither or both.

In that sense, Mabel Gray is also an extension of Rigato’s current mood and can even encompass his reaction to the day’s weather.

The template for most restaurants is to go for the big hits, those “house specials” that a place becomes known for. The Rolling Stones of the restaurant world still play their versions of "Satisfaction" every single night. Diners at Mabel Gray get no “Satisfaction,” only jazzy riffs in the key of D on Tuesday and C-minor power chords on Friday, sometimes producing those sublime, only-in-the-moment runs that transcend pop hits and cut to the core.

No other local restaurant of this quality is quite as nimble or so surprising.

Be forewarned: Dinner here is not for picky eaters who can’t give up control of their taste buds to the kitchen. And food allergies can’t always be accommodated, although there's always something on the menu for most.

But for adventurous types and frequent diners constantly in search of new flavors, few meals can be quite as thrilling.

Mabel Gray, 23825 John R, Hazel Park; Dinner only Tues.-Sat.; reservations accepted; 248-398-4300 and mabelgraykitchen.com

Contact Mark Kurlyandchik: 313-222-5026 or mkurlyandchik@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mkurlyandchik and Instagram: mkurlyandchik.