Spring Eating in Washtenaw County
Morels, asparagus, and the farmers market shift. What to eat and where to find it.
Spring is the most interesting eating season in Washtenaw County. Not summer, when everything is ripe and easy. Not fall, when the cider mills do the marketing for you. Spring, when the first asparagus shows up at the market and you remember what vegetables are supposed to taste like after five months of cold storage and California imports.
The window is narrow. Morel season opens in mid-April and closes by mid-June. Local asparagus arrives in late April and holds through June. For a few weeks in May, you can get both at the same farmers market stall, and the best restaurants in the county are building menus around them. If you're paying attention, the food gets noticeably better between April and June. If you're not, you'll miss it.
The Market Shift
The Ann Arbor Farmers Market (315 Detroit St, Kerrytown) runs Saturdays year-round, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. But the market in January and the market in May are different operations. Winter is a handful of vendors selling storage crops, preserves, and meat inside the shed. Spring is when the stalls push outdoors, the vendor count doubles, and the produce tables start looking like they belong in a food magazine.
Wednesday markets return in May and run through December. That midweek option matters if you actually cook with seasonal produce instead of just admiring it on Saturday mornings. The market accepts SNAP/EBT and participates in Double Up Food Bucks, which matches SNAP spending on Michigan-grown fruits and vegetables dollar for dollar. It is one of the best food assistance programs in the state, and it is underused.
What to look for in April and May: ramps, fiddleheads, radishes, green garlic, and the first lettuces. By late May, strawberries from the outlying farms start appearing, and the market shifts from sparse to overwhelming in about two weeks.
Morels
Morel season in southern Michigan runs from mid-April through mid-June, depending on rain and soil temperature. Foragers sell them at the farmers market for $30 or more per pound, which sounds expensive until you try finding them yourself. I have spent full afternoons in the woods near Dexter and come home with exactly nothing. The people who know where the morels grow do not share that information freely.
At the market, look for firm, dry mushrooms without soft spots. Fresh morels have a nutty, earthy smell that fades fast. Buy them on Saturday, cook them by Monday. Sautéed in butter with a little salt is the correct preparation. Anything more complicated is showing off.
Restaurant kitchens treat morel season like a countdown. Spencer (113 E Liberty St) runs morels on its spring menu, typically sautéed or folded into pasta, alongside whatever else is arriving from local farms. The kitchen leans French when spring produce shows up, and the combination of technique and Michigan ingredients is why USA Today named Spencer to its 2026 Restaurants of the Year list. If morels are on the menu, order them. They won't last.
Zingerman's Roadhouse (2501 Jackson Ave) has built its reputation on seasonal menus that rotate with the harvest. Spring means foraged mushrooms, spring greens, and dishes that wouldn't make sense in January. The Roadhouse sources aggressively from local farms, and the spring menu reflects that supply chain more than any written philosophy.
Asparagus Season
Michigan asparagus arrives in late April and runs through June. The difference between local asparagus picked that morning and the bundled stuff shipped from Peru is not subtle. Snap a stalk. If it breaks clean with a crack, it's fresh. If it bends, it's been traveling.
Thick spears are not tougher than thin ones. That's a persistent myth. Thickness is a function of the plant's age and variety, not quality. Buy what looks firm and bright green, regardless of diameter. Roast it hot, with oil and salt, until the tips char slightly. Overcooking is the only real mistake you can make.
Spencer works asparagus into the menu as soon as it shows up locally, and it stays until the season ends. Miss Kim (415 N Fifth Ave) uses seasonal vegetables across its Korean-Michigan menu, and spring produce — asparagus included — changes the banchan spread and bowl offerings week to week.
Restaurants That Follow the Seasons
Not every restaurant in the county changes its menu when the seasons do. Most don't. The ones that bother are the ones worth tracking in spring.
Spencer is the clearest example. The kitchen's spring menu reads like a farmers market receipt: morels, asparagus, ramps, pea shoots, whatever Richard Andres at Tantré Farm and other local growers are harvesting that week. The menu is small enough that every ingredient has to earn its place.
Zingerman's Roadhouse treats seasonality as institutional policy. The sourcing is documented, the farms are named on the menu, and the spring dishes change as the supply changes. It is a large restaurant that operates with the sourcing habits of a small one.
Miss Kim runs seasonal banchan and builds bowls around what Michigan farms are producing. Ji Hye Kim has been cooking this way since 2016, and the spring transition — from hearty winter ferments to lighter greens and fresh vegetables — is one of the best times to eat there.
The Farm Network
The restaurants don't do this alone. The sourcing depends on a network of small farms within thirty miles of Ann Arbor, and spring is when that network becomes visible.
Tantré Farm, a 16-acre certified organic operation near Chelsea, is one of the anchors. Richard Andres has been farming that land for years, selling at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market and supplying restaurants across the county. Tantré grows the kind of produce that makes chefs adjust their menus midweek: when the first peas come in, they go on plates that night. The Brinery, known for its lacto-fermented pickles and kraut, ferments cabbage from Tantré's crop on Tantré's property. That kind of producer-to-producer relationship doesn't happen in most food systems.
Argus Farm Stop operates locations in Ann Arbor as a year-round local food hub, stocking produce, meat, dairy, and prepared food from Michigan farms. In spring, the shelves fill with greens and early-season vegetables from farms you can drive to in twenty minutes. Argus functions as a farmers market that's open every day, which solves the problem of wanting local asparagus on a Tuesday.
Agricole in Chelsea runs a four-season indoor market that keeps local food available even when the outdoor markets are closed. By spring, Agricole shifts from winter storage crops to early greens and starts, and the overlap creates one of the better selections of local food you'll find in the western half of the county.
What to Do With All of It
Buy morels at the Saturday market. Cook them that night in butter, maybe over toast, maybe tossed with fresh pasta. Buy asparagus from Argus on a Wednesday when you don't feel like planning ahead. Eat at Spencer when the spring menu drops and let the kitchen do the work for you. Drive to Chelsea and walk through Agricole just to see what's growing.
Spring eating here is not about restaurants or markets or farms in isolation. It's about the fact that all three are connected, operating within the same thirty-mile radius, responding to the same weather and the same soil. The morels that a forager pulls out of the woods near Dexter on Thursday morning show up at Spencer by Friday dinner. The asparagus that Tantré harvests at dawn is at the Kerrytown stalls by 7 a.m.
I walked through the farmers market last May on the first warm Saturday after a long stretch of rain. Every table had morels. The asparagus was thick and bright. A woman from Tantré Farm was handing out samples of green garlic, and three people in line were arguing about the best way to cook ramps. That's spring eating in Washtenaw County. It lasts about eight weeks. Pay attention.