Menu highlight: Why aren’t more people talking about Tocororo’s chicken legs?

There are a few Eastern Market staples.

At Bert’s, there are red hot sausages fresh off the grill out front, or saucy slabs of barbecue ribs inside. There are thin slices of NY-style pizza at the original Supino and bloody marys at Vivio’s. Sweet and savory crepes from The French Cow and hot, powdery puffs from Beignets 2 Go satisfy many a sweet tooth on market days.

But one delicious creation lurks on the outskirts of the market, perhaps overshadowed by an inebriated bustle at Thomas Magee's and occasional lines of sneaker heads that wind around Two 18 shoe and clothing store steps away, when the latest Jordans drop.

Tocororo, the colorful bar and kitchen as vibrant as the Cuban bird that inspires its name, takes traditional bar food to the next level in both flavor and proportion.

Each menu item here defies the status quo, but it’s the giant chicken drumsticks that make the place my default dinner spot when I’m feeling carnivorous.

In place of buffalo wings, wing dings or chicken tenders, Tocororo plates three of everyone’s favorite chicken part, smoked, fried and slathered in your choice of sauce.

The drumsticks are massive, befitting a table set for Fred Flintstone. I wrap the cartilage at the bottom of a leg with a napkin and flash back to hot days at amusement parks and fairs where the turkey legs were twice the size of my face. These drumsticks aren’t quite as large, but the experience is all the same.

Tender meat is salty and smoky, sometimes pinkish the way poultry gets in the smolder of cherry wood and hickory. Its bare skin is golden and freckled with herbs before getting cloaked in sauces that range in heat.

There’s an island flair in the sauces here. Hunks of juicy pineapple peek through a pungent slurry of yellow curry, coconut and roasted peppers in the Buffalo Curry flavor. The tropical pineapple-coconut duo shows up again in a fiery jerk sauce and in the Tropical Birds Eye, too.

There are Asian notes with a Gochujang sauce bursting with umami flavors and a Hot Honey BBQ for a simply sweet nod to the American South.

For $11, the drumsticks are served solo — no sides, just chicken basking in the glory of its own robust flavor or amplified with spicy sauces and tears of fresh herbs. The dish is filling enough to be enjoyed on its own, I however, pair it with a bright salad teeming with raw vegetables, charred pineapples and funky gorgonzola for a balanced meal and a little roughage.

How Tocororo has gone on serving something so unassumingly gluttonous with such little fanfare, I’ll never know. I can only assume my fellow devotees have been as hesitant to let others in on the secret as I have.

Now that the secret is out, I hereby declare Tocororo’s drumsticks an Eastern Market staple.

Tocororo, 1416 East Fisher Freeway, Detroit. tocororodetroit.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit's Tocororo offers a new Eastern Market staple: Menu highlight