B2A2: Grizzly Peak

There is a category B2A2 has been skirting since the first entry, and twelve entries in it is time to name it. Not the smash burger from a James Beard kitchen. Not the build-your-own counter at a sixty-year institution. Not the farm-sourced restaurant that applies sourcing philosophy to the patty, or the wood-fired brewery where the sear comes from oak. The category is simpler than any of those: the neighborhood brewpub, the place that has been at the corner of Washington and Ashley long enough that people drive past it without thinking about whether it belongs on a list like this.

Grizzly Peak Brewing Company has been part of Ann Arbor's food and beer landscape long enough to be taken for granted. That is its own kind of credential, and it is the credential the series has not tested yet.

This is entry twelve.

The Burger

The Grizzly Peak burger is a pub burger: a single patty built to sit next to the brewery's beer without competing for attention, not the technical showcase Echelon or Grange are chasing. The build follows pub-burger convention: melted cheese, a house sauce, greens and tomato worked into the construction rather than added as an afterthought, on a bun sized to survive a full meal without collapsing by the second half.

The kitchen isn't making the sourcing argument Grange makes with every plate, and it isn't chasing the technical sear Echelon built its reputation on. It's making a simpler case: competent beef, handled the same way every time, from a kitchen old enough that the consistency is the point. Priced around $14 to $16, it undercuts Sava's by a few dollars and sits below the range Jolly Pumpkin was running.

Fries come standard. Grizzly Peak isn't chasing a fry reputation the way some entries in this series are, and it doesn't need to. At a brewpub, the side's job is to not get in the way of the beer.

The Beer

This is the entry where the series has to acknowledge something it has circled around since the Jolly Pumpkin entry. A pub burger ordered at a brewpub has a natural pairing built into the transaction. You do not need to decide between a cocktail program and a wine list and a short beer menu. The house-brewed ale is the answer, and the question is only which one.

Grizzly Peak runs a rotating lineup of house-brewed beers. A wheat beer offers a low-bitterness pairing; an IPA brings more contrast against the sear; a malt-forward amber or red echoes the burger's char. Which one is on tap changes by the week, which is beside the point: the brewery answered its own pairing question by making the beer in the first place.

That is not the La Roja pairing that made the Jolly Pumpkin entry memorable. It is less specific, less dramatic, and more repeatable, which is the point of a neighborhood brewpub. You come back because it works, not because it surprised you.

Where It Fits

Twelve entries in, and B2A2 now has a picture of how Ann Arbor handles beef. The top of the series has not changed: Echelon holds the technical benchmark, Jolly Pumpkin holds the wood-fired argument, Grange holds the sourcing argument. Sava's built its spot in the next group by applying full-service kitchen discipline to something it was never primarily known for.

Grizzly Peak does not compete in any of those lanes. The burger is not trying to win a series. It is trying to be right for a specific moment: the moment when you sit down at a brewpub, the glasses are cold, and the burger arrives having been made by a kitchen that has been making burgers long enough to do it without incident. That is not a backhanded description. It is the description of a place that understands what it is.

The honest ranking: Grizzly Peak lands in the middle of this series and belongs there. Below the kitchens that are making an argument, above the entries where the burger existed because the menu needed one. This is a pub burger at a pub that has been making it the same way long enough to know what it's doing. Blimpy belongs in this series through decades of technique and an institution that has outlasted almost everyone else. Grizzly Peak belongs differently: by being the neighborhood brewpub that has been right at the corner of Washington and Ashley for long enough that the burger has had time to get consistent.

If you have been walking past it to get to somewhere newer, the walk was worth it. But so is stopping.

This is part of our ongoing series. Read the full tracker: Best Burger in Ann Arbor (B2A2): The Running List.

Grizzly Peak Brewing Company is at 120 W Washington St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.