Long strands of black braiding hair are strung through the fibers of the beige area rug in my living room. “This is my last attempt,” my childhood friend says from the couch behind me, her hands sweeping my hair into a tight ponytail that pulls the skin at my temples toward the ceiling as her knees squeeze my ribs.

She’s hurriedly adding extensions to my hair for a long, braided ponytail that she has already done and undone twice over. I’m seated on the floor collecting loose hairs trailing from the teeth of the brush sitting beside me, trying to limit the flyaways I’m sure to find in corners of the room like pine needles of a Christmas tree in May.

My friend is visiting Detroit from New York City and we’re running behind for our reservation at Zuzu, a hot new restaurant in downtown Detroit.

A video that plays on a loop in the background of the restaurant’s website homepage opens with a woman’s bare leg draped outside of a car. Her heels are buckled at the ankle, her sequined black dress with a slit all the way up the side of her thigh. Imagery of women caressing their skin with fishnet gloves or swiping rouge onto their lips populate Zuzu’s Instagram grid. The site encourages guests to be “your most fashionable self,” but the overall creative direction screams, “Get sexy.”

It’s a team effort. My cousin, who is standing in front of a mirror tracing the slants of her cheekbones with a wispy fan brush dusted in brown contour powder, suggests a new approach to seamlessly blending the braiding hair into my own. The technique is a success, and my friend disappears to slip on her cream-colored, two-piece skirt set. The top crops just above her belly button.

When we arrive at Zuzu, I feel the braid skimming the small of my back through my fitted denim dress. With my bold red lips and steep heels that drive the balls of my feet into the ground beneath me, I feel like a vixen, my dress with slits revealing slivers of skin at my waist. The getup is so out of character, I consider going by an alias for the evening. It’s a weekend and I’m out with friends, but as a restaurant critic at a restaurant, technically speaking, I’m at work.

Once we pass the Lamborghinis at valet out front and the host guides us to our table on the outdoor patio, I fade into the sea of women in figure-tracing dresses, long lashes and glitzy rings on every other finger. Peeking into the lively dining room through the curtained glass windows, I catch glimpses of male bartenders shaking up cocktails in white dinner jackets and pink barstools with backs that look like painted pink lips seductively agape.

Our visit to Zuzu comes just days after signage at Detroit’s castle-like Grand Army of the Republic Building piqued my interest. Imagery of a woman wearing red patent-leather gloves grazing her elbows and rose-colored glasses clung to the windows of the historic building to alert passersby that Sexy Steak, a new steakhouse, would be moving in. “Sexy is calling,” was scribbled on top of the images. “Will you pick up?” it continued.

More:New steakhouse to occupy 2 floors of downtown Detroit’s GAR Building

And in the weeks that followed, I became increasingly aware of dining establishments luring diners with suggestive photography and dining rooms that could pass for strip clubs without the talent.

Perhaps, as the hospitality industry continues to wade through the rubble of the COVID-19 pandemic, are restaurateurs turning to an old adage for profitable businesses? Does sex sell when it relates to dining experiences?

Cyclical trends suggest that, at the very least, the illusion of sex and the objectification of beautiful women does.

Hospitality’s sexual history

Following the 2008 recession, then-New York Magazine editorial director Hugo Lindgren coined the “Hot Waitress Economic Index” — “The hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy.”

Lindgren, a producer on the 2017 film “Detroit,” cited ways in which restaurant owners and managers sought out attractive servers to help boost business.

“As a commodity that’s fairly cheap, historically effective as a marketing tool and available on a freelance basis, hotness will likely be back in demand long before your average Michigan autoworker is,” Lindgren wrote, an eerily prophetic assertion nearly 15 years prior to the hundreds of recent layoffs in Michigan amid the UAW strike.

The post-recession era also saw an increase in “breastaurants,” where servers abide by dress codes that flaunt their own breasts and thighs more than the platters of battered and fried chicken parts they serve. And in 2011, as chains like Applebee’s saw declines in the wake of the recession, AP Food Industry Writer Candice Choi reported that the country’s top three breastaurant chains behind Hooters saw sales growth of 30% or more.

More recently, FSR magazine, a publication that covers full-service restaurant news, reported that national breastaurant chain Twin Peaks opened three locations in 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and 18 more between 2021-22. The chain, FSR reports, is expected to open up to 16 additional locations by the end of the year and aims to reach 200 total restaurants by 2027.

Sex sells, I suppose, even through a global pandemic. Perhaps, especially.

“The goal is for our guests to interpret what they feel when they walk in,” said Zaid Elia, founder and CEO of the Elia Group and Zuzu owner. “If I told every guest what to feel, it wouldn’t be the same.”

No restaurant owner, chef or manager who I’ve spoken with has confirmed that the recent interest in dialing up the sex factor in Detroit’s dining scene was a response to the economic effects of the pandemic, but perhaps it’s a collective instinct — if even a subconscious one.

How does sex translate in restaurants?

Social media, the mouthpiece for many of today’s new restaurants, sets the tone for what an establishment aims to be. Those same sultry images that wrap around the GAR Building also filled Sexy Steak’s Instagram profile, flirting with viewers eager to learn more about the development. On Instagram, more of the campaign came into focus — the glasses of red wine, the ornate gold platters serving slices of rare steak garnished with delicate violet flower petals.

“You have to curate imagery that relates to high energy, so that when people are looking at your social media, they imagine themselves in that environment,” Elia said, “and when they come in, the tone has already been set.”

Inside the dining room, though, restaurateurs are taking a less obvious approach to giving a space a sexy edge.

In most cases, new restaurants are not following the breastaurant model. Servers aren’t dressed for a wet-T-shirt contest at Zuzu and when it opens, Sexy Steak has no intention of requiring female bartenders to shake up cocktails in glossy red gloves.

Instead, owners are setting the mood with lighting and textures.

At Zuzu, crushed velvet tufted banquettes look like crimson-colored oyster shells. Black-and-white marbleized round tables are their pearls. Red leather menus are embossed with a reptilian skin pattern and plates give the effect of hammered gold under warm lighting.

There are light fixtures with fringe and a wall of candles beneath the mural of a woman’s eyes painted in silver shadow imposed onto a taffeta curtain. A seat at the bar is like an upside-down view of a star-studded night sky. Flecks of LED lights dance on the bar top for an electric shimmer.

“Every successful restaurant has to have soul and that starts with the design and curation of the different elements that make a space come alive, from the lights and paint to the different fabrics and flooring,” Elia said, adding that Zuzu’s floor plan plays a role in the design.

Stationing the bar and DJ at the front of the restaurant sets the expectation of a high-energy experience before even arriving at your table.

“We want to make dinner feel less like the pre-party and more like the party itself,” Elia said.

What does sex taste like?

Dishes and beverages at today’s sexiest restaurants embody the tropes of sex itself. Gluttonous portion sizes and bold flavors say bigger is in fact better, and florals for garnishes nod to the romance of a bouquet gifted on a second date. I’ve seen everything from grilled prawns hooked onto whole marigold heads to purple violas clothes-pinned to cocktails to orchids on salads to orchids on ribeyes to orchids suspended in a bowl of macaroni and cheese.

At these restaurants, food is not phallic. There aren’t cheeky takes on bananas or plays on emojis that have become like modern-day Morse Code for genitals and private parts, like eggplants and peaches. A meal at Zuzu, however, does begin with a ritual that steers your mind to the anatomy of male arousal. A round, white object the size of an antacid sitting in a sheer, blue glass bowl grows to the size of a roll of Tums as your server pours water over top. Once full-grown, you’ll unravel the thin towelette to cleanse your hands before your first course.

Dessert menus aren’t populated with archetypes of bedroom foods, like chocolate syrup or chocolate-covered strawberries. It’s not even about aphrodisiacs, such as oysters or artichokes. Most chefs say, the making of a sexy dish is the thought behind it, the creativity that goes into it and the quality ingredients it highlights.

Sexy Steak will focus on halal beef sourced from the reputable Creekstone Farms. Sexy Burger will elevate the traditional burger with wagyu and lamb blends.  

Chef Omar Mitchell, owner of Greektown restaurant Table No. 2 and Imaginate, which has locations in Royal Oak and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, places an emphasis on presentation, particularly in an era when photos of a dish posted to social media may be what drives a customer to a restaurant.

“Folks like to make sure their food looks good,” Mitchell said. “I’m always looking for ways to push the envelope on the plate presentation so that the moment a guest posts it online, it’s going to gravitate to new potential customers. That’s exactly what folks are doing nowadays. Before they even read reviews, they’re clicking on images to see what the place and the food looks like.”

Mitchell described a creamy lobster bisque starter at Table No. 2 that is served with a crawfish clinging to the rim of the bowl. “It looks like it’s about to submerge itself into the bowl,” he said, “and to give our Caesar salad some sex appeal, instead of topping it with oversized croutons, we food-process them to create a crouton dust.”

Steak, truffles and edible gold leaves are almost always on the menu. Decadence, it is apparent, is a sex symbol, unless you’re talking to Christopher McClendon, who sees beauty in simplicity.

A Detroit-based chef, McClendon wrote the forthcoming cookbook “The Sexy Breakfast,” to capture the essence of breakfast in bed, which he believes is less about the meal prepared, but the intention behind it.

“The book’s mission,” the preface of “The Sexy Breakfast” reads, “is to restore and or establish intimacy in relationships.”

Throughout the book, which McClendon aims to release in early 2024, images taken by photography and photo styling duo Michelle Gerard and Jenna Belevender follow the same approach that restaurateurs seem to be applying to their business models, relying on lighting and texture to set a sultry mood.

There aren’t hands holding foods suggestively, or ingredients grazing lacquered lips. In “The Sexy Breakfast,” sex shows up in the form of minimal ingredients rather than handfuls of edible garnishes.

The sexiest dish in the book, McClendon said, is the Grapefruit Bruleé with Pistachio Dust. A candy coating encrusted with crushed pistachios can be cracked with a single tap of the back of a spoon to reveal the juicy interior of a naturally seductive fruit.

“There are things that are sexy and there are things that we try to make sexy,” McClendon said. “An orchid, for example, is beautiful. You could take a sweet pepper, cut it, shock it in cold water so that it curls at the ends, dip it in rice flour and make a whole new composition so that it looks like an orchid but it’s an actual functional thing. That is art.”

To dance or to eat? That is the question.

Sex appeal is in the eye of the beholder. Among America’s dining spheres though, Miami and Las Vegas are unanimously considered the sexiest.

Local restaurateurs seeking sexy spaces look to the lively cities where nightlife and dining intersect. It’s why a growing number of clubstaurants have surfaced in Detroit, where the barriers between restaurants, lounges and nightclubs fade like a pair of transition lenses.  

John “Bravo” Samuels III, a partner of District Seventy8 in downtown Detroit, said he and the co-owners of the “resto-lounge,” a restaurant-lounge hybrid, drew from their experiences in the city’s nightclub industry to develop an atmosphere that evokes the euphoric mood of a dance party, without the need for a dance floor.

“As a managing partner at Society Detroit and with 17 years in nightlife, you know what sells — you also know what’s missing,” Bravo said. “The one thing I felt wasn’t exemplified in the city was a restaurant structure with lounge aesthetics.”

Here, there are details more commonplace at a Greektown club than a downtown restaurant, such as LED lights that cast pink and blue hues on everything from guests’ faces to a DJ’s 808s. Leather booths and high tables dominate seating arrangements.

“If you look at stadiums, movie theaters, concert venues — the highest forms of entertainment have elevation,” Bravo said, offering context for elevated cocktail tables and a back dining area you’ll have to climb a few stairs to reach.

Also in common with nightclubs, District Seventy8, Bravo said, has a particular consumer in mind: women. “We call it a pretty-girl playground.”

Under the neon lights, District Seventy8 bartenders serve flower towers reminiscent of candelabras, where martini glasses rimmed with sugar and filled with colorful cocktails are threaded together with faux rosettes. A Shot O’Clock performance of up to two dozen green tea shots on an LED wheel topped with a sparkler appeals to the inner child in all of us, still impressed with bright lights and dancing flames.

“When we designed the space, we wanted it to be a spot where the ladies came out and celebrated their birthdays,” Bravo said, “because women celebrate their birthdays more than anybody in the world — for a whole month straight.”

In Bravo’s experience, glitz, glamour and a sex factor appeal to women of all demographics celebrating birthdays at any age. Bachelorette parties, too.

“But the beauty of it, is that a group of four guys can sit at a booth without feeling like they’re in a Barbie world,” he said. “They still feel like they’re in a lounge.”

Chef Mitchell, of Table No. 2 and Imaginate, anticipates breaking ground on his next endeavor, “a very high-end, chic restaurant with sex appeal,” in early November. More than a restaurant, though, The Coda Project will moonlight as an event venue and an upper-level cigar bar with “a masculine feel to it.” 

Mitchell, who garnered attention for Le Petit Chef, a feature that superimposed a 3D animated rendering of a miniature chef onto diners’ plates at Imaginate’s Royal Oak location, plans to give the concept of a traditional banquet hall a sexy twist with LED lighting panels and digitized backdrops to create another interactive experience for guests.

“We’re going to put a lot of time and emphasis into LED panels where images can move across the screens,” he said.

Detroit has its share of existing clubstaurants, only here, entertainment and beverages are the main gig. Food is the side hustle. And sex, in a proverbial sense, is on the menu.

On a recent Tuesday evening, starving for a late-night meal, a group of friends and I ventured into Trust Cocktails and Shareables in downtown Detroit where beautiful women served plates of steak bites and orders of fries wearing pink thong unitards and matching fishnet hosiery.

At a summertime brunch at The Shadow Gallery, the new Eastern Market rooftop entertainment complex, young waitresses in similar black getups and fanny packs cinched at their waists delivered candied bacon and eggs to my table for two. There was a $10 cover per person, and a DJ sent Bad Bunny’s deep drawl through the air on the outdoor patio along with curls of smoke from the hookah devices propped at a number of tables.

Below The Shadow Gallery is The Lobby, a bar and lounge serving Asian-Caribbean fusion, like jerk chicken and dishes made on a hibachi grill.

Checkmate Detroit, the most recent newcomer to the scene, having opened Oct. 20, debuted with cocktails filled with ice cubes stamped with the venue’s checker piece logo, custom neon signs and women in suggestive attire handing off bottles of Champagne, not unlike bottle girls in a nightclub.

Soon, owners of Eastern Market’s The Eastern will resuscitate the old Norwood Theatre in New Center with The Norwood, another event venue featuring a lower level activated with food and drinks.

The clubstaurant scene is a stark departure from the speakeasy trend of 2022, when it was as if business owners sought to entice diners with intimate settings and secrecy. Rather than whispered codes and inconspicuous entrances, this year’s bar scene is booming with live DJs and flashing lights.

Does Detroit have sex appeal?

Sexy Steak and Sexy Burger won’t open their doors at the GAR Building, likely, until early 2024 and yet the owner, Prime Concepts, has already softened the vampy nature of the eateries.

The hospitality group, whose portfolio includes Nara Miami, a Japanese steakhouse in North Miami Beach, swiftly responded to the demands of the metro Detroit market. Locals clutched their pearls at the oversexualized approach — principally, the name of the business — and challenged whether the concept is appropriate for the historic building, a space once frequented by the city’s Civil War veterans.

“It definitely elicited a response,” said Justin Near, president of Near Perfect Media and spokesperson for Prime Concepts Detroit, “and this is what it was intended to do. It got people excited to see how this concept would evolve and come to fruition.”

Near said the team continues to draw inspiration from its Miami operation, but will approach the influence with ease.

Rachel Malvich, creative director at Prime Concepts Detroit, described a shift away from the “red loudness” of the original campaign, which remains in the building’s windows but no longer on Sexy Steak’s Instagram profile, and into a more refined color scheme of neutral tones, such as brown and cream with strokes of green.

Diners can expect a fully sensorial experience with sturdy Italian leather menus grazing their palms and subtly titillating artwork.

“We won’t have anything that’s overtly sexual,” Malvich said. She assures that Sexy Steak, along with its sister restaurant that will reside in a corner space of the GAR Building, will not be spattered with nude bodies. “We just want artwork that invokes that sensual emotion.”

The names of the restaurants, however, remain.

“Detroit will never be Miami or Vegas, and Miami and Vegas will never be Detroit,” said Adrian Tonon, former 24-hour economy ambassador for the city of Detroit. “The problem is, everyone tries to rebrand Detroit, but Detroit is its own unique location. It’s very special and its people are special.”

Tonon looks to Detroit’s diverse cultural communities that power the local restaurant industry, the music industry and the overall art scene as attributes that give the city its own sex appeal.

“All of these ingredients add up to a vibe and a vibe is a sexiness, an allure, a mystique,” he said.

Tonon’s theory suggests a focus not on importing Miami or Las Vegas-born dining concepts to Detroit, but rather on creating spaces designed with Detroit’s creative community in mind. He argues the sexiest, swaggiest, new clubstaurants and lounges, with their live DJs, eclectic music selections and nightlife feel, will help the city retain the very talents that make Detroit as cool as it already is.   

“In Detroit, we’re the biggest exporter of talent in the world, I want to say, and we need to keep this constituency here,” he said, referring to local talents who migrate to bigger cities with thriving nightlife scenes in droves to meet their creative needs.

Tonon argues that lively dining and bar options have room to spill into neighborhoods beyond Greektown, one of the more established enclaves for Detroit nightlife.

The late restaurant critic and Detroit native Gael Greene made a lifelong career of exploring the ways in which food and sex can procreate something profound with what she referred to as “the metaphors of ecstasy,” used in her reviews as the “The Insatiable Critic” for New York Magazine.

In “Insatiable,” (Warner Books, 2006), Greene excerpted a line from one review:

“The same sense that registers pleasure at the table measures the delights in bed: the eye, the nose, the mouth, the skin, the ear that records a whimper of joy or a crunch of a superior pomme frite.”

Detroit’s dining scene has grown exponentially over the past several years. There are tasting menu restaurants and fast-casual spots, fine dining restaurants and pop-ups. The inevitable evolution of a burgeoning restaurant industry is to fill the gaps between existing establishments with new concepts — even if those concepts are new only for Detroit, yet perennially successful in other American food cities like Miami and Vegas.

If the natural progression, after a period that gradually shifted from isolation to shortages and eventually, to fatigue, is entertainment, celebration and a little bit of lust, I say, that’s hot.