Best Breakfast and Brunch in Ann Arbor

I've eaten breakfast at Angelo's more times than I can count and waited in line at the Fleetwood at 2 a.m. more times than I should admit. Ann Arbor has strong opinions about where to eat in the morning, and most of those opinions were formed in college and never updated. This guide is an update.

The city's breakfast scene splits into two categories: the institutions that have been feeding this town for decades, and the restaurants that have figured out brunch is worth doing well. Both belong here. What doesn't belong is the overpriced eggs Benedict at whatever hotel restaurant opened last month. You deserve better on a Saturday morning. Here are eight places that have earned the early alarm.

The Institutions

Angelo's (1100 E Catherine St) has been here since 1956, and the line out the door on weekend mornings has been there almost as long. This is the kind of breakfast place where the portions are designed to get you through a Michigan winter, the coffee never stops coming, and the waitstaff has been working there longer than you've been alive. I go for the deep-fried French toast, which is exactly what it sounds like: thick-cut bread, battered, dropped in the fryer, and served with a dusting of powdered sugar. It is not health food. It is not trying to be. The omelets are massive and filled with whatever you want. The pancakes cover the plate. Angelo's doesn't do anything fancy, and that is the entire point. Get there before 9 a.m. on weekends or be prepared to wait.

The Fleetwood Diner (300 S Ashley St) is open 24 hours, which means its breakfast crowd includes the people who woke up early and the people who haven't gone to bed yet. The menu item that made this place famous is the Hippie Hash: hash browns loaded with mushrooms, broccoli, tomatoes, green peppers, and onions, topped with feta cheese and sour cream. It's a pile. An organized, savory, satisfying pile. The regular hash browns are crispy and well-seasoned on their own, and the egg sandwiches are built on good bread with no pretense. The Fleetwood is a greasy spoon in the best tradition. The counter seats maybe fifteen people. The booths are tight. Everything is cooked right in front of you on the flattop, and the whole room smells like butter and coffee. If you've lived in Ann Arbor and never eaten here, you haven't lived in Ann Arbor.

The Saturday Brunch

Zingerman's Roadhouse (2501 Jackson Ave) does a weekend brunch that doesn't get talked about enough. People know the Roadhouse for fried chicken and barbecue, but Saturday and Sunday mornings are when the kitchen flexes in a different direction. The buttermilk pancakes use freshly milled flour and taste like it. Huevos rancheros come with house-made salsa and properly seasoned black beans. The brisket hash takes leftover smoked meat and turns it into something you'd order on purpose, not something that feels like cleanup. Brunch here is big and loud and generous, like the Roadhouse itself. The dining room just came through a renovation (new floors, better acoustics, same soul) and the place feels sharper than it has in years. Go hungry.

Aventura (216 E Washington St) brings a Spanish accent to brunch, and it works. The shakshuka is the dish I order most: eggs baked in spiced tomato sauce, served bubbling in the pan with crusty bread for soaking. Churros with thick chocolate for dipping show up as a side, and they are better than most restaurants' desserts. The patatas bravas make an appearance at brunch too, because fried potatoes with aioli belong at every meal. Aventura's brunch menu is smaller than its dinner menu, which is a good sign. It means they're making choices instead of trying to cover everything. The room is warm and fits about forty people, so weekends fill up. Get there by 10:30 or accept the wait.

Mani Osteria (341 E Liberty St) does brunch with an Italian tilt. Fresh pasta shows up at the breakfast table, which sounds unusual until you eat the carbonara made with a runny egg and house-cured guanciale at 11 a.m. and realize pasta for breakfast is a format we've been ignoring. The wood-fired oven produces a brunch pizza with a blistered crust, cracked egg on top, and enough char to remind you this is the same kitchen that turns out some of the best pizza in the state at dinner. Pastries are solid. Coffee is good. The room on Liberty Street is one of the prettier dining spaces downtown. Mani doesn't announce its brunch with the urgency of places that treat it as an event. It just serves good food in the morning, which is all you need.

The Ones You Might Be Missing

Sava's (216 S State St) sits right on State Street near campus, and the brunch crowd skews young and photogenic, which is not a criticism. The space is big, airy, and designed to look good on a phone screen, but the food holds up beyond the aesthetics. The shakshuka is solid (Ann Arbor has become a shakshuka town, apparently). The avocado toast has substance. The chicken and waffles are crispy and come with a real maple drizzle, not corn syrup. What sets Sava's apart is the sheer size of the menu. You can get a Mediterranean breakfast plate, a classic American stack of pancakes, or a lunch-leaning grain bowl, all before noon. It's a good first brunch in Ann Arbor if you don't know what you're in the mood for.

Miss Kim (415 N Fifth Ave) reframes what breakfast can be, and I mean that without any of the marketing-speak that sentence usually carries. Ji Hye Kim's Korean-Michigan restaurant offers rice bowls at brunch built around seasonal ingredients, banchan that changes weekly, and the kind of thoughtfulness that most brunch menus can't be bothered with. The kimchi fried rice is the entry point: crispy rice, a fried egg, house-fermented kimchi with real depth. The scallion pancakes (pajeon) are thick and savory and better than anything you'll get at a breakfast spot trying to do Korean food as a novelty. Kim isn't doing novelty. She's been at this since 2016, and the food reflects someone who has thought carefully about what belongs on a morning plate. We've profiled Kim's growing food operation before. The brunch is reason enough to go back.

Biercamp (1643 S State St) is primarily a butcher shop and charcuterie counter, but the breakfast sandwiches are a serious reason to visit in the morning. House-cured bacon has the thickness and smoke that grocery-store bacon can't touch. Sausage links are made on-site with real casings and actual seasoning. A fried egg on a fresh roll with a few slices of that bacon is one of the best breakfasts in town for under $10, and you can eat it in the car if you're in a hurry. Biercamp is south of downtown on State Street, past the stadium, and it does not have the foot traffic of a campus breakfast spot. That's fine. The people who know about it keep coming back. The people who don't are eating worse bacon somewhere else. If you care about what goes into your breakfast meat, this is where you should be buying it and eating it.

All eight restaurants are in Ann Arbor. Angelo's and the Fleetwood are cash-heavy operations — bring bills. Zingerman's Roadhouse brunch runs Saturday and Sunday. Most of the others serve brunch on weekends, with varying weekday breakfast hours. Call ahead or check online if you're going on a Tuesday.