If you’re a restaurateur and you’re gonna roll out an opulent eatery with an over-the-top, sybaritic vibe like that at Mad Nice, the new-ish upscale Italian-inspired spot in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, then it should be backed up by plates that bang, sing, and impart flavors worthy of the surrounding hype. If not, you may pass muster with some who came for an experience first and a meal second, but discerning diners, those concerned with culinary excellence over interior design wheelies and loud minimal house, may find the whole thing a bit chachi and amateur-ish.
It’s a big risk to take.
The crew behind Mad Nice was brave enough to take that chance. The restaurant is the latest concept from restaurateur Jeremy Sasson’s Heirloom Hospitality, which also does the Townhouse restaurants in Birmingham and downtown Detroit, as well as Prime + Proper, also in Detroit. The latter, a high-end steakhouse notorious for its rowdiness, holds an interior and pose that are not quite as bonkers as Mad Nice, but anyone familiar with Prime + Proper wouldn’t be surprised that Mad Nice was Sasson’s next step.
The setting he and the interior design firm Parini created is unlike anything else in Detroit, as is the experience. The coral, sea green, and opulent white palette across whimsical modern furniture is undeniably interesting. And the people-watching is fantastic. Looking at my notes, a co-diner and I used descriptives like “Candy Land,” “Jersey Shore nightclub,” “sex dungeon door,” “Circus Circus,” “Barbie,” “South Beach mall,” “high-end Cheesecake Factory,” “whose ego?,” and so on.
It’s a high-energy dining experience with loud music and young diners ripping shots at the bar, and it doesn’t feel so much like a pre-club stop as much as the first club of the night.
Mad Nice at times brings to mind the short-lived Midtown French restaurant Savant, which offered caviar and edible gold “bumps,” a dollop served on the customer’s fist — as one would consume cocaine — in an item called “The Finer Things in Life” that also included a Champagne chaser. Sure, it was fairly wacky, but Savant backed it up — it turned out some of Detroit’s finest dishes for a moment, before everything went south and it went out of business.
So does Mad Nice’s food match the spectacle? The menu, by executive chef Myles McVay of Ferndale’s former Otus Supply, has some intriguing options among a mix of plates like oysters, crudo, pizza, whole branzino, heavy duty meats, and pasta like ravioli with black truffle, chili, and kombucha and egg yolk. A pleasant surprise was the “Huge MF short rib” which we had to get on the name alone, and, indeed, it’s a massive portion of fairly tender short rib on a The Flintstones-esque bone, all of which is enhanced with sweet and complex mole and an herby chimichurri that worked surprisingly well together. The package is crowned with roasted squash ribbons, though a co-diner said it at best reached “decent wedding food” level.
At the bar, the mezcal in the Detroit Aristocratic Club cocktail was hard to detect, but the green chartreuse, lemongrass, grapefruit, and lime blended beautifully. There’s a long selection of Italian wines, a short beer list, and a decent number of amaros and aperitifs.
The raw items should be avoided. What makes beef tartare great is the interplay between the flavor and texture in the meat and whatever it’s mixed with. The bites of the tartare ranged from mealy and bland to mushy and overly garlicky, but at no point did the beef’s flavor shine through, nor was there ever any effective interplay with the pickled mustard seed or olives. I powered through the patty because it seemed like the plate had potential, though a co-diner only took a bite before giving up. The scallop crudo came with a huge portion of scallops, but they were a bit fishy and the strawberry mix that laced it tasted like a Glade PlugIns air freshener.
The smoky, tender pork shank was complimented well with an herby, acidic bean and asparagus salad, but two sides held what proved to be the meal’s best bites. A cucumber and dill salad reminded me of a version of an Eastern European vinegar-soaked cucumber plate my mom used to make. This arrives with sesame, dill, kohlrabi, and acid from the lime, and here the acid, creaminess, and crunch all jibed. We also enjoyed sweet and hot broccoli drenched with tamari honey and hit with spiced sunflower seed. Put this on a meat and you’ve got a hit entree.
The service wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t reach the level one expects for a restaurant that presents itself as Mad Nice does. And that was the theme. Mad Nice went big, and it’s not terrible — it just doesn’t live up to its own hype.
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