Hush Puppies Aren’t Dumb

Hush Puppies Aren’t Dumb

Pit Stops

THE FAMOUS BLUE DOT, 20841 John R, Hazel Park, 543-4070::In the patois of Kentucky cuisine, a hush puppy is a cornmeal ball, flavored with onions and other spices and deep-fried until delicious, delectable, diaphanous, indescribable. Pick your own adjective.

Not only are you guaranteed to Tike these edible hush puppies, but so is your dog...least ways a lot more than a pair of your smelly shoes. Dottie, proprietress and namesake of the Blue Dot, explains the derivation of the name “hush puppy” in the following fashion: “Back home around Kentucky Lake, hunters would take a pocketful of these cornmeal balls with them on the trail. Whenever the hounds got too noisy, they’d throw ’em one and say, ‘Hush, puppy.’” Aha, it’s all beginning to make sense now.

You oughta meet Dottie, she’s just about as good of folks*as you’re going to find anywhere between the hills of Kentucky and the streets of Hazel Park. When she and her husband came trucking up north, they established a full-scale restaurant, specializing in coon, bean cake and the other Southern dishes you just don’t find around these parts. But they soon discovered that the time and finances demanded by a small family restaurant was beyond their means (a sad lesson that almost every home-style cookery has learned of late). Instead Dottie decided to go strictly carry-out, concentrating the menu around its star attraction, the hush puppy. Pay no mind to the life-sized porcelain chicken you see on the counter. Consider it an objet d’art. I hope Dottie doesn’t hear this, but I was less than impressed with her “broasted chicken.”

As anyone who’s ever dropped a line into Kentucky Lake can tell you, God made hush puppies to go with deep-fried fish. Dottie whups them up masterfully — flakey, non-oily, perfectly soulful. “I’m one hillbilly who don’t use catfish,” says Dottie, revealing her preference for Icelandic whitefish. No matter what dives into the hot oil, what comes out is as good a piece of fried fish as you’ll be served in the Detroit area. One bite and there won’t be a dry Dixie eye in your house.

Two healthy pieces of fish, fries and a mess of hush puppies cost only $2.05. At those prices, you can under-, stand why every self-respecting redneck from Melvindale to Fraser makes a point of stopping by the Blue Dot periodically for a little of that good down home cooking. And not one, in all the time I was there, put hush puppies on his feet.

They ain’t so dumb.

Marty Fischoff