Depot Town, Ypsilanti: A Neighborhood Dining Guide

Depot Town and downtown Ypsilanti are not the same place, and that distinction matters when you're trying to decide where to go. Downtown sits along Pearl Street and Michigan Avenue, closer to Eastern Michigan University and the heart of city commerce. Depot Town is a few blocks northeast, on the east bank of the Huron River, built around what was once Ypsilanti's train depot. The two neighborhoods share a zip code but have different personalities.

Depot Town is the walkable one. East Cross Street and North River Street form an L-shape of restaurants, bars, a taproom, and a coffee roaster, all within a five-minute walk of each other. The Huron River runs just to the west. The old depot building is still standing. In warm months, people move between spots on foot, carrying food from one place to another, sitting on patios until dark.

Getting there from Ann Arbor takes about fifteen minutes on I-94 or twenty on surface roads through Ypsilanti Township. Parking on Cross Street fills on weekend evenings in summer; side streets off River Street are usually open. If you're driving in for dinner, arriving before 6 p.m. makes the logistics easier.

The restaurants below are the ones that make Depot Town worth the trip. They are all within easy walking distance of each other. A few practical notes about how to string them together are at the end.

Sidetrack Bar & Grill

The building at 56 East Cross Street leans. The story, as the bar tells it, is that a freight train jumped the tracks near the depot in 1929 and hit the side of the structure. The building was already old by then. Linda French has been running Sidetrack since the early 1980s, and the place has operated on the same principles for four decades: good burger, honest beer list, patio in summer.

GQ put the burger on its list of "Twenty Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die." Sidetrack didn't change a thing afterward. The patty is thick, loosely packed, cooked on a flat grill with enough char on the exterior to give it texture without drying out the center. Under $15. The same burger it has been for decades.

The beer list runs twenty-plus taps leaning toward Michigan craft, rotated often enough that there's usually something new. The wings are large and the sauce options are numerous; regulars have strong opinions about the garlic parmesan. On Fridays, the fish and chips draws people who have been ordering the same thing on the same day for years.

Go on a weeknight if you can swing it. The patio sits behind the building, shaded by trees, with string lights and a mix of picnic and regular tables. From May through October, it is the best place to sit outside with a beer in Depot Town. It fills on summer Saturdays.

MAIZ Mexican Cantina

At 36 East Cross Street, a few doors down from Sidetrack, MAIZ runs a narrow storefront with a counter and maybe twenty seats. Everything is made from scratch daily. The signature is the baked avocado taco: a half avocado, battered and baked until golden outside and creamy inside, on a corn tortilla with pico de gallo, cabbage slaw, and crema. Three distinct textures and none of them fight each other. At $4.50, it holds up against anything on the Cross Street block.

The carnitas come on a corn tortilla with cilantro, onion, and a red salsa with dried chile depth and real heat. The elote, charred street corn coated in mayo, cotija, and chili powder and served on a stick, is the best thing on the menu and worth ordering every time. The hand-shaken margaritas with fresh-squeezed juice are good enough to slow the pace of a meal.

MAIZ is the place to eat before a pint at 734. Carry the tacos across the street. The walk is ninety seconds.

734 Brewing Company

734 Brewing sits at 15 East Cross Street, named for the area code. The founders are Ypsilanti High School graduates who came back to build something in the city that raised them. The taproom is straightforward: a bar, some tables, enough room to move without bumping into strangers. The tap list rotates. Ales, lagers, hard seltzers, and house spirits come through the lineup. The Ypsi Blonde is the entry point, a clean light ale that delivers exactly what it promises. The 734 IPA balances hops without going bitter enough to clear the room.

There is no kitchen, and that is a deliberate choice. Food trucks park outside on a rotating schedule, and you are welcome to bring food from anywhere on the block. The Cross Street corridor makes this work because everything is within two minutes on foot. The arrangement turns a lack of kitchen into an asset: you eat from the best restaurant on the block while drinking beer brewed fifty feet from your seat.

On a Friday evening, 734 is the place the corridor converges. People arrive after dinner at MAIZ or Sidetrack and end up staying longer than they planned. That is what it's built for.

Aubree's Pizzeria & Grill

Aubree's has been at 39 East Cross Street since 1972. It predates every other restaurant in this guide, predates Depot Town as a food destination, predates most of the conversations people now have about Ypsilanti's dining scene.

Order the feta bread first. A slab of dough baked with crumbled feta, warm and salty, runs around $9 and disappears before the pizza arrives. The pizza sits in the middle ground between thick and thin, with a slight chew at the edge and a crust sturdy enough to hold toppings. Large specialty pies run $18 to $22. The room functions as both sports bar and neighborhood restaurant simultaneously, with televisions lining the walls and enough tables that a group can spread out without planning ahead. Families show up for pizza. Groups show up for the game. Both find what they came for.

Every food corridor needs a place where six people can arrive without a reservation and leave satisfied. Aubree's is that place for Depot Town.

Thompson & Co.

Walk north on River Street past where most visitors turn around and you reach 400 North River, the Thompson Block. The building finished construction in 1861 and served as a Civil War barracks within a year. It survived a 2009 arson that gutted the interior, spent years open to the sky, and had an oak tree grow through the collapsed roof before Mission Restaurant Group put $10 million into the renovation. Local woodworker Adrienne Nickles salvaged lumber from that tree and turned it into wall sculptures and tabletops throughout the restaurant. You eat dinner on wood that grew inside the building's ruins.

Executive Chef Keith Martin built the menu around Southern comfort food: shrimp and grits over stone-ground cheddar grits, Nashville hot chicken, Bayou pasta. The shrimp and grits is the dish to start with. The brisket pizza is unexpected and works. Weekend brunch brings bananas foster French toast that is as indulgent as it sounds. Sandwich prices run $17 to $20, dinner plates $19 to $33. The lunch pick-two special at $15 is one of the better midday deals in the corridor.

Adjacent to the main dining room, Mash operates as a bourbon and whiskey bar with oversized leather chairs and live music on Friday and Saturday nights. If Thompson & Co. is where you go for dinner, Mash is where you end up an hour later.

Hyperion Coffee Co.

At 306 North River Street, one building south of Thompson & Co., Hyperion roasts single-origin, direct-trade beans and treats coffee the way a winery treats grapes. The roast profiles lean lighter than what most local coffee drinkers are used to. This is deliberate: light roasting preserves the origin character of the bean, the flavors that come from the soil and altitude and processing. A washed Ethiopian from Hyperion tastes floral and citrusy. A natural-processed coffee from the same region tastes fruity and different. Dark roasting erases those differences. Hyperion's approach insists on them.

The pour-over is the order. The barista grinds to order, weighs the dose, and brews by hand. It costs about $5 and takes a few minutes. The large front windows look out over the Huron River. A pour-over at that window bar on a Saturday morning, before the Cross Street crowd arrives, is a reasonable argument for leaving Ann Arbor early.

The space is minimal by design: concrete floors, high ceilings, a few tables, the roasting equipment visible from the main room. An education lab hosts cuppings for people who want to understand what they're drinking at a technical level. This is not a laptop-and-study-session room. It is optimized for coffee.

The Practical Notes

Depot Town is compact enough that a full evening moves in one direction and then back. A sequence that makes sense: Hyperion for coffee in the morning or early afternoon, Sidetrack or MAIZ when hunger arrives, 734 Brewing after, and Mash at Thompson & Co. if the night goes long.

For summer evenings, the patio question is the first one to answer. Sidetrack's back patio is the best outdoor table in the corridor on a weeknight when the crowd is thin enough to hear the river. Thompson & Co. has a landscaped patio with a fire pit and covered seating at the north end of River Street. If both patios are full, 734 sometimes has food truck service outside.

If the visit is a dinner-only trip from Ann Arbor, Bellflower at 209 Pearl Street is worth adding. Pearl Street runs parallel to River Street, a few blocks west, and Bellflower is Ypsilanti's best restaurant by a real margin. Chef Dan Klenotic earned a 2024 James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef: Great Lakes. The menu changes daily with farm deliveries. Dinner entrees average around $31. Reservations on weekends are necessary.

The Bomber, at 306 East Michigan Avenue on the other side of the Huron, is the breakfast anchor for Ypsilanti's food corridor. Cap'N Crunch French Toast. The Bomber Skillet with hash browns, eggs, and meat in a cast-iron pan. Open daily for breakfast and lunch. If you stayed later than planned the night before, this is where the next morning starts.

Depot Town does not announce itself. There is no signage telling you this is a food destination. The buildings are old. A few of them lean. That is part of what makes it what it is.