30 metro Detroit restaurants that are gone but not forgotten

By Metro Times editorial staff on Fri, May 18, 2018 at 7:54 pm

Saying goodbye can be tough. Especially when it comes to some of our favorite restaurants. From Italian staples, hole-in-the-wall diners, and trendy eateries, here are some of metro Detroit's restaurants that left too soon (and for some, not soon enough.) Either way, these dining destinations forever hold a place in our hearts — and stomachs.

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Roma Cafe
The well-loved Italian spot was Detroit’s oldest running restaurant when it closed last year. The good news is one of its old chefs remodeled and reopened a new restaurant in the old spot.
Photo via Facebook

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Plaka
Will Greektown ever be the same without this 24-hour spot to feed the creatures of the night? Closed in 2016.
Photo via Yelp, Plaka

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Torino
Fresh off a 2012 retooling, Torino was heaped with praise from multiple publications, including a 215 reader’s pick as Best Restaurant in Oakland County. But in June of 2015, the owner, chef, and bar manager decided they’d rather close than deal with repeated trouble from the Health Department about how small their kitchen was.
Photo via Facebook Nicole Rupersburg

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Schweizer's Restaurant
Once upon a time, an immigrant community swept over Detroit and changed its character forever: the Germans. Downtown’s restaurant scene suddenly was filled with the lip-smacking gemütlichkeit of hearty peasant fare washed down with beer. A stalwart of that dining scene was Schweizer’s, established 1862. We once reprinted an old recipe of the restaurant’s we found for sauerbraten and potato pancakes. It closed in 1991, and in 2014, General Motors tore the building down.
Photo via MT file

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Angelina Italian Bistro
After a decade of enlivening Broadway, this nifty Italian eatery closed in December 2017. But there’s hope: We see an announcement on the restaurant’s website that information on a new location is promised soon.
Photo via EatDrinkMichigan.wordpress

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Topinka's
There were two Topinka’s in Detroit: Topinka's on the Boulevard across from the Fisher Theatre and Topinka's Country House, at Seven Mile Road and Telegraph. The Detroit location was taken by fire.
Photo via Flickr, CardBoardAmerica

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The Summit
The restaurant at the top of the Renaissance Center back in the old days, the Summit was something of a standout, one of that rare breed of restaurants perched atop a building upon a rotating floor. It was also atop the Western Hemisphere’s tallest hotel. The Summit closed before the space received a $10 million makeover in 2004 that did away with the revolving platform.
Photo via Flickr, Wikipedia

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The Golden Mushroom
The Golden Mushroom was a Southfield institution, started when co-owner chef Milos Cihelka left Detroit’s London Chop House to strike out on his own. The restaurant’s prized Golden Mushroom soup can still be had at Steve & Rocky's in Novi, where it’s renamed Chef Milos' Mushroom Soup. No photos seem to exist of the Mush, but lawyer Jeffrey Fieger loved the damn place so much he had the bar installed in the basement of his law offices.
Photo via , Facebook

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Victor Lim's
With a prime location on Grand Circus Park, Lim’s has been described as the closest a Detroit chop suey joint got to fine dining in the middle of the 20th century. Images online of the elegantly designed menus support that view.
Photo via Detroit Historical Society

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