Lola's, Detroit

- 100% 

it is a great place w/an above average menu. more»

My favorite entree is the spicy catfish ( $ 15 ) served on mashed red skins and green beans ( yum ). more»

GREAT Food , but a little pricey : LOLA's is a fantastic resturant with an attentive staff and excellent selection of foods. more»

There's a large sports bar on one side , a dining room with a dance floor on the other and a VIP room on the lower level. more»

Good to know that after many years spent and countless meals eaten - exquisite, really good, so-so and I-barely-kept-it-down - as a food critic, I can still be surprised. It happened in downtown Detroit. And, of all things, it was wings. There's plenty more to commend Lola's, the jazzy, comfortably friendly bright spot that opened last September in what's been a cursed location just inside the Gratiot gateway to Harmonie Park. But, when I stopped by last week for a first-impression lunch, the chicken wings came to the table first. You always remember your first time.Chef (and general manager) Phil Jones is a man to watch. I don't know his bona fides, and hung up the phone when I started to call for a chat. For now, anyway, I want to hold on to the mystery. In photographs, and as he ate at the bar while we enjoyed lunch, Jones has what seems to be a perpetual hangdog look on his round face. Is he thinking about something amazing to do with stuff as prosaic as mac-and-cheese or chicken soup? Does he have a vision for combining seemingly disparate, mundane ingredients into a show-stopping feed? Did he get a flat on the way to work? Last occupied by home-of-the-slider Hunter House (it moved across the street into the newish Hilton Garden Hotel), the space shares a short block with a few spots that promised not long ago to be a rebirth for Harmonie Park, somewhat hidden between Gratiot and the theater district. There was the aggressively hip Intermezzo, a white-tablecloth Italian outfit with one of the coolest bars in the metro area. It closed in the summer of 2004 "for renovations" and, as that phrase often foretells, now is just a darkened memory. Next door is the Rhino @ Harmonie Park, a spiffed-up version of the old Rhinoceros Club in the warehouse district. It replaced a noisy but otherwise forgettable snacks-and-booze operation that never came close to getting its act together .If there's anyplace in downtown.