[NEWS BITES] Happy's Pizza and Pub open in West Bloomfield

Oh, the things that come through my email. So. Despite the owner of Happy's Pizza, Happy Asker (his name is actually Happy! That makes me...happy), being indicted for tax fraud, the local pizza chain continues to expand. Most recently they opened Happy's Pizza and Pub in West Bloomfield, a sit-down, dine-in version of the fast food pizzeria with a full bar. My feeling was that it would be more your standard sit-down Buddy's than Jet's Sportsroom in Chelsea, but nay, apparently they are also trying to tackle the "eat/drink local" clientele. Here's the presser:

Happy’s Pizza is proud to announce the opening of their new Happy’s Pizza and Pub location in West Bloomfield, MI (7170 Orchard Lake Road), which officially opened on Monday, July 29.

The new Pizza and Pub was originally a Happy’s Pizza location, but re-opened as a sports bar and family-style restaurant. The Happy’s Pizza and Pub store features a full restaurant atmosphere, with over 40 flat screen televisions, 28 domestic craft beers and seats over 200 people, making it a great place to connect with family and friends while watching the big game. The new location has a full bar while still providing customers with the traditional Happy’s Pizza menu and concept of feeding a family of four for under $20.

“We couldn’t be more excited to open a Happy’s Pizza and Pub right here in Metro Detroit,” said Jason Curis, co-CEO for Happy’s Pizza. “Detroit is one of the best sports cities in the U.S. Now our customers will have the option of ordering in or coming down to the Pizza and Pub, where they can enjoy a great atmosphere while still eating the same delicious food.”

Happy’s Pizza offers over 220 menu items ranging from pizza to salads, chicken, ribs and seafood but will expand their menu in the pub to offer new dishes. Happy’s is best known for having pricing that allows a family to eat dinner for under $20.00 and deliver within a 5 mile radius of the store (248-406-5555). New pub hours are 11am – 2am, every day of the week.

Happy’s Pizza also offers franchising opportunities, more information upon request.

About Happy’s Pizza and Pub
The first Happy’s Pizza and Pub location opened in March of 2013 in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. The store features a full restaurant atmosphere, making it a good place to connect with family and friends while watching the big game. Happy’s Pizza and Pub will have a full bar while still providing customers with the traditional Happy’s Pizza menu.
www.happyspizzapub.com

About Happy’s Pizza
The first Happy’s Pizza opened in 1996 on Detroit’s Northeast side on a busy corner and quickly became known for not only its pizza, but also its barbeque ribs, fried chicken and seafood. Happy’s Pizza soon turned into a household name in Michigan and has expanded into eight other states. Happy’s Pizza’s primary mission is to provide families with the finest quality foods at the lowest possible price and to assure that each and every restaurant location a charitable leader throughout the communities that they serve. For more information visit www.happyspizza.com.

A lifetime ago I lived in West Bloomfield and it was pretty much a bar and restaurant desert. There were a few decent spots but they usually didn't last long. Things have been looking up a bit out there (and don't forget, Huerto Restaurant and Tequila Bar is opening there this fall) and I'll be honest, (a) pizza-lover that I am, and (b) beer-lover that I am, and (c) Happy's Pizza cheese bread-lover that I am, I might just check this place out next time I'm out that way. (Even though Jet's is still a thousand times better, OBVIOUSLY.)

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The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

There are European cities that are smaller.

I've spent the last few weeks being Grand Social Media Master Bloggery Empress Extraordinaire for GR Beer Week and it all culminated in Winter Beer Fest this weekend. While I have no plans to recap the whole excursion, this guy's pretty much sums it up. #11 x1000. [GR Beer Week / MLive]

Dan Gearig of El Guapo - Fresh Mexican Grill and The Mac Shack is showing metro Detroit how to build a better food truck with his new food truck fabrication business Red Beard Customs. The first of the fleet will hit the strEATs this spring and will be headed up by the fine folks at Corridor Sausage Co.  [Metromode]

So I posed this question: "Question: will Biggby Coffee be accused of being an evil corporate empire a la Starbucks once they go national, or will people still consider them a 'local' company that we should support since they're headquartered in MI? It's those fine lines, you know?" The answers were predictably polarized. [Crain's / EID FB]

The same thing happened here: "All of metro Detroit's dreams are coming true! The Cheesecake Factory will open its first-ever (and LONG discussed) metro Detroit location later this year. Where? Novi. Where else?" [Detroit News]

Looks like Oak Park might have caught on that Prohibition ended. [Detroit News]

Luciano del Signore once again makes it to the James Beard Foundation Awards semifinals for "Best Chef Great Lakes." After just getting "Restaurant of the Year" for Bacco Ristorante, it would seem Lucky Luciano is having a pretty good year so far! [JBF]

Happy 100th Happy's Pizza! Their pizza is just okay but their stuffed cheese bread is hot buttered crack. [Model D]

LOLZ. Steve from Mallie's Grill N Bar is a great guy and these dudes look like total twunts. I hope someone IDs them and I enjoy this opportunity to shame them publicly. [MyFoxDetroit]

Cafe Habana in Royal Oak has closed and will be replaced by Monk this spring, which will be an even MORE Belgian of their sister Belgian concept Bastone. [EID FB]

Awrey Bakeries, LLC: SAVED! One hell of a frosted hail mary here. [Detroit News]

So, tentacles are big right now. [Freep]

Jess Daniel of FoodLab Detroit wrote this extremely thoughtful piece on network weaving and building a good food network in Detroit for Urban Innovation Exchange. [UIX]

This woman is changing the meaning of the term "foodie." Read more about the founder and mission of Restaurant Opportunities Center and COLORS-Detroit. [In These Times]

Sylvia Rector loves Pizzeria Biga's new brunch. [Freep]

Butter Run Saloon in St. Clair Shores sounds like a fun spot! [Detroit News]

Another metro Detroit cupcakery will be featured on Cupcake Wars: this time it is Rockin' Cupcakes in Rochester Hills. [Rochester Patch]

Ann Arbor

Chelsea now has a smokehouse, Smokehouse 52 BBQ, in addition to the recently-opened Chelsea Alehouse. Chelsea may now proceed with being a city. [AnnArbor.com]

I'm kind of in love/obsessed with the whole concept of Selma Cafe. While I've yet to make it out to A2 at 7am on a Friday (awful early plus a whole of a driving for breakfast on a workday), one of these days I'd love to AirBnB it for a little weekday staycation (to clarify: they rent out rooms in their home where these events are also held through AirBnB). [Concentrate]

Luciano del Signore is all OVER the news this week! Here's more on the new Pizzeria Biga opening in Ann Arbor (*cough*FIRST*cough*). [AnnArbor.com]

Café Zola owners will open a new restaurant in the Arbor Hills Crossing development late this summer.  [Concentrate]

What Crêpe in Ann Arbor opened quietly. [AnnArbor.com]


Beerie
A proposed bill would make some significant changes to the current liquor laws in Michigan, particularly as they apply to craft breweries and beer distribution, which of course the president of the Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association has a problem with. [MLive]

Beer reps from Powers do the Harlem Shake. [You Tube]

Drink beer after your workout! [Washington Post]


Miscellaneous 
~Calling it: on February 18, 2013 at 8:35am (CST), poutine jumped the shark. Also, for those of you who didn't know, Chicago invented America. [Sun Times]

~Guy Fieri failed to buy the full domain name for Guy's American Kitchen + Bar. So this guy did instead. And put up an "alternate" menu with items like "Superbowl Bash Bro'det ($37.95): a bidet jammed to the brim with bubbling, overflowing Velveeta over a hidden layer of hamburger-fisted pig skins and a generous sprinkling of Dirty South Couch Crumbs. The bidet is an mp3 player that plays Smash Mouth while you eat. Serves one." [Business Insider]

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[EID Feature] Big Boy, My Big Boy

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

Question I am most often asked, #1: "What's your favorite restaurant?" (Note to the audience: I really hate that question.)

Question I am most often asked, #2: "How did you get 'into' food?"*

My history with food isn't really all that romantic. Shall we begin like David Copperfield?

I've been eating food for as long as I can remember. CRAZY, I know. There was really no impetus for it; just sort of a situation of basic human needs being met kind of a deal.

Okay, I'll stop being a sh*twit. Those of you who have been a Nicole Rupersburg Superfan for awhile have already seen my bio, but for the rest of you I'll repeat this snippet: "I grew up in a household where Shake 'N Bake and Hamburger Helper was de rigueur. Dining 'out' meant a cheeseburger at Big Boy. (And I still to this day love Big Boy.)"

I wrote that a couple of years ago, and I got a lot of positive feedback about it. People really seemed to personally relate to the part about Big Boy.

The thing is, most of you probably have a Big Boy story. The family hamburger chain (headquartered in Warren, Michigan) is ubiquitous in Southeastern Michigan, and no matter what kind of family you grew up in -- no matter how rich or how poor, how city or how suburban -- odds are your parents wrangled all you unruly children into a Big Boy at some point, where you ate their famous Big Boy Burger (the original double-decker ... yup, McDonald's swiped it from them) and drank their hand-dipped shakes served in a fountain glass with the stainless steel mixing cup with MORE shake in it on the side. You remember the brown octagon-shaped tiles, the orange-brown vinyl booths, the one section under the skylight (in every location), and coloring with dull crayons on the paper placemat and all over the iconic large lad.

As part of a corporate-wide re-branding initiative, Big Boy is now referring to itself in marketing and inside the restaurants as your Big Boy. When I walked into the location at Hall Rd. and Garfield in Clinton Township and was greeted with, "Welcome to your Big Boy!," the girl had no way of knowing that this really was MY Big Boy.

Most of my youngest childhood years were spent in Fraser. We went out to eat as a family probably once or twice a month, and it was always to Big Boy, and always at the Fraser location on Groesbeck and Kelly Rd. (long-since closed). My father and I also had a monthly Sunday breakfast ritual. We had to go all the way over to the other Big Boy in Fraser because our Big Boy didn't have the breakfast bar (which was a huge source of excitement and anticipation for me, and most surely marked the beginning of my sacred brunching). Then I got older and things changed. I started high school. I started dating a guy from a different high school. His friends all hung out at Big Boy, and therefore so did we.

When an elderly person succumbs fully to dementia, there is a specific point in their lives in which they seem to live in perpetuity. For me, it will be these days. It was the whole of my high school existence (and most of college); we sat in Big Boy, chain-smoked cigarettes, drank bottomless cups of coffee and talked. About life, the universe and everything (also Douglas Adams). About music and movies and books--Metallica, Jeff Noon, Beavis and Butthead, Sister Machine Gun, the State, everything, nothing, it didn't matter. Hours and hours and hours and hours we spent there. Sometimes our group was only three, sometimes we filled an entire section (looking back I pity those poor waitresses). This parking lot was our pre-concert meeting place; inside we held our post-concert powwows. We made lifelong friends, we fell in and out of love, we had our hearts broken, we learned we were smarter than our parents and also how to be jaded. We experienced all the magnified extremes of raw emotion only possible when you're a teenager. We were adolescents playing at adulthood. All here, at this Big Boy.

I don't often accept invitations from PR reps for media tastings and events. But when I got an email from John Fuller inviting me out to taste some of the new dishes at this Big Boy, MY Big Boy, I couldn't resist.

I walked in to find the place almost unrecognizable. After a $400,000 remodel in mid-July (this location being the first in the company to go through the full re-branding), the space is brighter, cheerier, and more stylish with also a bit of an old-fashioned soda shop throwback appeal. (I remember the last time they remodeled, probably in the late '90s. They shut down for three months. We didn't know what to do. This was how Ram's Horn, Denny's and National Coney Island got thrown into our rotation: it was Big Boy diaspora.) They've introduced a variety of new menu items with a focus on freshness, utilizing more local products, and the same large portions, hearty flavors and low prices that have made Big Boy a family favorite for 75 years.

John and I sit down and order up several rounds of food to sample. There's the BBQ Ranch Chicken Tenders (a sandwich made with chicken tenders on a grilled sesame roll with melted cheddar cheese, tomatoes, shredded lettuce, ranch dressing and BBQ sauce), the Buffalo Chicken Salad (a new menu item with choice of grilled chicken or chicken tenders with tomatoes, red onion, bleu cheese crumbles and croutons, then topped with their signature Buffalo sauce and bleu cheese dressing), Chicken Parmesan (an old favorite with breaded chicken breast, melted mozzarella and marinara sauce), a Coney Dog (from the all-new footlong hot dog menu, loaded with chili, diced white onions and yellow mustard), and the Best Burger on the Planet (another new item from the new Burger Lovers' Burgers menu, and while the name itself may be a bit ambitious it is indeed a DAMN tasty burger). And to wash it all down, a Peanut Butter and Jelly Shake, made with real peanut butter and quite literally just like the real thing blended with ice cream.

John and I sit down to sample all the different items, and they're every bit as reliably big and hearty as you have always been able to expect from your Big Boy. Big Boy epitomizes the American diner: as trends move this way or that (micro, gastro, organic, etc.) there is still a huge faction of America concerned less with celebrity chefs and haute food trends and more with being able to get a good meal at a good price. I will repeat this, ad infinitum: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Big Boy may not be gastro this-or-that, but it's damn tasty diner food. It may be full of blue hairs and screaming kids, but that's the atmosphere of the classic American diner (that and teenagers who will take up several tables for hours sitting, drinking coffee and philosophizing).

When I launched Eat It Detroit, the most important thing to me was to be as all-inclusive as possible. This means putting up fine dining against cheap diners, profiling unknown business owners in NW Detroit alongside the latest white dude opening a cocktail bar, running back-to-back Hot Lists on hot dogs and halal restaurants. To me, Big Boy fully represents that all-inclusive ethos. It's a chain (sneer); it's a non-trendy family restaurant serving pedestrian American diner food (sneer); it appeals to the lowest common denominator (sneer). But the classic Big Boy double-decker sandwich is still one of my favorite burgers, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Plus, hi, their pies and desserts? AWESOME.

Sitting with John and talking about life, work, travel and Detroit for a couple of hours reminded me of why I loved Big Boy so much in the first place. More often than not, sharing a meal is less often about the food and more about the people that you're with and the memories you associate with the experience, and that is something the Food Network can never package and sell.

*Actually, that's a lie. The second most-often asked question I get is "How do you eat so much and stay so skinny?" I'm on the almost-double-digit side of size 8; I ain't that skinny. Anyway, for the purposes of this, we'll stick with the other #2.

Want to see more? Check out the Flickr set here.

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[EID Feature] Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza: Reinventing the Pizza Wheel

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

In 2009, Slice (a subsection of Serious Eats) proclaimed coal-fired ovens the hottest new trend in pizza, also citing Florida as Ground Zero for the explosion of the trend. This is due, at least in part, to Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza.

Tony Sacco's opened their first store in the Bonita Springs area of Florida in July 2008. By early 2009 there was a demand for franchising, and by summer of '09 they began selling their first franchises. A franchisee opened a second Florida location in Fort Meyers; others franchisees opened stores in Illinois and Indiana with more scheduled in Ohio, North Carolina, and a slew more in greater Chicagoland (yep--Chicago will FINALLY have a decent pizza franchise). There are now a total of 18 Tony Sacco's restaurants already open, sold or planned, and in SE Michigan we're about to see several more open in 2012.

Owners Chuck Senatore and Geoge Kurajian are originally from Michigan, so it was only natural that as they opened more of their own stores that they would open one here. The Novi location opened in January 2011, and brought with it what might actually be among the first of its kind in metro Detroit: a coal-fired pizza oven. (The only other local pizzeria we know of using a coal-fired oven is Tomatoes Apizza.)

The idea for Tony Sacco's came into existence as Senatore and Kurajian were looking for a project. At the time they also had a third partner, Tony Sacco, but he left the business before they even opened their first store. "We liked the name," Chuck says. "It's a cool name, and we already had the fuse lit with that name so Tony let us use it and now we own the trademark so it's our name to use." Besides, it sounds a lot better than "George Kurajian's Coal Oven Pizza" (sorry, George). "People call me Tony half the time but whatever," Chuck laughs.

In 2008 they got a good space in the largest lifestyle mall in America, and because of all the snowbirds and tourists descending on that area they were able to share their concept with people from all over the country and world, getting exposure that wouldn't have been possible if they had been located anywhere else. "It was really strange how all the pieces fell into place," Chuck reflects. "We've never even tried to sell a franchise; this has all been people who came to us!"

They decided to go with coal-fired pizza because it was a simple concept they could go anywhere with that appeals to everyone. It was also a solid concept during down economic times because pizza is reasonably priced but also gourmet in its own right. "We could see how coal was going to be the next big thing on the horizon for pizza," explains Chuck. He traces the history of pizza in America from the immigrant-owned Italian eateries who brought traditional pizza styles with them, to the mass-production corporate chains making pizzas glopped high with cheese and toppings, to the "esoteric weird pizzas [places were doing] after chains sputtered out." Chuck says, "Until you start cooking something different with a different method you’re still making the same product. We’re doing something completely different by cooking it with coal. You're not going to change the flavor profiles until you start cooking it differently."

Coal-fired ovens may seem like a "new" concept, but really it's a very old one. Chuck insists they aren't reinventing the wheel here; they're just doing things in a more traditional way that has since been all but forgotten. "We had been to some of the old authentic coal oven places," Chuck says. "We wanted to do something that was high-end, something we could run with." He identified that the trend in pizza and food was moving more towards healthier, natural, gourmet items, which is really how pizza started.  "There's always a need for high-quality, high-end product. Pizza has gotten so far away from that it was just crap. There are not a lot of sit-down high-end pizza places where you can bring your family, a date, an office party, whatever. And we also knew if we have a high-end environment with high-end product then we need a high-end cooking method."

Enter the $50,000 custom-made coal-fired oven from Wood Stone in Washington. The oven at the Novi store weighs 7,000 pounds. The oven in their new Lansing store (breaking ground on Nov. 14) will be the largest coal oven Wood Stone has ever manufactured. The oven uses only anthracite coal from Pennsylvania, the cleanest burning solid fuel on the planet (cleaner even than wood with no soot no odor). It burns at a very high temperature allowing pizzas to cook in 4-5 minutes so the crust will be crunchy but still chewy on the inside and the toppings don’t get killed.

At Tony Sacco's, there are no freezers, no fryers and no microwave ovens. Vegetables are fresh and cut by hand. They make their sauce and dough from scratch. "We aren't really being magical," Chuck says. "We're just going back to the beginning when things were done right and were high quality." They strive for a balanced flavor profile--the don't overwhelm the pie with cheese, don't over-cook the toppings, don't add much salt or sugar. "Even our sauce is just olive oil, fresh basil and ground tomatoes." Because of this, their pizza is ACTUALLY healthy; a slice of cheese pizza from a 12'' pie is only 135 calories and 3.5 grams of fat. "If anyone asked me how we could make it better I honestly don't know. Every restaurant says, 'We use the finest ingredients,' but we actually do."

Everything here is made from scratch in-house and with hearty, fresh ingredients. The antipasto salad has big, beautiful slices of tomato and huge chunks of ham and salami. The marinated chicken wings are oven roasted for a smooth, smoky flavor. The garlic rotoli are roly-poly rounds of soft, homemade dough slathered in olive oil, garlic and Romano cheese (at $5 for a basket of 8 they're a damn steal; pace yourself because you won't want to put these down).

The pizzas are true Neapolitan style--big and round and semi-thin with fresh toppings and generous amounts of olive oil. Choose from toppings like Roma tomatoes, Kalamata olives, roasted garlic, zucchini and standard meats, or select one of Sacco's Specialty Pizzas like the Margherita (made simply with crushed Italian plum tomato sauce, fresh soft mozzarella and basil), Bianco (made with olive oil, ricotta, provolone, Romano and mozzarella) or Capo (pepperoni, sweet Italian sausage, roasted mushrooms and caramelized onions). The flavors are at once light and full, fresh and colorful, and the crust is a perfect balance of crunchy and chewy, tender and resistant. The robust olive oil creates a delicate harmony between the flavors; close your eyes and imagine you're in Italy, because this is exactly what the pizza there is like.

Cap off your meal with their Sacco's Shortcake, a coal-oven baked shortcake loaded with plump, juicy berries and homemade vanilla mousse, or try the liquid version under their "Specialty Cocktails."

Inside Tony Sacco's is more upscale than your average pizzeria. The floor plan is very open and casual, but they ditch "mom and pop red and white checker cloth" look of most eye-talian eateries. "We have a high-energy, upbeat environment. That's really what we set out to do; we wanted a concept that could carry the next 20 years. There are no pictures of Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin or the Rat Pack. Kids in their 20s don't even know who these guys are! [That photos of Frank Sinatra when he got arrested,] it's in every different Italian restaurant on the planet. It's played out!" At Tony Sacco's you can come in, enjoy a nice glass of wine or a cocktail along with your pizza and be in an environment that would suit a date as much as a dinner out with friends.

Right now the Novi location is the only location in Michigan (check out their $6.95 lunch buffet too), but 2012 will see the opening of the Lansing store as well as the Ann Arbor and Rochester Hills franchisees. In metro Detroit we have pizzerias using stone ovens, brick ovens, wood-fired ovens, and good ol' gas ... now taste the difference clean-burning coal can make. (As far as stocking stuffers go, it's not such a bad deal.)

Want to see more? Check out the Flickr set here.

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