Metro Detroit: White Lake’s Nashville Detroit & Graceland King
Located a ¼ mile apart, on M-59 (aka Highland Rd) in White Lake Township, are two places that are worthy of making a trip for some legitimate carry out food. We are taking you from Nashville to Graceland in 30 seconds, visiting Nashville Detroit for their great Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich and Graceland King Gyro, a liquor store selling some great gyro sandwiches.
We’ll start with Nashville Detroit which has been open a little over a year, who is making scratch made Southern cooking to go. It is not a flashy place. They are located in a end of a strip mall that looks more industrial than mall-ish. Inside, the place is clean and well kept, with a wide open view of the kitchen so you can watch your food being made. Everything is made to order, so it can be a 20 minute wait if you don’t call ahead. They are also committed to being as “green” as possible using the greenest reusable packaging they can get and recycling all the used cooking oil they go through, and as you can imagine it’s a lot.
We have been to Nashville Detroit a few times and while they specialize in the chicken sandwich their menu offers so much more than that. The menu is that of what you might see at a restaurant. There are appetizers, salads, sides, loaded fries, entrees, burgers, sandwiches and even offer gluten friendly options. It is quite impressive to see a carryout place offering up such a diverse menu.
In our few trips we have had an opportunity to try a few of their items. Of course the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich, which met or exceeded our expectations. It was a nice size sandwich made with Muenster cheese, Coleslaw and pickles and all sandwiches are served with waffle fries. It was as good as it looked in pictures I had seen and was as delicious as it looked. We also tried their Bang Bang Shrimp Po’boy which was almost too pretty to eat. You can tell a lot of pride goes into their food. On our last trip, we tried a new menu item, which I will definitely order again . . . a Nashville Hot-fish Sandwich. Fried Walleye done the same as their chicken and it was AMAZING!
Here’s their menu . . .
A ¼ mile down the road is the Graceland Wine Shop. It’s an Elvis themed liquor store, opened in 1989 by Dave Sharrak as the Hilltop Wine Shop. Through the years, and with his love of Elvis, the store quickly became a shrine to “The King”. He considered it his little Graceland, and renamed the store, which he still runs today with his son Dave Jr. They didn’t start off selling food. That came in the early 2000’s. Today they have quite an extensive menu of oven baked subs, pizzas, salads and of course the stars of the show the specialty sandwiches.
There are 3 styles of specialty sandwiches: the Gyro which comes with lettuce, tomato and onion and tzatziki sauce, the Shawarma which has garlic, onion, tomato and Mediterranean pickles and sandwiches and the Lisa Marie which has lettuce, tomato, inion, cucumber, beets, banana peppers, feta and Greek dressing. You can choose your style, pick your meat or base as they call it (chicken, Gyro or Falafel) and how big you want to go.
The sandwiches come in 4 different sizes based off 4 stages of Elvis’s weight through the years:
Skinny King which is 4 oz of meat
Regular King with 8 oz
Medium King with 12 oz
Fat King with a full pound of meat
We ordered the Regular King Gyro and a Chicken Shawarma. The chicken shawarma was good, but to us the star of the show was the Gyro! Both sandwiches were big enough for 2 people to share. We definitely had some left overs the next day. I can’t imagine ordering the Fat King. We’ll definitely venture back in for some more.
The pizza, subs and salads look quite delicious as well.
Here’s their menu . . .
Graceland which is located at 7505 Highland Rd is open daily till 9PM (7PM on Sundays) and Nashville Detroit which is located at 7755 Highland Rd is open T-TH from 4PM-10PM, Fri-Sun 11AM-10PM and closed on Mondays.
Until next time . . . live well, eat well and enjoy life!
-Keith & Teresa Becker