(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?