The Best Patios in Ypsilanti
Where to eat and drink outside when the weather finally cooperates. Ypsilanti has better outdoor dining than most people know.
Michigan gives you roughly five months of outdoor dining weather if you're generous with the shoulder season. Ypsilanti, being Ypsilanti, doesn't announce its outdoor spaces with fanfare. You find them by walking down Cross Street, turning north on River Street, or stumbling onto Pearl after dinner. The patios are worth finding. A few of them are genuinely among the best outdoor tables in the county.
The Washtenaw County patio guide mentioned Sidetrack and Bellflower in passing. This guide goes deeper on Ypsilanti specifically: what makes each outdoor space work, when to go, and how to string them together on a summer evening.
Sidetrack Bar & Grill
56 E Cross St, Depot Town
The back patio at Sidetrack is the standard by which outdoor dining in this city gets measured. It sits behind the building, shaded by old trees that do real work on a hot afternoon, with string lights strung above a mix of picnic tables and regular tables. The patio is large enough that even on a Saturday night in July it doesn't feel pinched. When the crowd thins enough, you can hear the Huron River.
That last detail matters more than it sounds. Ypsilanti doesn't have a lot of riverfront dining. Sidetrack gets as close as anything on the Cross Street corridor. Pair the setting with the beer list (twenty-plus Michigan craft taps, rotated regularly) and a burger that GQ put on its must-eat list and you have a legitimate outdoor dining destination, not just a bar with chairs outside.
Get there before 6 p.m. on weekends. The patio fills, and there is no reserving a spot.
Bellflower
209 Pearl St, downtown Ypsilanti
Bellflower has two distinct outdoor spaces, and they serve different purposes. The covered patio is the one for unpredictable spring evenings, when the temperature drops at 7 p.m. or the clouds roll in. It extends the season in both directions, making Bellflower's outdoor dining usable in April and October when most other patios in the city are already closed. The open-air patio is the summer one, and in full July heat with the right bottle in front of you, it is as good as outdoor dining in Ypsilanti gets.
The kitchen behind both patios is run by Dan Klenotic, a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Great Lakes. The menu changes daily based on farm deliveries. Fried oyster po'boy on house-made milk bread, shrimp etouffee, whatever the farms sent that week. Dinner entrees average around $31. Reservations are required on weekends and a good idea the rest of the time.
Bellflower is the reason to eat outside in Ypsilanti when you want the meal to be the point, not just the setting.
Thompson & Co.
400 N River St, Depot Town
Thompson & Co. sits at the north end of River Street, past where most visitors turn around, inside a Civil War-era barracks that survived a 2009 arson and a decade of abandonment before Mission Restaurant Group put $10 million into its renovation. The building earns its own attention. The patio is a bonus.
It is a good patio. Landscaped, with a fire pit for evenings when the temperature drops, and covered seating that makes it function in weather that would shut down a fully open space. The fire pit is the piece most Ypsilanti patios don't have. It extends the season and changes the atmosphere after dark.
Chef Keith Martin's Southern comfort menu works well outside: shrimp and grits, Nashville hot chicken, Bayou pasta. Sandwich prices run $17 to $20, dinner plates $19 to $33. The covered seating means you can stake out the patio earlier in May and stay later into September than the uncovered spots on Cross Street allow.
734 Brewing Company
15 E Cross St, Depot Town
734 Brewing doesn't have a formal patio in the landscaped, string-lights sense. What it has is outdoor space on Cross Street where food trucks park on a rotating schedule, and a neighborhood taproom culture that spills outside in warm weather. Bring food from MAIZ or Sidetrack, grab a pint of the Ypsi Blonde or whatever's rotating on the taps, and find a spot. The founders are Ypsilanti High School graduates who came back to build something in the city that raised them. That origin shows in how the place runs: informal, local, genuinely welcoming.
The outdoor setup at 734 works best as part of an evening that moves between spots. Cross Street is compact enough that two minutes of walking covers the full corridor. 734 is the middle stop, or the last one.
Practical Notes
When to go: May through October for all four; Bellflower's covered patio extends into April and late fall. Thompson & Co.'s fire pit gives it a late-night advantage in cooler months.
Reservations: Bellflower requires them on weekends. Sidetrack and 734 are walk-in. Thompson & Co. takes reservations but has walk-in capacity, especially for patio seats.
Sequencing an evening: Sidetrack or MAIZ for dinner, 734 Brewing after, Thompson & Co.'s Mash bar if the night goes long. Bellflower is its own destination, not a stop in a multi-spot evening. The Pearl Street location puts it a few blocks from the Cross Street corridor.
Patio season in Ypsilanti typically runs May through October, weather permitting. The broader Washtenaw County patio guide covers Ann Arbor and Dexter options.