“I was working at Rugby Grille, and one day, Takashi gave me a call,” Watson says. Yagihashi today owns one of Chicago’s top restaurants, which bears his first name. For more than a decade, Tribute was one of Detroit’s two paramount restaurants. Many chefs now running top metro Detroit kitchens learned their trade at Tribute under creator and culinary master Takashi Yagihashi. Tribute’s influence on many area chefs is hard to overstate. Both Watson and Iridescence Executive Chef Don Yamauchi, who oversees all food at MotorCity Casino Hotel, once cooked there. “What we do on the menu is to try to elevate the familiar, taking dishes people know and adding new, different twists.” A chicken potpie, for example, is enhanced with truffle oil.Ī major factor in the quality and style of the food is a connection to the former Tribute restaurant in Farmington Hills. … We do better selling chicken than squab. “We wanted fine dining, but we also needed to fill chairs. “In the beginning, we were trying to figure out what we were,” Watson says. “And those are just the ones we know about.”Īcross our several visits in the last 18 months, Watson’s menu and cooking have evolved and become more focused.

“At least six times a year, I’m asked to put a ring in a cake,” he says. According to chef Derik Watson, Iridescence has become a very popular place for proposing marriage. Interestingly, the hotel and the casino are in separate buildings, a blessing for anyone not into gambling, the jangle of slot machines, or cigarette smoke (smoking is legal on casino floors).Ĭombine the exceptional food with the setting, refined table service, and well-priced wine list, and the result is an unusual and enjoyable dining experience. The dining room’s top-tier tables face the twinkling panorama of Detroit’s night sky, while velvet half-moon-shaped banquettes and well-spaced four-seat tables with high-back padded chairs create an intimate setting on the lower level. Suspended from the ceiling are glass globes of assorted sizes that seem to float bubble-like, lending a momentary sensation of being inside a glass of champagne.

Perched like a crown atop the casino’s 16-floor hotel, the two-tiered dining room is flanked by massive Dale Chihuly-like glass panels that rise the full height of the interior and frame the open kitchen. The menu is heavily flavored with French and Asian cooking styles that emerge from a kitchen run by a 30-year-old chef whose culinary mentor was one of metro Detroit’s greats. Iridescence is a sassy, white-linen restaurant with a style and flair all its own.

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