Penny Red’s

Penny Red’s is the fried-chicken counter of the Parker’s Alley complex, and its pedigree is the tell: this is James Beard Award winner Andrew Carmellini’s chicken — the signs literally call it “AC’s famous fried chicken” — sold by the bucket, crisp and unfussy, with honey-butter biscuits doing quiet scene-stealing work and rotating local farmstand sides filling out the tray. The format is refreshingly simple: find the counter in the back, order for pickup or delivery, or carry your haul into The Brakeman, the beer and rec hall that serves as Penny Red’s de facto dining room, and pair it with a Midwest draft and a round of shuffleboard while the biscuits are still warm.

We clocked it on our alley stroll and filed it under exactly the kind of high-low move we love: an award-winning New York chef making bucket chicken for a beer hall in a Detroit alley. It’s on our list for the next casual crowd-feed — the dinner where nobody wants to decide anything harder than dark meat or white.