Avalon Café and Kitchen
The new Avalon Cafe and Kitchen, which partners with Mighty Good Coffee for the all-important...
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Dine
iDrink’s Bubbly DrinkMate
Douglas Wang, CEO of iDrink Products Inc., can’t turn water into wine, but he can turn wine into champagne (though not Champagne, a protected designation of origin). For that matter, he can turn any liquid into a bubbly...
Read MoreA Makeover for babo
Babo on E. Washington at N. Division closed for three weeks this fall; the windows were papered over, and cryptic signs touted a makeover in the works. What a makeover it was: formerly a mini-grocery and prepared food bar, babo...
Read MoreVirtual Food Delivery
A thought floating through many adult minds around 6 p.m. is: “I want dinner delivered to my door, but not pizza.” When I Googled “Who delivers in Ann Arbor?” I got several options: EatBlue, EatStreet,...
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Selden Standard
Selden Standard on Second Ave. in Detroit is riding a wave of popularity, so dinner visits may begin with a brief wait even if, as I did, you made a reservation in advance (and responded to their call the previous day to...
Read MoreIconic Restaurants of Ann Arbor
“It is easy to imagine that well over half of the town’s most interesting business deals, new relationships, heart-to-heart conversations, and entrepreneurial ventures … benefitted from, or were influenced by,...
Read MoreSuvai Palace
Okay, I’ll put this on the table right up front: I’m not fond of restaurant buffets. The whole concept is off-putting to me–more food than you really want to eat, usually sitting too long at temperatures too...
Read MoreWestside Barbecue
There’s more than one way to discover the new Westside Barbecue on E. Madison near Fingerle Lumber. Maybe while waiting at the intersection on S. Main you spot the distinctive low brick-red building tight alongside the...
Read MoreSlows Barbecue
Detroit’s famous Slows BBQ has made forays into Ann Arbor, but they have mainly been exclusive or fleeting: catering for sports team dinners, a booth at the art fair, a tailgating stand on Hoover before home football...
Read MoreEating Maize & Blue
Maize & Blue Delicatessen is neither a true Jewish deli nor a marketing arm of University of Michigan sports. Both traditions are honored, however–or perhaps leveraged, if you want to see it that way. The deep roster...
Read MoreNagomi Sushi Downtown
Three friends are catching up on one another’s complicated lives over a rare, and twice-rescheduled, dinner out. In the middle of lively conversation, one laughing listener starts pushing glasses away from the center of...
Read MoreFill ‘er Up!!
Man, are we a people in a hurry! It’s not enough that we have drive-up windows at our already quick fast food joints or phone and online ordering that brings the food out to us the moment we drive into the lot. Now we need...
Read MoreTexas Roadhouse and Outback Steakhouse
Our Outback Steakhouse visit was far enough behind us to allow for digestion to fully occur. Texas Roadhouse was on the current day’s agenda.Each named for a distant land, these two chain meateries face off across Ann...
Read MoreThe Old Town
Probably because I feel sentimental about the fortieth anniversary of the Observer, telling a then-and-now story of a local restaurant seems important. Revisiting the July 1976 inaugural issue, however, I found mostly ghosts of...
Read MoreThe Pretzel Bell
In a town full of individuals ready to bow down before the mighty block M, re-creating an iconic keeper of the flame seems a tad presumptuous, if not downright ballsy. Simply put, former institutions can’t be replicated,...
Read MoreYoon’s Bakery
“American-style bread is a little tough and big,” says Ms. Kim, a customer at Yoon’s Bakery. Ms. Kim said she’d rather not give her first name, but she did offer to serve as a translator for Sunhyup Yoon,...
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