Few dishes in Detroit hit like Cibo’s nduja and octopus with squid ink gnocchi, and the plate’s depth, inventiveness, and contrast encapsulates what makes the new-ish downtown restaurant one of the better high-end options in a city that somewhat lacks in the genre.
The dish’s inspiration, chef James Sumpter says, is Spanish octopus tapas, traditionally prepared with plenty of paprika, garlic, and potatoes. Nduja, a spicy and spreadable Italian salami pate, comes packed with garlic, paprika, and Calabrian peppers. The gnocchi, which Cibo makes with less flour so it’s more like a potato pillow, plays its role, and its squid ink adds an umami bump. The octopus is cooked sous vide, then pan-cooked in olive oil, then grilled, rendering the notoriously tough mollusk tender. The lean squid is the perfect canvas for the nduja, which adds a fattiness and holds everything together.
Most of what we tried reached that level at Cibo, where Sumpter runs six kitchens in the Cambria Hotel, right at the edge of downtown’s west side, near Corktown.
The restaurant describes itself as “Mediterranean,” which can mean any number of things, and in the Detroit area frequently suggests Lebanese fare. Sumpter says the owners are Sicilian and Chaldean, so they wanted Italian and Middle Eastern influences on the menu. Ultimately, there’s a focus on Italian, Greek, and Middle Eastern, but also some North African flavors.
The glistening space looks straight out of a coastal Mediterranean town, with plenty of sun in the day, and it offers a strong wine list and excellent bar program. Cibo’s menu has evolved a bit since its November opening as the kitchen figures out what works and sous chefs make their contributions to recipes, Sumpter says, and they’re also now shifting with the season.
Another representative plate is the kofta in which Cibo marries Greek and Middle Eastern elements. Sumpter says he embellished a lamb recipe from famed Israeli chef Michael Solomonov’s Zahav cookbook, and it’s served aside a punchy, slightly sweet tomato jam. That’s contrasted by a cucumber salad made with peeled cukes sliced super thin to pull out the water, then mixed with labneh and fresh dill. Sumpter describes it as “simple,” and on one level it is, but the interplay among the textures, saltiness, herbiness, smokiness, acidic and sweet jam, and other elements are not-so-simple, and give the dish its depth.
Also fantastic is the mussels in a shakshuka sauce with merguez, essentially a Moroccan plate. The fragrant sauce holds merguez, an awesome earthy North African sausage, and the mix is cooked with butter and wine. My one minor nitpick is that more wine could’ve been added to deepen it a bit. Regardless, don’t skip this one.
Sumpter, who has worked in kitchens around Michigan, moved to Detroit looking for a new challenge when he became an empty nester last year. He got acquainted with the potential demand for Middle Eastern cuisine here when a halal food influencer stopped in and shot some video that got 800,000 views.
He notes most meat on the menu is halal, with the exception of a steak, and the crew decided it would be a good idea to lean into some of the Middle Eastern elements. Out of that the halal half chicken was born from a plate that was more European in an earlier iteration. It is, in effect, a chef-ed up version of a chicken shawarma or a chicken and rice plate like those at New York City’s halal carts.
The chicken is a boneless half bird and its marinade recipe is also spun off of a Zahav cookbook plate. Sumpter takes an herby green onion marinade and enlivens it further with ginger, more garlic, lemon juice, spices, and herbs in an effort to produce almost a Middle Eastern chimichurri. The bird is cooked sous vide with the marinade, before the juices are removed from the bag, then reapplied as a glaze while the chicken roasts in the oven.
It arrives with a golden toum, effectively garlic sauce prepared with lemon cured cloves and turmeric. That’s accompanied by a bulgerless tabouleh, and a slightly sweet and mellow combination of pickles made with Champagne and white balsamic vinegars. Take each bite with rice or lavash.
Altogether, Cibo is one of the best higher-end dining experiences in recent memory in Detroit.
