I was watching the Michigan-Michigan State game yesterday (28-14 MSU – heh) and during halftime was flipping though the channels and stumbled upon the Travel Channel’s “Food Wars.” The episode was “Detroit Coney Wars – American v. Lafayette.”

Although I was a big Athens fan during my misspent youth, that was simply because it was the closest. I’d be eating sooner. You understand. But American and Lafayette are the originals – a kind of Mecca for coney connoisseurs. Plus, they sell beer.

American Coney Island opened in downtown Detroit in 1917, by Greek immigrant Gust Keros. Keros and his brother got into an argument quite soon after and split their restaurant into two parts–the present day Lafayette and American Coney Islands, which are next door to each other. Both restaurants are still owned by the descendants of the two Keros brothers.

In the Food Wars episode, they had fans from each restaurant voting based on a blind taste test. To the credit of the fans, they all chose their preferred restaurant in the blind taste test, even though the coneys each restaurant serves are almost identical. The tie was broken by a food writer from one of the newspapers who voted for American.

Last Updated on January 26, 2016 by admin