Wright & Company: a Culinary Gem in Downtown Detroit

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with celebrated local chef and partner at Wright & Company, Marc Djozlija.

Situated in the heart of downtown Detroit, his upscale gastropub has exploded in popularity since its 2014 debut. I was eager to learn what led to Marc’s passion and marvelous talent for cooking, and how Wright & Co. came to be.

You’ve built an extremely successful culinary career. Did you always want to be a chef?

So, I grew up in Madison Heights, and attended one of four vocational schools in the area. During their junior and senior years, students were permitted to take a trade course, which would count towards their elective credits. After looking at the curriculum, I thought, ‘maybe I'll go for cooking - I’ll be able to eat all day.’ I’ve been fat ever since.

     I was good at math, and I applied that logical mindset to breaking down recipes. The work was pretty easy for me, and my instructor started asking me to assist my classmates with their work. One day, the school had someone come in and present information about the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

     I brought home an application for cooking school to show my father and sister, both of whom were engineers - and well, it was the late 80’s, early 90’s, and being a cook wasn’t exactly sexy. My dad thought it was crazy, but he said, ‘if you pay for the first semester and everything goes well, I’ll pay for the rest of it’.

     I worked two jobs, at Panache and what was formerly known as Eton Street Station, more recently known as Big Rock Chophouse. I saved my money, waited tables, went to school and did pretty well. My father saw that I was committed and paid for the rest of my education.

     So [becoming a chef] was kind of by accident. I never saw myself in a cubicle or anything, but I still use math in a lot of different ways: budgets, recipes, things like that. I’m fortunate to have a good business acumen - and then obviously, I turned out to be a pretty good chef as well.


What were your next steps after you finished school?

I lived in Maui, Hawaii for a couple years and just sort of fooled around, but I wasn’t really making any money. I decided I would move to Vegas for a while: I would live with my parents until I was settled, then move out and get an apartment. I got a job with the Hilton Corporation, and worked there for a year.

     One day, I was sitting on my mom’s couch, and we were watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. There was a ‘top ten’ segment where Robin Leach listed Spago, a restaurant run by his friend Wolfgang Puck, as the number one restaurant in the country.

     In ‘92 or ‘93, Wolfgang made an announcement that he was going to open a new restaurant at Caesar’s Palace, in the Forum Shops at Caesar’s. I kept thinking to myself - if I could just get into a restaurant like that, and show him what I could do, then maybe I could make a career out of this. I went from making $13.25 an hour down to $8 an hour.

     I was just prepping for him, but I was faster than everyone else, I tried really hard, and I paid attention- and they kind of noticed and appreciated that. I followed my dad’s philosophy, which was that if you put your head down and work hard, then people will notice- your work will speak for itself.

     I moved up to another position where I assisted the line - and instead of waiting for them to come ask me to get something, I would go out there every half hour and ask what they needed. I moved up to work in the line, then became the sous chef. I ended up working for Wolfgang for around 18 years.


What stuck with you as a result of working with Wolfgang?

When I was working for him at Spago in Las Vegas, I had these ideas - I’d cook these dishes for him. One day he called me in and said, ‘Marc, sit down.’

     I asked ‘what’s up?’ and he said, ‘you’re trying to create something new, but you’re not falling back on what you already know. You like ham and cheese sandwiches, right? The combination is perfect - really great ham, really great cheese, mustard, bread, these good-quality ingredients that go together. Start thinking about what you know, and start building around that.’

     Later, I actually inadvertently created a dish that played off of that flavor profile - it was prosciutto laid on a plate with a parmesan Parisian gnocchi, and a parmesan broth, with a little arugula and some saba, topped with a little more parmesan. The gnocchi represented the bread, and actually had some mustard in it - the prosciutto was the ham, the parmesan was the cheese.

     After a while, you know what food is going to go together, you can see what’s going to happen in some capacity. Basil, tomatoes, mozzarella, balsamic - you can take that and do lots of different things with those basic building blocks. You have to cook what you’d want to eat.

What led you to open Wright & Company?

Near the end of my time working for Wolfgang, I decided I wanted to take my next job out of town. I moved to LA for a little while - this was before downtown LA was cool - and while there were tons of opportunities, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I moved back to Vegas, and then to Atlantic City for a two-year deal.

     Wolfgang mentioned that he was going to do something in downtown Detroit, in the casino, so I went and worked at the MGM Grand. I originally planned to leave after spending two years there, to try for positions in Hawaii and Miami. The economy went south and those opportunities didn’t pan out, but that ended up being in my best interest. I was making good money, and I stayed.

     My business partner Dave and I saw that there was a gap to be filled in Downtown Detroit- there were 18,000 young people, all these young professionals walking around, and where did they get to eat and drink? We wanted to create a gathering place, where you could have a beer before the baseball game, a glass of wine after the opera on our block - where you’d want to hang out. It didn’t exist here, at the time.

     In 2012, we started looking for a space - and actually, this building was the last one we looked at. We wanted something while off the beaten path, and the guys from Bedrock took us up here. We were only here for five minutes, and Dave knew this was the spot.

     We were bantering about what to call the restaurant, and I asked, ‘what's the name of the building?’ He said ‘it’s the Wright-Kay building, and so why don't we call it Wright and Company?’

     The building was designed by Gordon W. Lloyd and built in 1892. Originally, the downstairs was occupied by the F. J. Schwankovsky Music Company. In 1920, the Wright-Kay Jewelers took over and changed the name. The diamond in our logo is actually a nod to the building’s past as a jewelry store - they were set up here for 58 years.

      So it's got a little bit of a kitschy history, you know - quirky, I guess. We wanted to pay a little homage to the city of Detroit. We're just proud to be part of it, and we didn’t want to take over or anything like that.

     When I told my mom and dad that I had quit my job and that I was opening a restaurant in downtown Detroit, my dad went quiet. I explained that it was fully funded, that I had it figured out, and that I would be happier if I had more freedom - he still didn’t say anything. But when I pulled up a picture of the building and showed him, he looked at my phone and said, ‘you know what, I bought my class ring there in 1959,’ and that sort of broke the ice.

     Frederick Schwankovky’s [of F. J. Schwankovsky Music Company] great great granddaughter actually turned out to be an opera singer, and she came to town for one of the operas - she knew the history of this building, and had a private party here before it opened. She was able to use this space and sang about five songs for her friends and family, about 40 people.

     So it’s cool, having a lot of history and things to talk about. If you're ever in the restaurant at the far end of the bar, there's some plaster that looks like some hipster artwork - it's actually the original elevator shaft. The building was one of the first buildings in Detroit to have an elevator. So there's always really great talking points about the building’s history, and then hopefully you also talk about the fantastic food and drinks you get while you’re here.


What was the key to your survival during the pandemic?

We were fortunate that we had already been open for six years or so, and we already had some money in the coffers - we had an emergency fund. We also did different things with the Free Press - I have some good friends in the city, and they were doing this promotion where they would feed first responders, police officers, fire departments, hospitals, things like that. They expanded on that idea, and so there were about 20 chefs that were all dropping off about 400 meals a week. That was a little bit of income that kept it going.

     We were able to negotiate with our landlord and get our hours of operation back. Now we work smarter: the hours are less and the week is shorter, but we're still doing close to the revenue we did before. When we first started out, we never took reservations. Now, we reserve all the tables, which has significantly reduced wait time. Obviously, if you walk in and there's a table open, we give it to you - but our new system allows us to operate more smoothly.


How would you describe the culinary community in downtown Detroit?

First of all, the chef community is really tight. You know, a lot of the guys are fortunate, they have restaurants - a lot of us were here in the city at different points, just looking for the opportunity to someday spring off our normal jobs, or to move on from working for someone else to do our own thing. And since a lot of us are really close, we collaborate together, usually on each other's charity events or different events in the community. I think we're all respectful, cordial. You know what I mean? This is a really small town inside a large landmass.


What inspires you? How do you approach the development of new dishes?

Well, you do your research. I read a lot of periodicals, and I obviously travel and eat out a lot. The way I see it, you don’t ever knock off a dish - you might find something interesting, like ‘that sauce was really cool, or what if I did a different application, a different protein, or a different vegetable?’ So sometimes you find something that gets you going, and then you take that and you run with it.


You were nominated for the James Beard award in the Great Lakes region in 2015. What did that mean to you?

So, I actually found out by accident - I was in a meeting and my friend texted me that two of her favorite chefs had won the James Beard award. I asked ‘who?’ and she said ‘you!’ But obviously, it's an incredible accolade even to consider, especially since the restaurant had really only been open for a year or so. What I'm really proud of, though, is that the word Detroit is next to my name now. I was well aware that at that point there hadn't been a restaurant in the city of Detroit nominated for the James Beard Award in 25 years. I was excited to give people a reason to come, and to help demonstrate that there are some really good things going on here.


What is your favorite dish on the menu?

I can’t talk about the food without talking about the gentleman that we hired. I'm not the active everyday chef at the restaurant - it's a gentleman named Kyle Schutte. Before the pandemic, I had knee replacement surgery. I came back to work for two weeks, and it got shut down the first time with the pandemic. I was looking for someone to assist me with reopening the restaurant, and to run the place full-time.

     We met Kyle, and he came on a year ago. I said, ‘if you're gonna do this, you have to really do it - and you have to be the one that's the active everyday chef, and I'm here to help you out.’ He was on vacation last week, and I’ve covered a couple of weekends here and there - I'm always happy to do that. But for the most part, he's the one that is in charge of the menu. The only thing we do is we go over the food together, talk about some slight critiques or how it might be plated, but he’s the one who makes it happen.

     We're getting ready to change the menu again, seasonally, because right now we still have heirloom tomatoes, we have a summer corn dish, and we have halibut. Some of those are going to go by the wayside; as we move into autumn we'll try out some different ideas. Ultimately, my favorite dish is whatever you keep coming back for.


Are there any exciting events coming up at Wright & Company?

We are doing an event in conjunction with Schoolcraft College on November 6th. As I mentioned, I'm on the board, so I tried to change the focus, because I think that the food events at Schoolcraft should be more student-driven, like the one we did during the pandemic. For the culinary extravaganza, instead of having a bunch of chefs go there, we had different stations inside the classrooms - so there were kids making bread, and kids in the pastry department or in the butcher shop, making different steaks and fish dishes and things like that. I thought that it was more beneficial for the people that donate or buy tickets to see what their money was going towards.

     There will be about 80 people in attendance at the upcoming Schoolcraft event at Wright & Company. All the money that’s raised will go to the school - we'll be donating our help and our time, and we've contributed to the scholarship fund. We're going to have a four-course meal, cooked by a few of the outstanding students at Schoolcraft and paired with wine.

     We will invite each student and their instructor out to explain their dish prior to eating. We are excited to have the opportunity to invest in the improvement of the students’ experience at the school. Hopefully, they’ll want to come work for us someday.

Wright and Company is located on the second floor of the Wright-Kay Building at 1500 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI. You can make a reservation here.