- [Will] Coming up on a holiday edition of "One Detroit."

It's Thanksgiving, so we're talking about food.

We'll look at the Detroit area's unique twist on egg rolls.

Plus, we'll tell you about an organization helping Detroiters become urban farmers.

Also ahead, young people are learning their way around the kitchen at the Downtown Boxing Gym.

And we'll tell you what's happening around town this long holiday weekend.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

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(cheerful music) - [Will] Just ahead on "One Detroit," it's all about food in this special Thanksgiving episode.

We'll show you how Keep Growing Detroit is promoting food sovereignty in the city.

Plus a Detroit chef inspires kids at the Downtown Boxing Gym to eat healthy.

And we'll look at some of the activities taking place over the holiday weekend.

But first up, a culinary treat that is truly Detroit.

We all know the city is famous for its Detroit style pizza and Coney Island hot dogs.

Now, the egg roll is poised to take its place in the region's storied culinary history.

"One Detroit's" Bill Kubota looks at how the traditional Chinese American egg roll has evolved into a deep fried treat with a variety of multicultural fillings.

(gentle music) - Now, am I eating it right?

I feel like I got it two handed, it's so big, but if I just- - It's on you.

- [Bill] Tom Perkins, Detroit food writer, checking out Sista Roles Street Eats.

The home of an array of oversized egg rolls in Allen Park.

- Them big old egg rolls on a stick, Everybody know to tag Sista Roles 'cause they know where it come from.

So it was a big marketing thing.

That's for Uber Eats.

This one for DoorDash.

- [Bill] The evolution of the Detroit-style egg roll, it begins with the spring roll, which really is eaten in Asia, but it's here in the US where the egg roll was created.

Some credit a Chinese restaurant in New York almost a century ago.

But who really knows, and why are they called egg rolls?

Not shaped like an egg, not a trace of egg inside.

Just maybe an egg wash to keep the wrapper together.

Who really knows?

We do know this.

In Detroit, Chinese restaurant egg rolls have been known for containing a lot of bean sprouts that helps with that satisfying crunch.

Other places use more cabbage, a more economical option, let's say.

But our Detroit egg roll story really starts with corned beef.

- Corned beef culture, as somebody once put it to me in Detroit, dates back to, I mean, gosh, 100 years ago.

There's a big Jewish population in Detroit and they opened all these corn beef shops and then the Jewish folks left town, African-American folks who moved into the neighborhoods enjoyed corned beef.

So some of the restaurants that were there that had like been around for 60 years stayed in business.

- [Bill] Then in the late 1970s, a woman from Vietnam, Kim White, she put corned beef and cheese in an egg roll wrapper, called it Asian Corned Beef.

Fusion cuisine before most even heard of that term.

- Asian Corn Beef I think was Kim White, the woman who opened that.

I think she's generally credited with inventing the dish.

But it really started to pop like about 10 years ago.

More and more corned beef bay roll purveyors popped up around town.

You know, it's not to the level of Detroit style pizza or a Coney dog yet, but it's getting there.

It's getting to that territory of almost a regional food dish.

- Egg rolls is a Detroit thing.

I can say it's part of our culture.

- And then Asian Corned Beef, I love their egg rolls.

They don't have a lot of variety.

My goal was like pretty much to piggyback off of them and just make it bigger and wider.

- So my wife was like came up with a great idea 'cause I used to always make Alfredo egg rolls for whenever we made Alfredo at home, I make the egg rolls.

- [Bill] Alfredo egg rolls with chicken and broccoli on the menu.

- It was a hit.

So I was like, everything could go in the egg roll.

The list goes on.

- Corn beef with mozzarella cheese, chicken shawarma.

We got a 313 dog, that's corned beef, ground beef, bacon.

- [Bill] 19 different kinds of egg rolls.

- I can't even remember 'em all - Now this is the first time that I've had an egg roll on a stick.

- [Bill] Sista Roles Street Eats got started five years ago.

Porsche and Courvoisier Jackson are entrepreneurs.

They started with a food trailer.

Word got out through social media, their egg rolls were an instant hit.

- But TikTok now I am like getting real big on there because everybody is tagging me continuously.

We are a must-try restaurant right now.

- [Customer] All the way to Detroit for this.

- Man, social media have blew us up so big and I can't even like imagine if we didn't have TikTok, how would it be?

I can't even imagine it, you know?

- Trying a place called Sista Roles Street Eats.

- Mr. Chimetime, 'cause everybody was tagging him to come here.

and he was like, "I had to come here.

The people would not let me not come here."

- I've done my research and I do see that some people like it, some people don't.

And I'm here to put the nail in the coffin to let you guys what it's really hittin' on.

I ordered all the popular menu items.

- I was scared, like I don't know what he is about to say, so, oh my God, it's like I was in here like losing it.

Like, I'm not ready for that.

- Mm.

Salmon.

So we got salmon looks like, what's that?

Spinach dip and Swiss cheese.

I do like the fact it is stuffed and I mean stuffed with meat.

Y'all will love this.

If you like egg rolls, you need to stop whatever you're doing and get these egg rolls now.

- Is it a Chinese dish?

No.

Is it an Asian dish?

The person who invented it was a Vietnamese immigrant.

So you got that connection, but I'm not sure it goes much deeper than that.

- No, that's a long way from Chinese here.

This is delicious, and it's big.

- [Bill] At Sista Roles, another favorite, the pizza style filling.

Innovative?

Well, it's not a new idea.

- [Announcer] A pizza, pizza, pizza roll.

(lively music) - [Bill] The original pizza roll goes back to 1965, brought to you by a guy in Minnesota named Jeno.

- [Announcer] This is America's favorite hot snack.

The pizza roll.

- [Bill] Jeno Paulucci, a proud Italian who owned the Chun King Foods Company, which made little frozen egg rolls.

Jeno thought, why not put something else in there?

- [Announcer] All those good things rolled into America's favorite hot snack.

- [Bill] Jeno sold out to Totino's, which still makes them today.

Still little bite-sized things.

- [Staff] Order number 92, your order is due!

- [Bill] Chinese, Vietnamese, Jewish, Italian, and then there's the Irish.

- So we'll get ourselves an Irish egg roll here.

Gotta take it and, you really do have to, in my opinion anyway, you really do have to have a little bit of the blarney mustard sauce.

I think that it just makes it.

- [Bill] At McShane's Irish Pub in Detroit's Corktown, Bob Roberts had leftover corned beef he wanted to repurpose into another dish.

That was 12 years ago.

- Somebody had the idea, let's try and roll 'em up in a wonton and deep fry 'em.

The first set was pretty good, but then we wanted to jazz it up a little bit.

So now they're made with corned beef, red-skinned potato, braised cabbage, Swiss cheese, and scallions.

We had never had one of the Asian Corn Beef egg rolls before.

We had never heard of 'em.

- [Bill] So then it seems it's the luck of Detroiters to have so many egg roll choices.

- You could get into a debate there, well, is this an Irish thing or is this a Detroit thing?

And, all right, fine, if you're putting potatoes in it.

But really like at the end of the day, who cares?

It's a corned beef egg roll.

It is a thing Detroit and it's delicious, so why are we debating it?

- [Will] The organization known as Keep Growing Detroit is on a mission to create a food sovereign city where the majority of fruits and vegetables consumed by Detroiters are grown by residents within the city limits the most.

I visited the urban farm at Eastern Market to learn more about its efforts to teach Detroiters how to grow their own food.

(birds chirping) - Food is one of the most integral things that connects all of us and is one of the most important things in terms of culture, economics, and who we are as a people.

You can learn a lot about who you are by what you're eating.

- Growing food is one of the most meaningful things you can do.

Connects you to the land and its people.

And that's where I find meaning - Keep Growing Detroit started in 2013 and then one of our major programs, the Garden Resource Program, 10 years before that.

And so the main goal has always been about cultivating a food sovereign city, making sure that Detroiters are consuming vegetables grown by Detroiters.

And so one of the major ways that we do that is through the Garden Resource Program where we provide seeds, plants, support, additional garden resources and supplies, classes for people to get their gardens growing within Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park.

I'm very proud to say that there are over 2200 farms and gardens within the city that are connected to our program.

That wealth of folks who are utilizing that space in that way is something that is uniquely Detroit in a way that I don't think many people associate with us, particularly since most folks think that we're the Motor City, we're an industrialized place, and we're sitting on, you know, over an acre of farmland right here in the middle of Eastern Market.

- Yeah.

From the gardens, how does that, I guess, ripple effect go into the community - When we say that we're a cultivating food sovereign city, it means that it's a way in which people have autonomy and accessibility to foods that they want to grow, foods that they want to eat, and they know how it's being grown.

In a way that they don't have to depend on a grocery store, in a way that they don't have to depend if they have money in their pocket to be able to do so, and a way that they don't have to see like, am I gonna be able to get this one thing that connects me to my culture, this one thing that connects me to who I am.

And so for me specifically, my parents came from the Philippines.

If I am away from my family, I'm away from like many people who look like me.

I'm away from like the language that I grew up learning.

If food is the way in which I can continue to connect with this major part of who I then let that happen.

And in addition, if it's a way in which I can grow it from seed, cultivate it, and see it be grown, it's an even deeper connection than if I had gone to the store to go and buy it.

When I found out that Ginger could be grown here, ginger is a ubiquitous thing in many of the Filipino foods.

But when I found out that it can be grown here and in this greenhouse, that made me feel like I can be here, I can be rooted here.

- What brought you to Keep Growing Detroit?

How'd you end up here?

- It has to do a lot with the community in Detroit.

I'm originally from Grand Rapids and a lot of barriers of access in farming are found in Grand Rapids that aren't found in Detroit.

And a lot of that has to do with the community in Detroit being so supportive of urban agriculture.

There's just more resources and programming.

You know, we have the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund, we have organizations like Keep Growing Detroit that has the Garden Resource Program and a wide range of urban farms all across the city that are ready to support each other.

- So Juneteenth 2020, we launched the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund in collaboration with Detroit Black Food Security Network and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm.

These three longstanding organizations focused on urban agriculture right here in the city.

It was born out of seeing many times over and over again white farmers in the city having capital and access to be able to own the lands where they are farming.

And in a city that's majority black, that's a major disparity, right?

The focus was to be able to say like, okay, you need capital and connections, let's do that for you.

Black farmers in the city who have been growing for decades in the same place but do not own it.

So many times, like what folks are facing is they're up against a developer, they're up against someone who has thousands of dollars of cash on hand who can outright buy that land.

So the land fund was created to be able to assist folks that they can have land security.

The fund, I'm proud to say is now in its fifth year.

- Oh wow.

- We have now awarded 171 awardees.

- Whoa.

- Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

- Yeah.

- Given, awarded, and I think about 18 acres that are now in the hands of Black farmers in the city.

- Just from my personal background, you know, it's like reclaiming the legacy that was lost for my ancestors that weren't able to, you know, freely work the land and build something on their own free will.

- What is different about farming in a major city like the city of Detroit versus farming in a rural area?

- First and foremost, we know that this is an industrialized city and one of the biggest values that we have as part of the Garden Resource Program is that every membership includes a soil test.

So we make sure that you know the lead levels are safe within the place that you're growing.

Then we do assistance for people who have community gardens to provide materials with raised beds.

Often I think you're talking about space and how much of that space you're able to grow.

- Most often, who are you seeing wanting to come and participate and learn how to grow, take this information back to their communities?

- It's everybody.

It's kind of amazing.

The folks I think that are really into it the most are the most seasoned senior folks who are in the community.

'cause they remember what it's like to grow up having a garden.

We take a lot of time additionally to focus on early childhood.

We work a lot with early childhood centers and create little gardens where they can include garden-based learning into their curriculum.

Then we also have a teen program where it's a youth apprenticeship program.

So our connection with growing Detroit youth talent where they come here for six weeks throughout the summer with an intensive program in learning all of this.

- What is the most gratifying thing about the work you're doing here at Keep Growing Detroit overall?

- The most gratifying thing is seeing that people can do it.

I think there's a lot of times people are like, "I can't do that.

I can't grow food."

And once people start growing their own food, people start to say things like, oh, I grew up eating this.

Oh this is something that my grandma used to grow in her backyard.

I haven't had this taste since they were alive, since they cooked that for me.

- Food sovereignty has to do with self-determination and self-determination leads to freedom.

And so when you're growing food on your own land, there's a sense of freedom that you don't normally have when you're going to the grocery store and buying food.

- These are folks who are taking urban agriculture very seriously in the city of Detroit.

And it has brought it to the forefront.

Farming is right here and we can do it here in City of Detroit.

- [Will] Students at the Downtown Boxing Gym on Detroit's east side are getting a lesson in the culinary arts.

The kids are learning how to prepare nutritious meals in the organization's Commercial Kitchen.

"Bridge Detroit's" Micah Walker teamed up with "One Detroit's" Chris Jordan for a report on the program.

(soft music) - [Micah] Every day after school, hundreds of kids head to Downtown Boxing Gym on Detroit's east side to shoot some hoops, get help with their homework, or hit the boxing ring.

And they're also having fun in the kitchen.

- [Molly] So you do that for all of them and then you'll come around and do it.

- [Micah] That's Molly Mitchell, the new Associate Director of Culinary Arts for the Downtown Boxing Gym.

She prepares fresh from scratch meals and snacks for DBG students each night, totaling more than 1,000 meals per week.

Mitchell is also teaching kids how to cook nutritious meals and is developing a culinary arts curriculum for the organization.

Downtown Boxing Gym serves students ages eight to 18 across Metro Detroit with continued mentorship and support through the age of 25.

Mitchell was the owner of Rose's Fine Food on Jefferson which shut its doors last year.

- When I closed Rose's last year, I was really interested in like going into culinary education in some manner and so it just like really worked out for me to sort of get in contact with DBG at the same time that I was closing Rose's because they were ready to really flesh out their cooking program 'cause they just opened this amazing commercial kitchen.

The timing really worked out for me to come here and I'm able to pursue my passion and also like help them out with their commercial kitchen.

So it's just like a really good match.

- Molly, what's it been like creating this culinary arts program?

- I'm really inspired by the kids at DBG because they're super into cooking and so I've really let them take the lead on what they're interested in and I'm just trying to like shape it in terms of having like a very complete culinary education.

So learning about, you know, food safety and like sauces and roasting meats and everything in between.

So it's been great.

Oh yeah, that was great.

- Three more.

- Three more decisive chives.

Yeah, put it in.

- And what kind of healthy meals are you preparing for the kids?

- You know, we have breakfast for dinner sometimes, we have tacos, we make braises.

I'm really trying to get the kids into vinegarette.

We also make ranch sometimes, which is really the most requested.

I'm just like trying to like find out what they really are into and then also just like throw some wild cards in.

- Mm, that tastes different.

- That's good.

- I know kids can be notorious for being picky eaters.

How do you make making healthy foods fun and simple?

- So that was actually like my biggest fear starting here, that the kids would be so picky that I would really be like hindered in what I could make for them.

And to my surprise, like the kids are pretty open-minded about trying most things that we make.

I would say like about 85% of the kids at dinner time are game to try whatever we make.

And then there's like a smaller percentage that do have like, well we have kids with dietary restrictions and allergies, but also some pickier kids and I just try to like maybe work with them and have like some planer options available when we do serve dinner.

- [Micah] And Molly has some big plans for the curriculum, including a guest chef's program.

- They'll teach a class and then it's my hope that they'll give us a recipe that we can actually make for dinner just to have even like a broader range of point of view for the kids to try new things that like I wouldn't have thought to make as well.

But we're also working on a garden outside, like a kitchen garden near the soccer field that we'll be able to have like a teaching space within the garden where we'll be able to grow food that we can harvest, bring in here, so kids can see everything from seed to meal.

- For Downtown Boxing Gym founder Khali Sweeney.

teaching children how to cook and where their food comes from has been a priority since the organization started in 2007.

Why did you wanna add culinary arts to the curriculum here?

- Food brings people together.

It's also the fuel that our body needs to get through the day.

You know, how can you go to school and function at a high level if you may have only had a bowl of cereal or something, or there's is no lunch program at your school.

So I wanted the gym to be that space where you can come get a healthy meal, learn about eating healthy and just being a healthy overall person.

- And why was it important for the kids to get outside and see how food is grown?

- Learning how to grow food straight from the ground, no preservatives, none of that type of stuff.

You know, that's a wonderful skill to have and just getting back to nature and learning how to farm and stuff like that, that is a life skill.

I thought it was important that kids were able to do that.

- We're just gonna make a quick coleslaw.

But we can eat this for dinner with our pizza.

- [Michah] What's something you learned to cook here with Molly?

- We learn how to make smoothies, pancakes, yogurt.

We did frosty cakes.

- You see yourselves having a future doing culinary arts.

- Yes.

I wanna be a chef when I grow up.

- You wanna open your own restaurant?

- Yeah.

I'm gonna try.

- [Micah] And I even got to join in on the taste test.

- Okay, let's taste it, see if it needs something.

More lime juice?

- Too spicy.

- [Micah] What are your goals for the culinary arts program?

- My goal is to really like build out a program that is not only really informative and like if somebody wanted to go get a job in a restaurant, they could after taking this program.

But really I'm trying to just cement an excitement for food that can be like a lifelong passion.

Whether you're working in a restaurant or you're just learning how to cook, like really amazing meals for yourself and your loved ones.

- [Will] It's a long weekend for many people.

Cecelia Sharpe and Dave Wagner of 90.9 WRCJ have some ideas on how you can get the holiday season started in today's One Detroit Weekend.

- Happy Thanksgiving, Dave.

- Happy Thanksgiving, Cecelia.

- So are you ready to tell our viewers about the events happening this weekend?

- Absolutely.

There's so much going on.

Let's start with the Rink at Campus Martius, where anyone can go and skate around.

Whether you're a pro or you're just learning, the Rink is open through March the 2nd.

- [Cecelia] And on select dates through January 5th is another Metro Detroit holiday tradition with Wild Lights at the Detroit Zoo, when the animal kingdom transforms into a sparkling winter wonderland.

- [Dave] Tomorrow through December 22nd, you can head to the Detroit Public Theater to enjoy their holiday cabaret.

It's the second year in a row for the uplifting show, filled with both familiar and some unexpected holiday music.

And it can't be the holiday season without "Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas."

The musical comes to the Fox Theater stage through Sunday, December the 1st.

- And of course you know Detroit has so many other things going on this weekend and beyond, so stay tuned to see if any of the following events pique your interest.

Have a great weekend.

(calm music) - [Will] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

(calm music) - [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by Timothy Bogert, Comprehensive Planning Strategies.

From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by, the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(calm music)