The Best BBQ in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County
Ann Arbor is not a BBQ town. But between Chelsea, South State Street, and Packard, there's more smoked meat worth knowing about than most people realize.
Let's get the honest framing out of the way: Ann Arbor is not a BBQ town. There is no Lockhart, no Memphis pitmaster row, no regional tradition that goes back three generations. Nobody is driving from across the state to eat smoked brisket here the way they might drive to Kalamazoo for craft beer or to Grand Rapids for a specific pizza.
What Ann Arbor has is different, and worth knowing. A Chelsea destination that trained under a four-time world barbecue champion. A roadhouse on Jackson that has been smoking ribs low and slow for more than twenty years. A butcher shop on South State that makes its own sausages and smokes its own pork. And a south-side counter that runs Texas-style brisket through an Asian-influenced kitchen and produces something that exists nowhere else in Washtenaw County.
That's four options. It's enough for a guide, especially when the options are this different from each other. Here's what to know.
1. Smokehouse 52 BBQ (125 S Main St, Chelsea)
Smokehouse 52 is the closest thing in this region to a dedicated BBQ restaurant built around a serious tradition. Phil Tolliver grew up on a hog farm in Stockbridge and trained under Mike Mills at 17th Street BBQ in Murphysboro, Illinois. Mills is a four-time world barbecue champion. That lineage shows up in the brisket.
The brisket is the anchor. Smoked until the bark is dark, cracked, and carries real smoke flavor through to the center. When it runs out, it's gone -- and on weekends, it sometimes goes before dinner. The ribs run from $15.99 for a half rack to $29.99 for a full, and the full rack is the move: bones that pull clean without being mushy, meat with a rub that has sweetness, pepper, and salt in the right proportions. Pulled pork at $15.99 is shredded fine and moist, with smoke that earns its place without overwhelming the pork.
Five sauces matter here. Mustard-based (Carolina-style, tangy). Vinegar-based (thin, sharp, for purists). All American (sweet, thick, ketchup-forward). Root beer (sweeter, cola-depth, works on pork). Hot (heat-forward, no apology). The fact that Smokehouse 52 runs five distinct sauces tells you something: the kitchen isn't asking you to trust only the meat. It's giving you five different conversations with it.
This is the out-of-town drive that actually justifies itself. Chelsea is twenty-five minutes from Ann Arbor. Go on a weekday if you can. Go early if you care about brisket. There's also a second location in Saline, but the Chelsea original is the one with the pedigree.
Mon-Wed 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Thu 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri-Sat 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sun 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
2. Zingerman's Roadhouse (2501 Jackson Ave, Ann Arbor)
The Roadhouse is not primarily a BBQ restaurant. It's an American roadhouse with a wide menu: fried chicken, mac and cheese, steaks, fish. But it has been running a pit-smoked BBQ program for more than twenty years, and that program is serious.
The spare ribs ($38 half rack, $60 full rack) are big, meaty, with a smoke ring you can see and a bark that gives way to meat that pulls clean. These are the ribs to order. The BBQ plate ($38) gives you a sampler view. The pit-smoked pulled pork ($30) and pit-smoked beef ($32) are both real: the pork is smoky and slightly sweet, the beef leaner with a deeper smoke profile. None of these dishes are the cheapest way to eat BBQ in Ann Arbor. They are, however, the most fully realized version of what American pit smoking looks like when applied to a restaurant with serious sourcing standards and a kitchen that has been running the same program for two decades.
The full meal context matters here. You're eating sides like bacon-braised collard greens and Anson Mills stone-ground grits alongside the meat. That's not always how people think about BBQ, but the Roadhouse earns the combination.
Open daily for lunch and dinner. Reservations via OpenTable.
3. Biercamp (1643 S State St, Ann Arbor)
Biercamp is a butcher shop first, a sandwich counter second, and a place that happens to smoke a lot of excellent meat along the way. The setup is not what most people expect when they're looking for BBQ: no dining room, no rack of ribs, no sauce flights. What there is: a display case of house-cured bacon, house-made sausages, smoked meats, and a counter where you can order a pulled pork sandwich, a bratwurst, or a smoked turkey sandwich and eat it standing up or take it to your car.
The pulled pork sandwich is the BBQ order. Smoked pork with a proper bark, shredded, served on a soft roll with a vinegar-based slaw. Around $13. The bratwurst is made in-house, with a snap to the casing and seasoning that actually tastes considered. The smoked turkey is quieter but has depth that packaged deli turkey cannot touch.
Biercamp's place in a BBQ guide is a charcuterie-butchery angle rather than a barbecue-restaurant angle. It belongs here because the smoking is real and because a pulled pork sandwich this good at this price point deserves to be on the list. The location on South State past the stadium filters out casual traffic. That's fine. The people who know about Biercamp came on purpose.
Tue-Sat. Check hours before going.
4. Ricewood (1928 Packard St, Ann Arbor)
Ricewood is the most unusual entry. Texas-style BBQ with Asian-fusion inflection: brisket and pork belly rice bowls, a brisket sandwich with its own following, Korean and Filipino-influenced sauces and preparations running alongside the smoked meat. Two locations (Packard Street and Maple Village), closed Sunday and Monday.
The brisket sandwich is what the regular crowd comes for at lunch. The rice bowls build the same smoked meat into a format that has more in common with a Korean bibimbap base than a Texas lunch plate, and that combination works better than it sounds on paper. Brisket that carries smoke and fat, layered over rice with pickled vegetables and a sauce that references gochujang or something adjacent, is a different experience from a Lockhart-style brisket plate and a good one.
Ricewood is worth knowing about precisely because it doesn't fit the template. If you want a straight BBQ experience, go to Chelsea. If you want smoked brisket in a context that makes it feel like something new, Packard Street is the address.
Closed Sun-Mon. Two locations: 1928 Packard St and Maple Village.
The Practical Takeaway
For traditional pit BBQ: Smokehouse 52 in Chelsea is the answer, full stop. Make the drive.
For BBQ in the context of a full restaurant meal: Zingerman's Roadhouse is the move, with the understanding that you'll pay Roadhouse prices and eat alongside collard greens cooked in bacon fat.
For smoked meats as craft butchery: Biercamp on South State is the stop, best for sandwiches at lunch or picking up something for the grill.
For something that doesn't exist anywhere else in the county: Ricewood on Packard, especially the brisket bowl, which is its own thing entirely.
Ann Arbor is not a BBQ town. But these four places cover more of the spectrum than most people realize, and none of them are settling.