Dani Ungar, 29, is on a constant quest for Vernors. The Oak Park native has four cases of the signature beverage stacked in his apartment, just in case he can’t find it again soon. “I bought it all at once -- I pretty much bought the store out,” he says of his purchase from a store in New Jersey. “I’m still looking for a local place that sells it.”
Currently a lawyer living in Manhattan, he says tastes of home are always welcome. His last fix: cake from Zeman’s, served at the home of fellow Detroit natives during a Shabbat meal. “They took it out for a special treat,” he says of the unexpected slice of seven layer. “It was pretty good.”
And there’s more where that came from -- he has two more installments of the cake, likely half-logs, waiting for him in various apartments around the city. His sister and a friend each came in this week with it in their luggage. “I have to go pick them up.”
Ungar, who left Detroit after middle school to attend a yeshiva in Baltimore, has since lived in Washington D.C., where he worked in the government’s patent office, and also in Boston, where he attended Harvard Law School.
He moved to New York in 2008, but says he still feels Detroit has a lot to offer. Food and drink from home are just one way of expressing that, and of sharing the sentiment with friends. “It reminds me of my childhood; it makes me feel connected,” he says. “It reminds me of good times in Detroit.”
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