The Best Restaurants of 2026: Washtenaw County and Beyond
A year of eating, ranked and reasoned. The restaurants, dishes, and moments that defined 2026.
Plate & Press launched in March of this year. Nine months later, I have eaten more meals in Washtenaw County and greater Detroit than any reasonable person would consider normal, and I have formed opinions about nearly all of them. This is where I put those opinions in order.
The year had a shape. National attention landed on Ann Arbor in ways it hadn't before: a James Beard semifinalist nod, a USA Today Restaurants of the Year list, a Brooklyn expansion for one of our most recognizable restaurants. At the same time, the closings kept coming. Three campus-area institutions gone in seven months. A fifteen-year kebab house on Eisenhower. The pattern I wrote about in June didn't reverse itself by December. If anything, it sharpened.
But the openings were good. Some of them were great. And the restaurants that were already here kept getting better in ways that don't make headlines but show up on the plate. That's the story of 2026 in this part of Michigan: a food scene that is gaining depth even as it loses landmarks.
Here are my picks.
Best New Restaurant: Echelon Kitchen & Bar
200 S Main St, Ann Arbor.
This was not close. Chef Joseph VanWagner's wood-fired kitchen at 200 South Main earned a James Beard semifinalist nomination in the Best New Restaurant category, and it deserved to be there. The kampachi crudo with poached pear is delicate enough to slow you down. The lobster bucatini is properly indulgent. The charred cauliflower with tahini converts skeptics. The cocktail program, anchored by the "Brine" martini and a bourbon-based "Modern Medicine" that arrives via tabletop dispenser, could carry a lesser restaurant on its own.
But Echelon is not a lesser restaurant. It is a kitchen where a Michelin-trained chef decided to cook in a college town and brought every bit of that training without the pretension that usually accompanies it. Wallpaper with Ann Arbor landmarks. An open kitchen you can watch. A smash burger that became a cult item. All of it in a space that used to be a BD's Mongolian Grill.
Ann Arbor has not had a restaurant like this before. VanWagner made the strongest case of anyone this year that a mid-sized Midwestern city can produce nationally competitive food without trying to be somewhere else.
Runner-up: Huna Tiki Bar, the rum-forward basement operation below Echelon. Yes, the same building won both categories. The block at 200 South Main had a year.
Best Restaurant Overall: Spencer
113 E Liberty St, Ann Arbor.
Spencer made USA Today's 2026 Restaurants of the Year list, one of only 39 restaurants in the country. That recognition confirmed what anyone who has eaten there already knew: Abby Olitzky and Steve Hall built something that operates at a national level without needing to announce it.
By day, a wine shop. By night, a tasting menu driven by whatever Michigan farms are sending that week. The patio bar in warm weather is the best lunch in Ann Arbor. The natural wine list is deep enough to get lost in and well-curated enough that you won't get lost for long. Reservations disappear the moment they open. The prices are not cheap. The food is worth every dollar.
Spencer has been open since 2015. The consistency over a decade is as impressive as any single dish. In a year when national attention went to the new and the loud, Spencer won by being itself, quietly, for another twelve months.
Runner-up: Bellflower, 209 Pearl St, Ypsilanti. Dan Klenotic's daily-changing menu in a former telephone exchange is the most exciting restaurant in Ypsilanti and one of the best in the county. The fried oyster po'boy on house-made milk bread is the dish that got me through the winter.
Best New Opening Outside Ann Arbor: JD's Stage Bistro
117½ S Main St, Chelsea.
Jeff Daniels put a restaurant in Chelsea, and it is much more than a celebrity vanity project. Chef Nate Wegryn, who cooked at the Dixboro Project and Echelon, runs a wood-fired kitchen sourcing from local farms. The acoustically engineered listening room, designed by Gavin Haverstick, is purpose-built for singer-songwriters and small ensembles. Mahogany doors from the Waldorf Astoria at the entrance. Stained-glass martini olives on the cherry wood door. Art Deco marquee outside.
The room feels like it has been there for years, even though the building has never been a restaurant before. That's the highest compliment you can pay a new space. Chelsea already had the Purple Rose Theatre. Now it has a restaurant and music venue that justifies a trip from Ann Arbor.
Runner-up: Calamansi, 4458 W Vernor Hwy, Detroit. Tyler Olivier and Marcee Sobredilla brought Detroit its first Filipino-focused restaurant, in a forty-seat room on Vernor Highway. The chicken adobo is braised in vinegar, soy, garlic, and bay leaves, and it tastes like someone who grew up eating it made it. Because someone did.
Best Burger: Echelon Smash Burger
200 S Main St, Ann Arbor.
I ranked every burger I ate this year in the B2A2 series. After six entries, including the Raven's Club, Frita Batidos, Blimpy Burger, Sidetrack, and Green Dot Stables, the Echelon smash burger is still number one. Two smash patties with a deeply caramelized sear, American cheese melted tight, a tangy house sauce, and a bun that stays intact through the last bite. The char has a depth that the other entries can't match. It is the most expensive burger in the series. It is also the best.
Best Taco: Taqueria El Rey
4730 W Vernor Hwy, Detroit.
The Fold went looking for the best taco in Ann Arbor and ended up in Southwest Detroit. That's not a failure of the series. It's an honest result. Taqueria El Rey serves tacos in the $2 to $3 range from a counter on Vernor Highway, and the barbacoa is the best single taco I ate in 2026. The beef shreds without losing structure, seasoned with a warmth that builds across each bite. The al pastor has real char from a grill that runs hot. Four tacos and a drink for about $12, and you leave full. The mid-series rankings put El Rey first, and nothing since has unseated it.
Best Pizza: Mani Osteria
341 E Liberty St, Ann Arbor.
Three entries into The Slice, Mani Osteria holds the top spot. The margherita from the wood-fired oven at 341 East Liberty has a leopard-spotted blister pattern on the crust and a chew that tells you about the dough. Supino in Detroit's Eastern Market runs it close with the white pizza with arugula and lemon, and Jolly Pumpkin Dexter proved that brewery pizza can be serious food. But the Mani margherita is the pizza I kept ordering when I wasn't evaluating, which is the only metric that counts.
The series has more entries to come. Detroit-style, late-night slices, and the places that have been feeding this town for decades. The ranking could change. For now, Mani.
Best Dish of the Year: The Barbacoa Taco at Taqueria El Rey
The barbacoa taco at Taqueria El Rey is the single dish I have thought about most in the past nine months.
It costs less than $3. The beef is braised slowly enough that it shreds without losing structure, and the warm spice sits in the background and builds with each bite. The doubled corn tortillas, cilantro, onion, and a side of salsa verde with raw green heat. I ordered three on my first visit and wished I had ordered five. I have been back more times than I am willing to admit in print.
There were fancier dishes this year. The kampachi crudo at Echelon. Spencer's tasting menu when asparagus season hit. The fried oyster po'boy at Bellflower. I ate all of them, and I am glad I did. But when someone asks me for the single thing I ate in 2026 that I would eat again tomorrow, it is a barbacoa taco on Vernor Highway that costs less than a cup of coffee.
Biggest Loss: The Campus Corridor
This is not one restaurant. It is three.
Red Hawk Bar & Grill closed in May after thirty-three years on State Street. Tower Inn closed in December after decades on West Huron. Blue Leprechaun closed in December after seventeen years on South University. Three campus-area institutions, all gone within seven months. Add Zamaan Grill on Eisenhower in March and it's four closings in eleven months.
What they shared was not a cuisine or a price point. It was function. They were affordable, consistent, and the kind of place you went without thinking about it. Red Hawk was where generations of Michigan students ate their first off-campus burger. Tower Inn was where a pitcher of beer cost what a pitcher of beer used to cost. Blue Leprechaun survived floods, renovations, and seventeen years of campus turnover. Zamaan served kebabs and house-made hummus for fifteen years on a stretch of road where nobody goes looking for great food.
None of them failed because the food stopped being good. They failed because the math stopped working. That's the pattern I wrote about last summer, and it has not changed. The cheap spots close, the leases turn over, and the new tenant builds a concept aimed at a higher check average because the rent demands it. Ann Arbor's restaurant scene is getting better at the top and thinner at the bottom. That is not a trade I would make.
The Neighborhood to Watch: Southwest Detroit
Drive down Vernor Highway from Calamansi at 4458 to Flowers of Vietnam at 4440. Twenty feet apart. A Filipino-inspired bar and restaurant and a Vietnamese restaurant run by a Palestinian-American chef who started as a Sunday pop-up inside a coney island. Both are excellent. Both are the kind of restaurant that only opens in a neighborhood where the rents haven't yet priced out the risk-takers.
Add Taqueria El Rey down the road, the Mexicantown Bakery, and everything else that has been feeding this neighborhood for decades, and you have the most interesting restaurant corridor in the metro area. Southwest Detroit is not new. But the combination of legacy institutions and ambitious newcomers on the same stretch of highway is something I have not seen anywhere else this year.
If you're not driving to Southwest Detroit to eat, 2027 is the year to start.
Most Underrated: Little Kim
207 N Fifth Ave, Ann Arbor.
Ji Hye Kim opened Little Kim as a fast-casual, all-vegetarian Korean cafe and mini-mart in Kerrytown in July 2025. It is two blocks from Miss Kim, which gets more attention because it has the Zingerman's name attached. Little Kim does not have that name, and it does not need it.
The build-your-own bowls are the reason to go. Rice, fried tofu with a crunch that holds up through the meal, house-made kimchi with proper fermentation funk, charred broccolini, and gochujang mayo that ties everything together. The kimbap is tight, well-seasoned, and portable. The fried tofu sandwich is better than any fried tofu sandwich has a right to be.
Little Kim creates satiety through texture and flavor rather than volume, which is the harder thing to do with vegetarian food. I have eaten there more times than any other restaurant in 2026, and the only reason it doesn't get more attention is that it's fast-casual in a courtyard and doesn't take reservations. Go.
Best Late-Year Opening: Bev's Bagels
115 E Liberty St, Ann Arbor.
Bev's Bagels arrived on East Liberty in September, and Ann Arbor finally has a dedicated bagel shop. Chef Max Sussman, from Core City Detroit, hand-rolls and kettle-boils between Spencer and RoosRoast. The block didn't need another coffee shop. A real bagel shop fills a gap that had been empty for as long as I've been eating here. The Liberty Street corridor — Spencer, RoosRoast, and now Bev's — is one of the best food blocks in the county.
Looking Ahead to 2027
The B2A2, Fold, and Slice series all have more entries to write. I owe you Detroit-style pizza, late-night slices, and at least two more burgers. Tabe Fusion on South Main is approaching its first anniversary, and I want to see what the omakase looks like with a year of settled confidence. Sunda New Asian near Comerica Park was the biggest opening of the year by sheer scale, and the early review left me wanting a return visit now that the kitchen has had time.
The closure pattern is what I'll be watching most closely. Ann Arbor's commercial vacancy rate has not improved. The campus corridor has not recovered. The question for 2027 is whether the city finds a way to keep its affordable restaurants alive or continues trading them for concepts that only work at a $40 check average. I don't know the answer. I know I'll be writing about it.
What This Year Meant
Plate & Press started because I believed there was room for food journalism in this part of Michigan that took the restaurants seriously without taking itself too seriously. Nine months in, I am more convinced of that than when I started. The restaurants here are good. Many of them are great. Some of them are operating at a level that deserves national attention, and two of them got it this year.
But the restaurants I think about most are not the ones with the awards. They are the taqueria on Vernor Highway where a barbacoa taco costs less than $3. The vegetarian cafe in a Kerrytown courtyard. The dive bar on West Huron that closed in December and left a hole that nothing expensive will fill. The Korean-Mexican fusion spot on North University where the kimchi fries are $10 and every dollar is earned.
The food scene in Washtenaw County and greater Detroit is deep, strange, specific, and worth paying attention to. I ate my way through as much of it as I could this year. I plan to eat through more of it next year.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for eating.
This is Plate & Press's first annual Best Of list.