Sidetrack Has Been Anchoring Depot Town Since Before You Were Born
An 1850s building, a 1929 train wreck, and a burger that GQ told you to eat. The full story of Ypsilanti's most durable bar.
The building at 56 East Cross Street leans. Not dramatically, not dangerously, but enough that you notice if you're looking. 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. It went up sometime in the 1850s, which means it has watched Depot Town grow, shrink, grow again, and argue about its own identity for the better part of 170 years. The train didn't knock it down. Nothing since has, either.
Sidetrack Bar & Grill takes its name from that derailment. Linda French has been running the place since the early 1980s, which is its own kind of durability in an industry that burns through owners faster than most people realize. Forty-five years in the same building with the same name. In Ypsilanti, where places like the Wurst Bar and Beezy's face uncertain futures, that longevity says something.
The Burger
I should get this out of the way early because it's the reason half the people reading this know the name. GQ put Sidetrack's burger on its list of "Twenty Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die." The magazine wasn't wrong.
The patty is thick, loosely packed, and cooked on a flat grill with enough char on the exterior to give it texture without drying out the center. It comes on a sturdy bun that holds up to the juice. No architectural nonsense, no truffle aioli, no stack of ingredients taller than it is wide. This is a bar burger executed with precision, priced under $15, and it has been essentially the same for decades. I ate one on a Tuesday afternoon last month and spent the drive home wondering why I don't do that more often.
Beyond the Patty
The menu is bar food, and I mean that as a compliment. The wings are large, meaty, and available in enough sauce options that regulars have strong opinions about which one. I default to the garlic parmesan, which has actual garlic flavor rather than garlic powder dusted over oil. The Reuben is stacked high, the corned beef sliced thick rather than shaved, the rye bread properly toasted. Fish and chips on Fridays draw a crowd that includes people who have been ordering the same thing on the same day of the week for years.
The beer list is where Sidetrack flexes without calling attention to it. Twenty-plus taps that lean toward Michigan craft, rotated regularly enough that there's usually something new alongside the standards. This is a bar that takes its beer seriously but doesn't lecture you about it. If you want a Miller Lite, nobody's going to judge you. If you want to try something from Arbor Brewing or Jolly Pumpkin, it's there.
The Patio
I wrote in the Ypsilanti dining guide that Sidetrack's patio is one of the best outdoor dining spots in Washtenaw County. I'll go further here: it might be the best. The patio sits behind the building, shaded by trees, with enough space that it doesn't feel cramped even on a Saturday night in July. String lights. Picnic tables and regular tables mixed together. You can hear the Huron River if the crowd is thin enough, and even when it's not, the atmosphere manages to be lively without being loud.
The patio is seasonal, obviously. Michigan winters don't negotiate. But from May through October, there is no better place to sit outside with a beer and a burger in Depot Town, and I've tried them all.
What Sidetrack Means
Depot Town's identity has been in motion for as long as I've been paying attention. 734 Brewing is making beer. Bellflower has brought fine dining to Pearl Street. MAIZ has made the block a destination for people who wouldn't have driven to Ypsilanti five years ago. But Sidetrack was here before any of them. It was here before Depot Town was a food destination. It was feeding people on East Cross Street when the neighborhood was just a neighborhood.
That matters. Every food corridor needs an anchor that predates the trend, the place that was there when the rent was cheap and the foot traffic was sparse and the only people who came were locals who already knew. Sidetrack is that place for Depot Town. It didn't ride a wave. It built the dock.
Linda French has been behind the bar for over four decades. The building has been standing for almost two centuries. A train hit it once, and it's still here. GQ noticed the burger, and Sidetrack didn't change a thing. The menu didn't get a redesign. The prices didn't jump. The place just kept being what it has always been: a bar that serves good food in a crooked building in a town that deserves more attention than it gets.
Order the burger. Sit on the patio. Stay longer than you planned. That's what Sidetrack does to people.
Sidetrack Bar & Grill is at 56 E Cross St, Ypsilanti (Depot Town). Open daily for lunch and dinner.