Mom’s Spaghetti
2131 Woodward Avenue“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.”
Let’s just acknowledge for a minute that the guy who wrote that lyric, about half digested vomit on someone’s shirt, thought, yeah, that’s a good name for a restaurant.
Obviously, I’m talking about Eminem and his spaghetti restaurant appropriately (I guess?) named Mom’s Spaghetti.
Eminem was starting to get big when I was in college so Lose Yourself was a song I had on repeat for months. I was also in the theater the night 8 Mile opened in November of 2002.
My ten year old son found Eminem a few years ago and has come to love his music. He was kind of shocked when he found there is actually a restaurant in Detroit owned by Eminem called Mom’s Spaghetti. He’s been asking to go ever since he found out.
We haven’t had a reason to go to Detroit and we weren’t going to drive over there just to get spaghetti.
This past weekend, we were putting L on a flight to Orlando to spend the week with one of her friends. We typically do Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo for flights but since she was traveling alone, we wanted a direct flight and booked her out of Detroit.
She had a pretty early flight and I had a really good deal on a nearby hotel so we decided to go over Sunday night after the kids got done skating.
B was kind of bummed he didn’t get to go to Florida so we thought this was the time to bring him to Mom’s Spaghetti.
Mom’s Spaghetti is on Woodward Avenue near West Columbia Street in downtown Detroit. It’s right across from Comerica Park and right next door to The Fillmore. Don’t look for a building with the restaurant’s name on it though. It’s actually just a walk up in window in an alley between the Fillmore and the Little Caesar’s Global Resource Center and Corporate Office…the building with pizza slice shaped windows.
Obviously, there’s no parking since the restaurant is just in an alley. There was also a Red Wings game that night down the street at Little Caesar’s Arena so all of the parking lots were in event mode. I drove around the area a couple times and spotted a street parking spot a few blocks from Woodward. It had been raining but the rain had stopped. It wasn’t that far of a walk so I pulled in. Bonus, you don’t have to pay for street parking on Sunday.
There were quite a few people in Red Wings jersey’s standing in the alley when we got there. We quickly looked over the menu, which is pretty much just spaghetti, then got in line.
I keep making the point that this is a walk up window because it’s just wild to me you can order spaghetti at a walk up window in the middle of Detroit. We put in an order for three regular spaghettis, one large spaghetti with balls, four slices of garlic bread, and three drinks. The cost came out to about $41 and it took about 15 minutes for our order to be passed out the window. That part kind of surprised me since it’s just spaghetti. There’s not much to cook so I couldn’t figure out why it was taking so long.
We were handed two bags with four containers of spaghetti in them. They come in what is essentially a Chinese take out box that I guess technically you could eat while walking down the street. Each order comes with a half a slice of garlic bread so we ended up with six total slices there not realizing the orders came with that.
So, you *could* just walk down the street eating spaghetti, and if I was by myself, that’s probably what would have happened, but that would not have been good with the kids. They actually do have a small dine in area inside the Union Assembly which is the restaurant that takes up the bottom floor of the Little Caesars building. Mom’s Spaghetti has the southeast corner of that building for their kitchen and there is a small dining area right above it. The unfortunate thing is you have to walk through the whole Union Assembly restaurant to get to it. We had to squeeze through the tight rows of tables to get to the stairs.
There are only about half a dozen tables in the upstairs portion of Union Assembly that are set aside for Mom’s Spaghetti. When we walked in the restaurant, the hostess saw the bag and said we could take any of the tables with the gingham table clothes. Luckily, a group in Red Wings jersey’s were walking out as we were walking up so we were able to snag a chair and make a four top out of one of the tables pushed against the wall. There are also a couple of vintage video games and a pinball machine in the small space.
I got the Spaghetti with Balls while everyone else just got regular spaghetti. They also have options for spaghetti with Bolognese and a spaghetti sandwich which is essentially two slices of garlic bread with spaghetti between it. get a great leftover taste the first time aroundI got the Spaghetti with Balls while everyone else just got regular spaghetti. They also have options for spaghetti with Bolognese and a spaghetti sandwich which is essentially two slices of garlic bread with spaghetti between it.
The portions are a lot larger they look. Each of the take out boxes is stuffed with pasta covered in a sauce that the creator says in an interview with Eater Detroit “The goal was to make make a scratch sauce that tasted like going straight from the jar. It doesn’t taste like the kind of sauce that grandma used to bake. It tastes like the kind of stuff mom used to open.” Even the product description on the website to order jars of it says the sauce is how you “get a great leftover taste the first time around.” Definitely not high cuisine but something that has more of a homey feel to it. It’s just pretty basic. It’s kind of sweet but there’s not sugar in. There’s not really much in the way of spices either. Mom’s spaghetti makes no bones about what it is and what it isn’t. This isn’t some kind of Old World Italian thing. It’s literally meant to taste like you went to a store on the way home from work and grabbed a jar off the shelf and that’s exactly what it looks like and tastes like.
I got meatballs in mine. There were four pretty good sized meatballs that had some flavor to them. Both of the kids like meat sauce and we tried to encourage them to order the meatballs then just break them up but neither wanted to do that. I really liked the meatballs because it gave the pasta a little bit of extra flavor that wasn’t coming from the sauce.
Each of the boxes came with half a slice of garlic bread but we didn’t realize that. It was fine though, garlic bread was a buck and we all love garlic bread. Each piece was a piece of Texas Toast with butter and garlic. Very simple but also very delicious.
J and L both ate about half of there’s as did I. B, who has been begging to go to this restaurant, took about three bites and asked the dreaded question, “can I be done?” To be fair, he doesn’t really like spaghetti anyway and since this was kind of a bland spaghetti, it’s not much of a surprise. Luckily the spaghetti was already in a very convenient, very easy to close up take out box so I closed the lids on all of the boxes and took them home. Yeah, it’s not the best spaghetti but it’s easy to reheat and something I would eat at home.
Our evening at Mom’s Spaghetti didn’t end there though. As part of the upstairs dining area for Mom’s Spaghetti, there is a little museum and a merch shop. The museum is designed to look like a manufactured home like Eminem grew up in in the 80’s and 90’s. There is a small set of steps next to the table we were sitting next to and once I got everything boxed up, we went in for a look.
There are items from Eminem’s music videos, live performances and some other memorabilia is glass display cases. There’s not a lot but it’s still cool to see some of the recognizable items.
There is also a set recreation from the 8 Mile film as well as the outfit he wore from the Cleanin’ Out My Closet video.
There was some merch for sale but it was mostly Mom’s Spaghetti merch and not really Eminem merch. B was hoping to get something but there really wasn’t a lot to chose from and there was nothing he really wanted after looking around.
Is Mom’s Spaghetti worth the trip? Yeah, it’s an experience. I’m glad we did it. You literally order from a window in an alley and eat spaghetti like it’s Chinese takeout. It’s a Detroit only experience and if you’re in town for a game or a show somewhere, why not? It is not the best spaghetti you’re ever going to have but that’s by design. This whole thing just fits Eminem’s persona so well.
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