A hundred years
on one block
Everything below is drawn from reporting by Detroit newsrooms and from the Detroit Historical Society. Where the record disagrees with itself, we have said so.
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1917
Gust Keros opens American
A Greek immigrant sells food to factory workers from a pushcart, then takes a storefront at 114 West Lafayette.
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1924
William Keros opens Lafayette
Gust’s brother — Vasili, anglicised to William, called Bill — takes the space next door at 118 when it comes free. The two counters have shared a wall ever since.
The story that the brothers fell out and split is the version everyone tells. William’s own grandson has said it is exaggerated.
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1970
George Keros takes over
William’s son had been working here since he was ten. He took the restaurant on when his father died, and worked out the chili recipe downstairs in the basement.
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1991
He gives it to the staff
After twenty-one years George Keros transferred the whole business to the people who worked in it — not a sale, a transfer, “without them paying a penny for it.” Lafayette has been owned by its own counter ever since. George died in 2019, aged 87.
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2018
The cash-only rule ends
In September, after more than ninety years of cash and nothing else, the registers start taking cards. It is why the board still prints two prices for everything.
The one question
Detroit keeps asking
American or Lafayette. People have been asked it on national television and they still answer it like a civic duty. Two families, two counters, one wall, a century.
We are not going to settle it here. We are at 118.
About that date on the board
The printed board above the counter reads Est. 1914, and so does the restaurant’s own Instagram. Detroit’s newsrooms and the Detroit Historical Society all date the opening to 1924, the year after Gust’s brother took the room next door. We have used 1924 here because that is what the written record supports. The board is the board, and we are not about to argue with it in its own house.
Sources
- Metro Times Lapointe: Is Detroit’s Coney feud more than a food fight?
- Crain’s Detroit Business Coney connoisseur George Keros, who created recipes at Lafayette, dies at 87
- Deadline Detroit One With Everything: Former Lafayette Coney Island Owner George Keros dies at 87
- Hour Detroit A Long Day’s Coney Into Night
- Detroit Historical Society Coney Dog, Encyclopedia of Detroit