Westside 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...
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Slows 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...
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Fill ‘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,...
Read MoreSeafood Driven and Pita Cruiser
It’s good that I don’t live far from Mark’s Carts–and its companion business for libations, Bill’s Beer Garden–because it took several attempts to try Seafood Driven, the newest cart in the...
Read MoreMayonnaise Sandwich
Knowing that we’d emptied the kitchen before we left, we stopped for groceries on our way home. We were just back from Cuba, and the overflowing American supermarket was a stark reminder of just how scarce food was there....
Read MoreTrue North
Traffic completely clogged downtown Ann Arbor, as RVs chugging in for Michigan’s football spring game mixed with cars full of young people anticipating the next day’s Hash Bash. In the face of gridlock, it seemed a...
Read MoreCommon Grill
“I’m still having fun,” says Craig Common, whose Common Grill is celebrating a quarter-century on Main St. in Chelsea: “It has been phenomenal, a great run, with lots of people who have been with us a...
Read MoreBill Knapp’s Chocolate Cake
“I still dream of Bill Knapp’s chocolate cake. It was the best,” a dessert enthusiast was overheard saying recently. Despite the restaurant chain’s bankruptcy in 2002, that dream is about to rematerialize...
Read MoreAntonio’s Coney Island
We ate a lot of black beans and eggs and fried chicken the month we spent riding buses around Guatemala–enough, actually, that we grew tired of those otherwise tasty staples. It was the rainy season, and alternatives in...
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