From Mosul to Motor City

posted on: Mar 10, 2015

DETROIT — It’s easy to miss Tigris Restaurant in Detroit’s Chaldean Town, a tiny stretch of businesses and residences on Seven Mile Road just off Woodward Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare. Chaldean Town is like many parts of Detroit: a mix of still-operational community centers and businesses with an increasing number of blighted vacant storefronts. Tigris’s exterior — nondescript, with foggy windows — could be mistaken for either.

Tigris is no doubt a restaurant, however, offering lamb, chicken, and even quail dishes, with most menu items under $5. But it’s also a gathering place for the city’s Chaldean population. Most Chaldeans these days live in the city’s suburbs, but Tigris is a haven for older men who come to play cards and dominoes, keeping score on sheets torn from Newport cartons. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke overpowers the meat spinning on a rotisserie in the back, and occasionally some of the younger patrons play music from the home country on their cell phones.

Source: foreignpolicy.com