The Best Brunch in Detroit
Saturday morning in Midtown, Sunday in Corktown, and the case for crossing the county line before noon.
Most Ann Arbor residents have a Detroit dinner restaurant. Fewer have a Detroit brunch restaurant. That's a mistake. The city's weekend morning food has improved enough in the past few years that driving 45 minutes east before noon makes the same case it makes at 7 p.m.: you will eat better than you expected, and you will wonder why you waited this long.
This is not a comprehensive survey of every restaurant in Detroit that serves eggs on a Saturday. It covers the places I keep going back to, all of them tracked in our restaurant data, all of them open as of this writing. Four restaurants, three neighborhoods, and enough reason to set an alarm on a weekend.
Selden Standard (3921 Second Ave, Midtown)
Selden Standard's brunch is the one that changed how I think about weekend mornings in Detroit. Andy Hollyday's wood-fired kitchen, the same one that produces some of the best dinner cooking in the city, runs a brunch service on weekends that draws a crowd from the Wayne State and DIA corridor.1Selden Standard's brunch service and wood-fired oven are described in our Selden Standard profile and on the restaurant's website.
The bread is where it starts. Baked in the wood oven, pulled out warm, served with cultured butter made in-house. At brunch, that bread anchors a menu that leans harder on vegetables and grains than most morning operations. A grain bowl built around farro, seasonal vegetables, and a soft egg might not sound like a brunch dish until you eat one at Selden and realize that the wood oven gives everything a smokiness a standard kitchen cannot produce.
Shakshuka shows up on the weekend menu in various forms, the eggs baked in tomato sauce in a cast-iron pan with enough spice to wake you up without burning. Roasted potato hash with seasonal greens and a fried egg is the simpler option, and it is good in the way that simple food made with serious technique tends to be good.
Brunch plates run $14 to $22. Two people splitting a few dishes and ordering coffee will spend $50 to $70 before tip. The room fills by 11 a.m. on Saturdays, so arrive early or plan to wait. The natural light through the high windows makes the dining room feel different than it does at dinner, less moody and more awake. I prefer it this way.
Folk Detroit (1701 Trumbull Ave, Corktown)
Folk is a Corktown restaurant that has built its reputation on brunch as much as on anything else. The space on Trumbull Avenue is small and bright, and on weekend mornings the room fills with the kind of people who know that Corktown has become one of Detroit's stronger food neighborhoods.
The menu changes, but the approach stays consistent: seasonal ingredients, Michigan sourcing where possible, and plates that look thoughtful without looking overwrought. Expect dishes like ricotta toast with seasonal fruit, a breakfast sandwich built on good bread with real sausage, and scrambled eggs that are cooked slowly enough to stay soft. A grain bowl with roasted vegetables and a poached egg has appeared on multiple visits and is the dish I keep ordering.
Portions are honest without being excessive. Most plates fall in the $12 to $18 range. Coffee is strong and served without ceremony. The counter-service format means you order at the register, find a table, and wait. On a sunny Sunday, the wait for a table can stretch past twenty minutes, which tells you what the neighborhood thinks of the food.
Folk does brunch well because it does not try to make brunch into an event. No bottomless mimosas. No DJ. Just good cooking in a good room on a weekend morning. For Corktown, that is plenty.
Supino Pizzeria (2457 Russell St, Eastern Market)
Supino is not a brunch restaurant. I know that. But if you go to Eastern Market on a Saturday morning, you will end up at Supino, and what happens there counts as brunch in any practical sense.
Dave Mancini's thin-crust pizza operation sits on Russell Street in the middle of Eastern Market, and on Saturdays, when the market is running, the line forms early.2Supino Pizzeria's Eastern Market history and Saturday crowds are covered in our Supino profile. You buy your produce, your flowers, your meat from the market vendors, and then you stand in line at Supino and eat the best pizza available before noon in metro Detroit.
The margherita ($14-$18 depending on size) is the one to order. San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil. The dough has the char and chew of a kitchen that has been making the same thing for close to two decades. The white pizza with arugula and lemon is the other option I keep coming back to: olive oil base, mozzarella, then a pile of fresh arugula and lemon juice added after the oven. The arugula wilts from the residual heat. The lemon cuts through everything.
Supino opens at 11 a.m., which puts it squarely in brunch territory on market days. The space is small. Expect to eat standing or at one of the handful of tables if you time it right. Slices are available if you want to keep moving. A whole pie and two drinks will cost $25 to $35.
Eastern Market on a Saturday morning is one of the best food experiences in Michigan, and Supino is the place where you sit down after walking the sheds. That makes it brunch. I don't care what the menu says.
Wright & Company (1500 Woodward Ave, Downtown)
Wright & Company is a dinner restaurant. The cocktail program and the small-plates menu are built for evening, and the second-floor room on Woodward Avenue looks its best after dark when the arched windows frame the street below. But Wright & Company has been running a weekend brunch service, and the kitchen adapts its strengths to the morning format in ways that justify the trip.3Wright & Company's brunch offerings are referenced on the restaurant's website and social media channels.
The cocktail bar, which at dinner is one of the better programs in Detroit, does brunch drinks with the same precision. A Bloody Mary built with house-made mix, the kind where you can taste celery and horseradish as distinct ingredients rather than a homogeneous spice slurry. Seasonal brunch cocktails rotate and lean on the same house-made syrups and bitters the bar team uses at night.
Food at brunch follows the small-plates approach. Expect dishes like a steak and egg plate with the quality of beef the kitchen handles at dinner, or a brunch board with cured meats, cheeses, bread, and accompaniments. Egg dishes arrive with the attention to plating that Wright & Company applies to everything. Brunch plates range from $16 to $28.
The room during the day is a different experience than the room at night. Sunlight through the arched windows shows the exposed brick and high ceilings in full relief. The proportions of the space, built in the 1890s when this was a jewelry store, hold up in natural light even better than they do under pendant lamps. It is one of the better rooms in Detroit for a late morning meal.
Selden Standard runs weekend brunch service. Folk Detroit serves brunch on weekends (counter service). Supino Pizzeria is open daily starting at 11 a.m., with the Eastern Market Saturday crowd making it a de facto brunch destination. Wright & Company's weekend brunch schedule varies; check their website or call ahead. All four restaurants are in Detroit. The drive from Ann Arbor is approximately 45 minutes to Midtown and Corktown, longer to Eastern Market if traffic cooperates the way it sometimes doesn't.