The flagship, full-service Anita’s Kitchen in Ferndale features traditional Lebanese recipes, Michigan craft cocktails and beers, raw juices and smoothies, and patio dining. Start with an appetizer of hummus, baba ghannouge, falafel, or with lentil soup. The menu includes chicken and beef shawarma, gyros, and lamb burgers.

At first glance at the menu, it might be hard to map the food, a mix of modern regional dishes centered by eastern European comfort food. Specialties include pierogies, potato pancakes, and kapusta. For breakfast, there’s a wonderful selection of omelets from around the world.

For a taste of the bayou, try a New Orleans’ traditional po’ boy sandwich (shrimp, fried oyster, voodoo chicken, catfish), with a bowl of gumbo ya ya or shrimp bisque. If you’re up for something heavier, go for jambalaya or the red beans and rice with andouille sandwich. Finish things off with bread pudding with bourbon sauce.

Got Pho? made its debut in the middle of the pandemic. Yet it’s building up a solid clientele with its food, which can be easily ordered for carryout or through DoorDash. This traditional Vietnamese noodle soup comes spicy or with a choice of protein (beef, tofu, chicken, shrimp, pork, or imitation crab) perfect for slurping.

Inyo Restaurant and Lounge is known for its fresh sushi, sashimi, and Asian-fusion cuisine but it’s also a standout for its creative cocktails and cook factor. On the weekends, dim sum brunch has traditional bites served with mojitos, mimosas, and bloody marys. Happy hour is 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and in 2021, there’s a new menu of cocktails featuring Roku Japanese gin.

Long a jewel of Ferndale, Bangkok Cafe is consistently excellent and their prices have remained reasonable and the service stellar. The menu is lengthy but is classic Thai: curries, pad cashew, pad thai, fried rice, rice noodles, served with a choice of beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, crabmeat, or scallop. Mind your spice level. Entrees are enough to serve two.

Balkan House is known for Eastern European dishes, specifically the Balkans-style döner kebab, made with the owner’s recipe for lepinja bread and stuffed with shaved lamb or chicken, purple cabbage, and a special döner sauce.   Reflecting on its Bosnian roots, Balkan House is a halal restaurant and doesn’t serve alcohol, so complete the meal with Turkish coffee and baklava.

The food at Assaggi Bistro is a mix of Rustic Italian, and country French with a hint of Lebanese. The menu includes pasta, flatbread pizza, and veal, duck, and chicken entrees, with menu changes based on seasonal ingredients. Customer favorites include the rigatoni Bolognese, which is flavored with hearty meat sauce, bechamel, and parmesan, and the chicken Francese, seasoned with Parmesan, orecchiette with eggplant, mushrooms, olives, tomatoes, and lemon beurre blanc.

Even before the pandemic, Wing’s Garden was a popular spot for takeout. This bustling restaurant, just across the Ferndale border, is typical of old-school Chinese-American restaurants: the menu is extensive; service is fairly fast; and combo plates come with an entree, choice of fried rice and an egg or spring roll. Portions are large and sizable enough for parties of two or four. Entrees are flavorful enough that you may skip the extra soy sauce.

Right across the border in Oak Park, this family-owned Salvadoran / Mexican restaurant offers the best cheap eats you’d find in El Salvador in Mexican. This means $2.50 for pupusas (cheese and pumpkin, locoro and cheese) or $2.50 for tamales de pollo. There’s also Salvadoran breakfast with plantains and eggs.