Detroit saved by hip foodies? Not so much.
The Dining section’s cover today in the Times is an earnest but problematic depiction of local model-turned-developer-turned-restaurateur-turned-mayoral-appointee Phil Cooley as the savior of the city. It’s, well, interesting that, in a city where the population is over 80 percent black, the two “spokespeople” chosen by the Times are hip white dudes. (Toby Barlow, a writer whose creds include an op-ed promoting Detroit, is the other annointed ‘spokesperson.’)
I understand, of course that Cooley’s a far more interesting story for the NYT than the dudes who are working to make their neighborhoods safer. But it’s offputting to see stories about the role of food in Detroit’s renaissance, like Christine Muhlke’s in the NYT magazine’s food issue, ignore longstanding grassroots work like that of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. The telling anecdote Muhlke highlighted in that story? “Young artists and college debtors [who] have formed a wonky farm village.”
The thing that, as a reporter, I’ve found most compelling about Detroit is that the food movement there is deeply rooted in neighborhoods and the people who live there—many of whom have lived in the city for a long time. It’s not being led by Phil Cooley or Toby Barlow (nor, incidentally, would either of them say it was; that’s merely the implied takeaway from the Times’ piece). For all the energy being brought to the city by the younger and hipper demographic, the soul of the city’s rebirth is in far scrappier corners of the city. And that’s really what makes Detroit such a fascinating place: Not that creative, hip restaurateurs with inheritances are doing cool shit, but that retirees, teachers and children of factory workers are, too.
