October 28, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, most food critics chase Michelin stars or fine dining, but Tyler Groenendal is chasing something crispier. From diners in small towns to highly rated restaurants in America’s biggest food cities, this Michigan native has spent years traveling the country reviewing one thing: onion rings. What started as a quirky side gig has grown into a devoted following and a deeper appreciation for the people behind America’s best comfort food. Join us as Tyler shares what makes a good onion ring and why some of the best dishes come from unexpected places.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories and up next to story
from Tyler Grenadal of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Tyler has one
of the most interesting side gigs I've ever heard of.
He's an onion ring reviewer and he posts his reviews
on his blog named Sola capa, which in Latin means
onion alone. Here's our own Monte Montgomery with more on
(00:32):
this story.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
In a world dominated by subpar onion rings, one man
rises against it all to find the cream of the
crop on a journey that started in an economic form
in Atlanta but continues nationwide on the streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(00:57):
The man seeking the best onion well, that's Tyler Grenada.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything,
but I think at this point I must be one
of the world's leading experts in onion rings, if only
by the virtue of that nobody else is and nobody
else cares. It's not just a hobby, it's sort of
a mission. You could do it with any food in theory,
I guess, but I don't think it would work with
all of them, like French fries or hamburgers. For whatever reason,
I think onion rings have that potential for greatness that
(01:30):
most people won't bother to do, but a good restaurant
will because in a sense, most people don't care about
onion rings. It's kind of a throwaway to use an
appetizer or a side. It's using out the star of
a place. So I think, if you're putting effort into
something that you could do cheaply, that you could do poorly,
that says to me a lot about what the restaurant
does in other ways. The first one is actually a
(01:57):
Saucy Dog barbecue in Jonesville, Michigan, right outside of Hillsdale,
and I got the onion rings and I was kind
of blown away by them because they didn't fit my
paradigm of what an onion ring was, which before that
was I don't know, kind of a circle that tastes
a bit like onion. But these had a big depth
of flavor. They were handmade, they were crafted with love
(02:18):
and care and attention, and that sort of opened my
mind to the possibility of onion rings. And I think
then on I started eating more and more onion rings,
and an observation of a correlation kind of developed into
a philosophy. I noticed that restaurants that tended to have
good onion rings had good other things. In other words,
(02:38):
the onion rings were a proxy of the quality of
food for the restaurant, and that eventually developed into the
onion ring standard, wherein you can judge the quality of
a restaurant solely based on the onion rings.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Highler now presents the onion ring standard.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I rank a good onion ring by four categories. So
the first category is presentation and appearance. How are they plated?
What are they plated in? Do they fit in it?
Do they spill out? Are there too few? That one's
pretty subjective. But then appearance is the second part of
that category. How do the onion rings themselves look? Are
they patchy? Are they handbreaded? Are they clearly machine made
(03:22):
because of the uniformity to it that you can't get
with handbreading? Next one is probably an obvious one taste.
How do they taste? Usually it breaks down with three components,
the breading and the batter, the onion itself, and then
whatever dipping sauce they might have. Third category is texture,
which I think is the most underappreciated aspect of any
onion ring. How are the onions. Are they mushy?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Are they too hard?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Are they too soft? Do the onions slip out from
beneath the batter something I'd call slippage, meaning that they're
not meshed well together. The last one is probably a
little unconventional when you're talking about food reviews, but it's
one that's very near and dear to my heart as
a thrifty Dutchman. Those who know Westin don't know how
true that is. Value is what I paid for it worthwhile,
(04:05):
And that's not the same thing as cheap. Something could
be expensive and a good value. All these things are
proxies for all those aspects of the restaurant I think,
but value is probably the biggest one. I think the
best kind of onion ring depends so in my experience,
onion rings that are good tend to be thick cut,
so they're wide and they're tall. They tend to be
(04:27):
in a liquid batter and then fried rather than breaded
obviously handmade. I think that goes without saying. I've noticed
more good ones at places like barbecue restaurants and bars
rather than like fancy places. I think barbecue restaurants tend
to be one of the weird concentrations of very high
quality onion rings. But the best one, and I'll say
this upfront, Uchiko, Japanese restaurant in Austin, Texas serves tempera
(04:50):
battered onion rings which were unlike anything I have ever
had and blew my mind. I think we need to
have as good flavor in the batter, a liquid batter
and thick cut onion rings, and then a perfect fried
time to unleash the crispiness of the batter, and just
enough juice from the onions to not let them be musche.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
We've heard about the good, now let's hear about the
bad and ugly.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So I like to trot out this Bostiacht quote for
a lot of things because I think it always applies.
Truth is one, error is multiple. There's not one true
way to make a good onion ring, but I think
there's fewer than there are to make a bad onion ring.
At the core of it, overpriced cannot stand, frozen, invariably
bad the prep time. If you burn it to a
(05:36):
crisp it's bad because that means that the breading is
too hard on the outside and the onions are just
juice like you're eating onion water. What's disgusting. I don't
want to eat that. Texturally slippage, which I mentioned earlier.
It's a term I think I coined for when you
bite into an onion ring and the onion just slips
out and slides out onto your plates, but the breading
still holds. I think that kills an onion ring quicker
(05:59):
than just about anything else.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Tyler now gives an in depth look into a recent
trip to Michigan's Macinaw Island that he had, firstly for
him and his wife to celebrate their one year anniversary,
but secondly to review onion rings and warning, this first
review is scathing, but justifiably so. We've chosen to bleep
the name of the restaurant in question to avoid further
(06:30):
shame to them. After all, they probably were crying after
reading Tyler's review, and it wasn't just because of all
the bad onions they were chopping.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I went to a place called in that's halfway around
Mackinaw Island for those who never been. It's an island
in Lake Huron by the Straits of Mackinaw where there
are no automobiles allowed. So the thing you do is
bike around the island, and we were doing that, and
most of the Stuffley Island is concentrated in the southern half.
There's one restaurant on the north part of the island,
(07:03):
which is drive in. I think there's a lot of
economic reasons why this is the case, but when you
have a not quite monopoly per se, but a dominance
and no other competition nearby, I think your products can
or might tend to be worse, and I think that's
the case here. I couldn't finish them. I literally could
not eat any more of it. They were completely absolutely tasteless.
(07:28):
I mean there was not even onion. There wasn't even salt,
there wasn't even grease. I think it gave them a
zero out of five and taste because there was nothing
at all to it. So it was kind of a
meltdown in just a delivery of the onion rings as
a concept. So I post all the reviews on my blog,
Sola Kapa, but I also post them on Google Maps.
(07:50):
I had sort of a service to the community kind
of thing, more exposure, more people learning. So I posted
this review of which was not good. They weren't good
onion rings. I don't really pull my punch, and they
responded with the following, sorry you didn't enjoy. After reading
your novel, I have come to the conclusion that you
need psychiatric help enjoy your time on the island. That
(08:14):
kind of steemed me a little bit, and I think
that it sort of shows a lot about what kind
of restaurant it is and why it is the way
it is. If the response to the owner true negative
review is you need psychiatric help, I think that says
a lot about how you run your restaurant. But in
recent memory, one of the best onion rings is a
place called ice House Barbecue, also on Mackinaw Islands, but
(08:34):
a similar process, except a different story. They were a
beautiful golden brown, really crispy, pretty consistent size, handbreaded. You
could tell like these weren'tny frozen rings. Taste was unbelievable.
They put flavor, salt, and seasoning into the panco breading.
The onions were cooked just right to release all the
(08:54):
onion juices out into the ring, but without being too
greasy and without being too overdone. And that's basically what
the review was. And I think that the owner's response
to this review, again on Google Maps shows a lot
about what kind of restaurant they run, how they operate.
The response was five stars for this review. You're entertaining
(09:15):
an educational recount of the ice House Barbecue Onion ring
experience kept us on the edge of our seats till
the very end. Thank you for sharing your unbiased expertise
as well as an exceptional talent for storytelling. I think
that demonstrates a lot. So they didn't have to respond.
They didn't have to respond in that verbose and glowing
way either. They could have said thanks for the review
(09:38):
or glad you enjoyed the experience, but they saw someone
who put a lot of time and effort into analyzing
the product they put out.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So what's next for Tyler and his onion crusade.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
To me, the beauty of solo capa is that it
is a never ending journey. Even if I did this
full time for twenty years, doing nothing but eating reviewing onion,
I would be morbidly obese and I would probably die
before the twenty years were up. Two I don't think
I'd come anywhere close to getting everywhere, even in the
United States. I mean, there are an unfathomable number of restaurants,
(10:14):
and of that number, a proportion of those have onion rings.
So I think the beauty of this to me is
that it's never ending. So what's next. It's kind of
more the same. Ideally it would be forever. I mean,
as long as I can. I want to do this,
so it's next to more of the same. Keep eating
onion rings, keep reviewing them, hopeful people keep reading them.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And great job on that, Monty, and special thanks to
Tyler Grenadall. Tyler Grenadall's story an important one, A man
in search of the perfect onion ring. Here on our
American stories
This is our American Stories and up next to story
from Tyler Grenadal of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Tyler has one
of the most interesting side gigs I've ever heard of.
He's an onion ring reviewer and he posts his reviews
on his blog named Sola capa, which in Latin means
onion alone. Here's our own Monte Montgomery with more on
(00:32):
this story.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
In a world dominated by subpar onion rings, one man
rises against it all to find the cream of the
crop on a journey that started in an economic form
in Atlanta but continues nationwide on the streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(00:57):
The man seeking the best onion well, that's Tyler Grenada.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything,
but I think at this point I must be one
of the world's leading experts in onion rings, if only
by the virtue of that nobody else is and nobody
else cares. It's not just a hobby, it's sort of
a mission. You could do it with any food in theory,
I guess, but I don't think it would work with
all of them, like French fries or hamburgers. For whatever reason,
I think onion rings have that potential for greatness that
(01:30):
most people won't bother to do, but a good restaurant
will because in a sense, most people don't care about
onion rings. It's kind of a throwaway to use an
appetizer or a side. It's using out the star of
a place. So I think, if you're putting effort into
something that you could do cheaply, that you could do poorly,
that says to me a lot about what the restaurant
does in other ways. The first one is actually a
(01:57):
Saucy Dog barbecue in Jonesville, Michigan, right outside of Hillsdale,
and I got the onion rings and I was kind
of blown away by them because they didn't fit my
paradigm of what an onion ring was, which before that
was I don't know, kind of a circle that tastes
a bit like onion. But these had a big depth
of flavor. They were handmade, they were crafted with love
(02:18):
and care and attention, and that sort of opened my
mind to the possibility of onion rings. And I think
then on I started eating more and more onion rings,
and an observation of a correlation kind of developed into
a philosophy. I noticed that restaurants that tended to have
good onion rings had good other things. In other words,
(02:38):
the onion rings were a proxy of the quality of
food for the restaurant, and that eventually developed into the
onion ring standard, wherein you can judge the quality of
a restaurant solely based on the onion rings.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Highler now presents the onion ring standard.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I rank a good onion ring by four categories. So
the first category is presentation and appearance. How are they plated?
What are they plated in? Do they fit in it?
Do they spill out? Are there too few? That one's
pretty subjective. But then appearance is the second part of
that category. How do the onion rings themselves look? Are
they patchy? Are they handbreaded? Are they clearly machine made
(03:22):
because of the uniformity to it that you can't get
with handbreading? Next one is probably an obvious one taste.
How do they taste? Usually it breaks down with three components,
the breading and the batter, the onion itself, and then
whatever dipping sauce they might have. Third category is texture,
which I think is the most underappreciated aspect of any
onion ring. How are the onions. Are they mushy?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Are they too hard?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Are they too soft? Do the onions slip out from
beneath the batter something I'd call slippage, meaning that they're
not meshed well together. The last one is probably a
little unconventional when you're talking about food reviews, but it's
one that's very near and dear to my heart as
a thrifty Dutchman. Those who know Westin don't know how
true that is. Value is what I paid for it worthwhile,
(04:05):
And that's not the same thing as cheap. Something could
be expensive and a good value. All these things are
proxies for all those aspects of the restaurant I think,
but value is probably the biggest one. I think the
best kind of onion ring depends so in my experience,
onion rings that are good tend to be thick cut,
so they're wide and they're tall. They tend to be
(04:27):
in a liquid batter and then fried rather than breaded
obviously handmade. I think that goes without saying. I've noticed
more good ones at places like barbecue restaurants and bars
rather than like fancy places. I think barbecue restaurants tend
to be one of the weird concentrations of very high
quality onion rings. But the best one, and I'll say
this upfront, Uchiko, Japanese restaurant in Austin, Texas serves tempera
(04:50):
battered onion rings which were unlike anything I have ever
had and blew my mind. I think we need to
have as good flavor in the batter, a liquid batter
and thick cut onion rings, and then a perfect fried
time to unleash the crispiness of the batter, and just
enough juice from the onions to not let them be musche.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
We've heard about the good, now let's hear about the
bad and ugly.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So I like to trot out this Bostiacht quote for
a lot of things because I think it always applies.
Truth is one, error is multiple. There's not one true
way to make a good onion ring, but I think
there's fewer than there are to make a bad onion ring.
At the core of it, overpriced cannot stand, frozen, invariably
bad the prep time. If you burn it to a
(05:36):
crisp it's bad because that means that the breading is
too hard on the outside and the onions are just
juice like you're eating onion water. What's disgusting. I don't
want to eat that. Texturally slippage, which I mentioned earlier.
It's a term I think I coined for when you
bite into an onion ring and the onion just slips
out and slides out onto your plates, but the breading
still holds. I think that kills an onion ring quicker
(05:59):
than just about anything else.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Tyler now gives an in depth look into a recent
trip to Michigan's Macinaw Island that he had, firstly for
him and his wife to celebrate their one year anniversary,
but secondly to review onion rings and warning, this first
review is scathing, but justifiably so. We've chosen to bleep
the name of the restaurant in question to avoid further
(06:30):
shame to them. After all, they probably were crying after
reading Tyler's review, and it wasn't just because of all
the bad onions they were chopping.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I went to a place called in that's halfway around
Mackinaw Island for those who never been. It's an island
in Lake Huron by the Straits of Mackinaw where there
are no automobiles allowed. So the thing you do is
bike around the island, and we were doing that, and
most of the Stuffley Island is concentrated in the southern half.
There's one restaurant on the north part of the island,
(07:03):
which is drive in. I think there's a lot of
economic reasons why this is the case, but when you
have a not quite monopoly per se, but a dominance
and no other competition nearby, I think your products can
or might tend to be worse, and I think that's
the case here. I couldn't finish them. I literally could
not eat any more of it. They were completely absolutely tasteless.
(07:28):
I mean there was not even onion. There wasn't even salt,
there wasn't even grease. I think it gave them a
zero out of five and taste because there was nothing
at all to it. So it was kind of a
meltdown in just a delivery of the onion rings as
a concept. So I post all the reviews on my blog,
Sola Kapa, but I also post them on Google Maps.
(07:50):
I had sort of a service to the community kind
of thing, more exposure, more people learning. So I posted
this review of which was not good. They weren't good
onion rings. I don't really pull my punch, and they
responded with the following, sorry you didn't enjoy. After reading
your novel, I have come to the conclusion that you
need psychiatric help enjoy your time on the island. That
(08:14):
kind of steemed me a little bit, and I think
that it sort of shows a lot about what kind
of restaurant it is and why it is the way
it is. If the response to the owner true negative
review is you need psychiatric help, I think that says
a lot about how you run your restaurant. But in
recent memory, one of the best onion rings is a
place called ice House Barbecue, also on Mackinaw Islands, but
(08:34):
a similar process, except a different story. They were a
beautiful golden brown, really crispy, pretty consistent size, handbreaded. You
could tell like these weren'tny frozen rings. Taste was unbelievable.
They put flavor, salt, and seasoning into the panco breading.
The onions were cooked just right to release all the
(08:54):
onion juices out into the ring, but without being too
greasy and without being too overdone. And that's basically what
the review was. And I think that the owner's response
to this review, again on Google Maps shows a lot
about what kind of restaurant they run, how they operate.
The response was five stars for this review. You're entertaining
(09:15):
an educational recount of the ice House Barbecue Onion ring
experience kept us on the edge of our seats till
the very end. Thank you for sharing your unbiased expertise
as well as an exceptional talent for storytelling. I think
that demonstrates a lot. So they didn't have to respond.
They didn't have to respond in that verbose and glowing
way either. They could have said thanks for the review
(09:38):
or glad you enjoyed the experience, but they saw someone
who put a lot of time and effort into analyzing
the product they put out.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So what's next for Tyler and his onion crusade.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
To me, the beauty of solo capa is that it
is a never ending journey. Even if I did this
full time for twenty years, doing nothing but eating reviewing onion,
I would be morbidly obese and I would probably die
before the twenty years were up. Two I don't think
I'd come anywhere close to getting everywhere, even in the
United States. I mean, there are an unfathomable number of restaurants,
(10:14):
and of that number, a proportion of those have onion rings.
So I think the beauty of this to me is
that it's never ending. So what's next. It's kind of
more the same. Ideally it would be forever. I mean,
as long as I can. I want to do this,
so it's next to more of the same. Keep eating
onion rings, keep reviewing them, hopeful people keep reading them.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And great job on that, Monty, and special thanks to
Tyler Grenadall. Tyler Grenadall's story an important one, A man
in search of the perfect onion ring. Here on our
American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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