Editor’s note: This is part of RB’s look at Detroit and its restaurants. Check out Market Watch: Detroit.
A lot has happened over the past dozen years, and more so in Detroit than most other American communities. Motor City filed for Chapter 11 municipal bankruptcy protection in mid-2013 and was trying to claw its way back when chefs Joe Giacomino and John Vermiglio opened Grey Ghost with their business partners in 2016.
“We were the only spot in the neighborhood,” said Vermiglio, who grew up in the Detroit suburbs and moved to Chicago to pursue his career as a chef.
In fact, they were just the second chef-driven restaurant in all of Detroit, the other being chef Andy Hollyday’s Selden Standard, which opened in 2014 and had a unique set of challenges.
“They were paying a security guard to drive around the perimeter of the restaurant while they were open for business just so that their guests could feel more comfortable leaving their car outside and walking toward the restaurant,” Vermiglio said.
“It used to be when you’d see someone walking down our street you could hold the door for them 200 yards away because you knew they were coming to Grey Ghost. There was nowhere else to go.”
And it was dangerous.
“One of our guests got held up at gunpoint after dinner, and that was half a block from the front door of our restaurant,” he said.
“So to see where it started at that point to now, 10 years later, it's insane what's happened. That area where they got held up is a beautiful park now and well-patrolled, but we were certainly on an island for a while.”
Now people do walk by Grey Ghost because there are other places to visit in the neighborhood, including Second Best, the beer-and-shots bar that the chefs opened across the street in 2018, and Basan, the Izakaya restaurant they opened three blocks away in 2022.
Their latest venture, a burger joint called Little Ghost in the suburb of Ferndale, Michigan, opened in August of 2025, capitalizing on the runaway success of Grey Ghost’s burger.
Grey Ghost's Burger | Photo courtesy of Four Man Ladder Hospitality
“It was really rewarding to be here and watch it all unfold in front of our eyes,” Vermiglio said. “I don't think even in my wildest dreams I could have imagined that this is where we'd be now. it's an incredible community of chefs. It's an incredible community of diners who are excited by this. And it’s still new for them.”
Giacomino, who grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, said he’s enjoying how their customers are becoming more savvy.
“The amount of vocabulary that people have gained in just this amount of time, to be able to read a menu, not be intimidated by it, and recognize stuff has been improved tenfold,” he said. “It's been really fun to watch and be a part of.”
And they’re enthusiastic about all of the new openings in the area, including Little Ghost.
“It took us three months to get to get to a point where there was not a line out the front door,” Vermiglio said.
The burger that anchors Little Ghost is a variation on Grey Ghost’s, which is made with a custom grind plus trim from the restaurant’s dry-aged steaks on a locally made sesame seed bun with American cheese, onion, iceberg lettuce, and pickle mayonnaise made from house-made bread-and-butter pickles.
Grey Ghost, which opened in the space of a former butcher shop, was intended as a meat-forward restaurant with a solid cocktail program, but it has evolved to feature whatever the chefs felt like, plus the burger.
Another signature dish also has a significant following.
“Grey Ghost rarely gets mentioned without a dish that’s no longer on the menu, but is making its grand return this summer for our 10-year anniversary, and that’s the fried bologna,” Vermiglio said.
It’s thinly sliced house-made bologna griddled on the flat-top and served on a potato waffle with cream-cheese fondue, pickled jalapeño peppers, and jalapeño jam. A version of it is at all of their restaurants, including as a hot dog at Little Ghost, elote topped with chopped bologna at Second Best, and in a bao bun at Basan.
“When we first put it on the menu we had a lot of people who came in and said ‘I haven’t had fried bologna since I was 10,’” Giacomino said. “It really resonated with people.”
The chefs can make fried bologna, but they have serious culinary backgrounds. They met working at the Art Smith restaurant Table 52 in Chicago, where Giacomino was a line cook and Vermiglio started as sous chef after training at Charlie Trotter’s. They then worked at a variety of Chicago restaurants before working together under another Trotter’s alumnus, Matthias Merges.
Once Vermiglio saw momentum moving toward Detroit, he took the opportunity to go home and participate in his hometown’s renaissance, and Giacomino joined him.
They haven’t looked back.
Grey Ghost's interior | Photo courtesy of Four Man Ladder Hospitality
The kitchen at Grey Ghost is now headed up by Anthony Patton, who has worked through the ranks to become its executive chef. The current menu ranges from spring chicken with rhubarb, Napa cabbage, and almond, to pappardelle with wild boar ragù and green garlic, to grilled peaches with whipped ricotta, ginger jam, sunflower seed and mint, and a rib eye cap with Korean barbecue sauce, Thai basil, and plum.
Second Best is mostly sandwiches and other handhelds, including a Nashville Hot chicken sandwich made with thigh meat, an Italian beef taco inspired by the Chicago delicacy, and a fried green tomato BLT on sourdough.
Basan is izakaya-inspired but global in flavor, including a bao bun with lobster, corn, popcorn, and Parmesan cheese, salmon skewers with Thai laab seasoning and yuzu kosho aïoli, and soba noodles with gochujang, spring vegetables, and honey.
With Little Ghost, their suburban burger restaurant, coming up on its one-year anniversary, Giacomino is looking at next steps.
“I think Little Ghost is something that we’ll look at maybe replicating. There’s such a boom in full-service restaurants in Detroit right now, that may be our next stop,” he said — a far cry from where Detroit was when they started.
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