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Community Corner

A Walk Down Warren Avenue

Want to discover new things to eat, new places to shop? Get out of your neighborhood!

It’s amazing how you can spend your whole life in a city and still miss so much of what is going on. West end Dearbornites hang out in west downtown; east enders on the east side. We shop at the nearest grocery store, eat at the nearest restaurants, drink coffee at our local coffee shop.

I enjoy chatting with Dearborn Patch readers about their favorite places to eat, shop, work out, or get their hair trimmed. Often times, I’ve never been to the places they suggest. What have I been missing?

With that in mind, a fellow Patcher and I took a walking tour of Warren Avenue this week.

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The Warren business corridor has always interested me. Very few vacant storefronts, lots of locally owned shops. How is this area able to thrive while so many other business districts suffer?

We started the morning at , where local artwork for sale adorns the walls, and visitors can catch a glimpse of Caffina roasting their own coffee in the warehouse next door. The smell is wonderful, and the coffee, always fresh.

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Coffee in hand, we headed east down Warren.

Probably our favorite stop was , where the friendliness of the staff and deliciousness of the food delighted us.

“Some of our readers say you have the best shawarma in town,” we told employees of the bakery as they served a seemingly endless stream of customers (it was during Ramadan, after all).

A customer from Hartland told us he comes out to Golden Bakery because it’s worth the drive. After trying that shawarma, I have to agree.

We dropped in to and , if only to see a few of the places Dearborn residents always talk about, but that I had somehow never been to. And we stopped by a few places neither of us had ever heard of–like , a specialty gift shop. Their shelves were overflowing with gifts for recent grads and recent dads; newlyweds and birthday boys and girls.

What I found in all these places is that the community keeps it alive, and many of the customers are greeted by name. The reputation of many shops that have been there for decades carries on by word of mouth, but those that are lesser known draw customers in with interesting wares (or tantalizing smells!).

So while the weather is still nice, take a drive outside of your neighborhood, then park and take a walk. Dearborn’s a big city–you never know what you might be missing.

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