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 people have a Detroit dinner restaurant. Fewer have a Detroit brunch restaurant. That's the gap this guide is trying to close. Weekend morning food in the city has caught up to the dinner scene, and the I-94 calculation that already works at 7 p.m. works at 10 a.m. too.
This is not a comprehensive list. It is 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, four different reasons to set an alarm on a Saturday.
Selden Standard (3921 Second Ave, Midtown)
Selden is the brunch you book when your parents are in town and you want them to understand why you keep driving east. Andy Hollyday's wood-fired kitchen, the same one that produces some of the best dinner cooking in the city, runs a weekend service that pulls 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 house-cultured butter. At brunch, that bread anchors a menu that leans harder on vegetables and grains than most morning operations. The farro bowl with seasonal vegetables and a soft egg is built around what the wood oven does to everything that passes through it, which is smokiness you can't fake with a flat top.
Shakshuka rotates through the weekend menu in different forms, eggs baked in tomato sauce in a cast-iron pan with enough spice to wake you up without burning. The 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 land at $50 to $70 before tip. The room fills by 11 a.m. on Saturdays. Go early or plan to wait. The high windows pull in enough light that the dining room reads completely different from the dinner version, less moody, more awake. I prefer it this way.
Folk Detroit (1701 Trumbull Ave, Corktown)
Folk is the brunch you take a friend to when you want to argue about whether Corktown is the strongest food neighborhood in the city. The room on Trumbull is small and bright. The crowd on weekend mornings is the kind of crowd that already knows the answer.
The menu rotates, but the approach holds: seasonal ingredients, Michigan sourcing where the kitchen can get it, plates that look considered without looking fussy. The ricotta toast with seasonal fruit, the breakfast sandwich on good bread with real sausage, the slow-scrambled eggs that stay soft, and a grain bowl with roasted vegetables and a poached egg that has been on the menu across multiple visits. That bowl is the one I keep ordering.
Portions are honest without being aggressive. Most plates land $12 to $18. 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 past twenty minutes is the room telling you what it thinks of itself.
There are no bottomless mimosas. There is no DJ. Folk is brunch as cooking, not brunch as event programming. For Corktown, that is the right call.
Supino Pizzeria (2457 Russell St, Eastern Market)
Supino is not a brunch restaurant. I know that. But Saturday morning at Eastern Market ends at Supino for most people who go regularly, and what happens there counts as brunch in any practical sense.
Dave Mancini's thin-crust operation sits on Russell Street in the middle of the market, and on Saturdays the line forms early.2Supino Pizzeria's Eastern Market history and Saturday crowds are covered in our Supino profile. You walk the sheds, you buy your produce and your flowers and your meat, and then you stand in line at Supino and eat the best pizza available before noon in metro Detroit.
Order the margherita ($14 to $18 depending on size). San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and a dough that has the char and chew of a kitchen that has been making the same thing for close to two decades. The other one I keep coming back to is the white pizza with arugula and lemon: olive oil base, mozzarella, then a pile of arugula and lemon juice added after the oven. The arugula wilts from the residual heat. The lemon cuts through everything.
Doors open at 11 a.m., which puts Supino squarely in brunch territory on market days. The space is small. You will probably eat standing, or at one of the handful of tables if the timing breaks your way. Slices are available if you want to keep moving. A whole pie and two drinks runs $25 to $35.
Eastern Market on a Saturday morning is one of the best food experiences in Michigan, and Supino is where you sit down after walking the sheds. That makes it brunch. The menu can disagree.
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 the weekend brunch service exists, and the kitchen adapts its strengths to the morning format in ways that justify the trip downtown.3Wright & Company's brunch offerings are referenced on the restaurant's website and social media channels.
The bar carries over. The Bloody Mary is built with a house-made mix where celery and horseradish read as distinct ingredients rather than a homogeneous spice slurry. Seasonal brunch cocktails rotate on the same house-made syrups and bitters the bar team uses at night, which is the simplest argument for sitting at the bar at 11 a.m.
The food follows the small-plates approach. The steak and egg plate runs at the quality of beef the kitchen handles at dinner. A brunch board comes loaded with cured meats, cheeses, bread, and accompaniments. Egg dishes arrive with the plating attention Wright & Company applies to everything. Brunch plates range $16 to $28.
The room during the day is the case for going. 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 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 roughly 45 minutes to Midtown and Corktown, longer to Eastern Market when traffic doesn't cooperate.