Sanders

Long before “Detroit-style” anything, there was Sanders. Fred Sanders opened his candy shop at Woodward and Gratiot in 1875, and the next year — so the story goes — he ran out of cream for a soda, substituted ice cream, and introduced Detroiters to the ice cream soda. From there came an empire of marble-countered sweet shops that defined Detroit childhoods: the famous bumpy cake (yellow cake under ridges of buttercream and dark chocolate), the dense, slightly bitter hot fudge, the cream puffs.

The original downtown parlors are long gone, and the brand passed to local chocolatier Morley after 2002 — but the recipes endure, and you can still get a proper bumpy-cake fix at Sanders Chocolate & Ice Cream shops around the metro, including a sweet little spot on Woodward in Ferndale. Some Detroit traditions you don’t just read about — you eat them.