By Joel Thurtell
“Muskrat Mania” hat courtesy Johnny Kolakowski. Joel Thurtell photo.
Hey, Zlati — I’d like to cook a rat for you!
And then I’d like to thank you, Zlati Meyer of the Detroit Free Press, for giving me an excuse to run those muskrat stories I wrote eons ago.
Well do I recall the rat stories I wrote back during the Great Muskrat War of the 1980s, when the government tried to stop us muskrat-lovers from eating rat.
For my own taste, sorry to say, the story by Zlati in the November 25, 2012 Detroit Free Press was just too darned brief to do justice to the noble rodent who saved many a pioneer family from starving, and gave me a great dinner topic that I have not tired of in more than three decades of hashing over rat.
Therefore, with permission of the Free Press, here is the article I wrote in 2007 upon learning that muskrat maestro Johnny Kolakowski was closing his restaurant.
By the way, I’m trying to reach Johnny, and his old phone numbers don’t work. If you read this, Johnny, would you please drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com?
Zlati needs me to cook her some rat.
Headline: IS YOUR MOUTH STILL WATERING FOR MUSKRAT?
Sub-Head: RIVERVIEW EATERY IS CLOSED, BUT AQUATIC RODENT AVAILABLE
Byline: JOEL THURTELL
Pub-Date: 7/8/2007
Memo: DOWNRIVER
Correction:
Text: Tradition has it that rats flee the sinking ship, but not at Kola’s Food Factory, a Riverview restaurant famed Downriver for its muskrat dinners.
At least not for now.
Proprietor Johnny Kolakowski assured me that he’ll still be cooking muskrat even though he’s closed the restaurant and put the building at 17168 Fort Street up for sale.
Whew!
For the more than two decades that I’ve lived in Metro Detroit, I’ve rested easy knowing that I needed only to journey Downriver to Kola’s for the repast of my dreams: broiled muskrat.
When I heard he’d closed the restaurant, I feared the worst – what would life be like without Kola’s special rat?
You think I’m joking?
Hey, back in the 1980s, when Kola’s was in a Wyandotte bowling alley, I took my young sons down there on a Sunday morning for a terrific breakfast. We bowled, and then I scored what I’d come for – raw muskrat carcasses and a chunk of beaver tail. My older son, Adam, was supposed to provide some game for a wild feast in his fourth-grade class.
I followed the Kolakowski recipe and boiled the rats three times – first in salt, then in tomatoes and finally in bay leaves. Then I roasted them. Can’t recall exactly how I cooked the beaver tail.
What I remember, though, is thinking that there would be plenty left for us to eat the evening after the feast. Guess again. Those kids in Plymouth’s Bird Elementary School gorged on my rat and scarfed up beaver. There was none left for me.
I’ve had a hankering for some time to fix rat and beaver again.
That’s why I was pleased when Johnny said he’s not out of the rat business, even though he’s closed the restaurant.
“You can still buy rats,” Johnny says. “I can still do special orders; that’s no problem. It won’t be table service. You can preorder ‘rat to go.’ I’ll still have the rats and ‘coons and turtles I fought so hard to get.”
In the 1980s, the Michigan Department of Agriculture banned muskrat dinners because there was no approved source of muskrats. Some chefs of high rat cuisine defied the prohibition. Back in the day, I went to an Erie Veterans of Foreign Wars fund-raiser expecting to see state officers order the men to shut off their broilers. Instead, I ate some of the tastiest and greasiest muskrat I’ve ever had.
Johnny worked out an agreement whereby he imports muskrat carcasses from Canadian trappers and inspects it himself.
So why did he close the restaurant?
“I couldn’t justify it anymore,” he told me. “I’m paying $16,000 a year in property taxes. The economy has changed. People are not going to restaurants like they used to. People are buying $5 pizzas. How do you pay $16,000 in taxes with $5 pizzas? I bid on a brand-new cafeteria to open at Severstahl Steel, and it looks like I’m gonna get it. I got 200 people to feed lunch every day, plus street-fair business.”
Will he serve rats to the Severstahl crew?
Does a muskrat swim in the river?
But the days of the table-served rat definitely are over. And that is sad.
“I’ve got so many loyal customers, and nobody really does it,” Johnny lamented. “It looks like the rats are going to disappear. I hate to see that happen.”
But if you want carryout rat, call Johnny at 734-281-0447 [no good 11-25-2012 — JT] . He’ll fix one or a dozen, or sell you the raw carcasses to cook at home.
Contact JOEL THURTELL at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com.
Caption: 2004 photos by MARY SCHROEDER / Detroit Free Press
Left: Johnny Kolakowski, 60, of Wyandotte, proprietor of Kola’s Food Factory in Riverview, in his restaurant with a stuffed muskrat that was trapped in Gibraltar. Below: Muskrat was served daily at Kola’s, which is now closed – but customers still may order carryout muskrat either cooked or ready-to-cook. Just call 734-281-0447 [no good.].
Illustration: PHOTO
Edition: METRO FINAL
Section: CFP; COMMUNITY FREE PRESS
Page: 5CV
Keywords:
Disclaimer: THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE
