Put Enough Vegetables on Anything and You Can Convince Yourself It’s Healthy
Put Enough Vegetables on Anything and You Can Convince Yourself It’s Healthy
Hippie Hash in Ann Arbor
You know that scene in Back to the Future, where Marty McFly goes into the diner right after he’s traveled back to 1955? That is exactly what it feels like to walk into the Fleetwood Diner in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
I first noticed Fleetwood, without having any idea of its history, on a stroll around downtown Ann Arbor my first afternoon there. It’s a delightful urban center with the youthful vibe of a college town, packed full of bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, craft brewpubs, and locally-owned shops. If you’re at the corner of Liberty and Ashley, you can’t help but notice the gleaming, stainless steel, trailer-looking building with its fabulously retro sign on top: neon letters complete with the Coca-Cola logo.
The next morning, I arrived for breakfast, and learned the fascinating history of the place. The diner was first opened in 1949, built with a kit ordered from Montgomery Ward. It was manufactured by the Dag-Wood Diner Company out of Toledo, Ohio in 1948, and it’s pretty much the last remaining Dag-Wood kit diner in the country. There were several others through the years, which have all closed or have been remodeled beyond recognition from the original buildings.
From 1949 on, the diner went through a few different owners and was renamed the Fleetwood in 1971. The current owners, George Fotiadis and Adi Demiri, purchased it in 1992. It’s open 24 hours a day. A couple of other interesting claims to fame are that it had the first restaurant website in town, established in 1995, and was the first sidewalk café in Ann Arbor. Inside, the place is all dive-diner chic, with black-and-white checkered floor, fluorescent tube lighting, and thousands of stickers from all over the world covering the walls, placed there by customers (you, too, can affix your sticker of choice). There’s also a gallery of Polaroid pictures of people who have been banned from the establishment.
Fleetwood serves up a full menu of typically hearty, all-American diner grub: omelets, burgers, milkshakes, fried chicken, pork chops. They’ve also gone modern with a pretty good variety of salads and vegetarian options. But their signature dish, the thing that people talk about and keep coming back for, is the Hippie Hash.
It’s their own style of homemade hash browns, topped with grilled tomatoes, onions, green peppers, mushrooms and broccoli. The whole buttery mound is then topped with feta cheese. You can order this melty deliciousness by itself, or on top of corned beef hash, eggs any style, gyro meat or tempeh. Trust me, it’s a life-changing breakfast experience.
The secret of the Fleetwood’s magical hash browns, according to longtime cook Kevin Phizacklea, is to leave them entirely alone once they’re on the griddle. “Do not touch the hash browns,” he reiterated strongly to the Ann Arbor News. In spite of the golden grilled potatoes, he says the feta cheese is the most important part.
“We are actually the creator of the original Hippie Hash,” says Phizacklea. “It’s got the appearance of being healthy—it’s got all your vegetables, right?