Ypsilanti Has a Food Scene. You Just Have to Know Where to Look.
The restaurants on Michigan Avenue and beyond that make Ypsi worth crossing the river for.
The people who have been eating in Ypsilanti for years have a habit of not making a big deal about it. They know where to go, they go there, and they don't need you to follow. This has been good for the restaurants and mildly bad for anyone who spends most of their time in Ann Arbor and occasionally wonders whether there's something worth crossing the Huron River for.
There is. There has been for a while. The scene has only gotten harder to ignore.
What trips people up is the geography. Ypsilanti's good restaurants are not centralized. They don't cluster on one walkable street the way Ann Arbor's do on Main or Liberty. They scatter: Depot Town on the east side of the Huron, downtown Pearl Street a few blocks over, Michigan Avenue running through the city's spine, Washtenaw Avenue trailing toward the eastern edge. Finding the places worth your time means knowing the corridors and what lives in each one.
That's what this guide is for.
Start Here: The Anchor
Bellflower is the restaurant that settled the argument about whether Ypsilanti could support serious food. At 209 Pearl Street, in a former Michigan Bell telephone exchange that owners Mark Maynard and Jesse Kranyak spent four years rebuilding after a fire left it open to the sky, chef Dan Klenotic runs a kitchen that earned him a James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef: Great Lakes in 2024. The cooking bridges Midwestern comfort and Southern coastal flavors. Eight of the 15 or so entrees on a given night are seafood. The fried oyster po'boy on house-made milk bread is the dish that turned heads first. Shrimp etouffee, seared scallops, boudin sausage from the in-house smoker, bread from two dedicated bakers who take the program seriously. Sandwiches run $10-13 at lunch, dinner entrees average around $31. Reservations on weekends are essential.
I keep going back, which is the simplest thing I can say about it.
Depot Town: The Spine
Depot Town is Ypsilanti's most developed dining corridor and the place most visitors have in mind when they think of eating in Ypsi. The restaurants along East Cross Street and North River Street form a walkable cluster that can fill a full evening.
Sidetrack Bar & Grill at 56 East Cross is the anchor that predates everything else. Linda French has been running it since 1980, in a building that went up in the 1850s and took a hit from a derailed freight train in 1929. The building still leans. GQ put the burger on its "Twenty Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die" list, and Sidetrack didn't change a thing afterward. The burger is the order, wagyu beef cooked on the flat grill with a solid char, on a bun that holds together. Twenty-plus taps lean toward Michigan breweries. The patio, from May through October, is one of the best outdoor dining spots in Washtenaw County. Go on a weeknight if you can. The patio fills on summer weekends.
Thompson & Co. at 400 North River Street occupies the Thompson Block, a building that served as a Civil War barracks, survived an arson in 2009, and spent years open to the sky while an oak tree grew through the ruins. Mission Restaurant Group, the same operators behind Jolly Pumpkin in Ann Arbor, put $10 million into the renovation. The local woodworker Adrienne Nickles salvaged lumber from that oak tree and turned it into wall sculptures and tabletops throughout the dining room. Executive Chef Keith Martin's menu is Southern comfort food: shrimp and grits over stone-ground cheddar grits, Nashville hot chicken, Bayou pasta. The space is 11,000 square feet with a patio and fire pit. Adjacent, Mash operates as a bourbon and whiskey bar with live music on Friday and Saturday nights. The building is worth seeing regardless of what you order.
734 Brewing Company at 15 East Cross Street doesn't have a kitchen, and that's a deliberate choice. The founders are Ypsilanti High School graduates who came back to build something here, and the taproom runs a rotating list of ales, lagers, seltzers, and house spirits. Grab food from MAIZ or Sidetrack and carry it across the street. On a Friday evening this is the logical last stop on a Depot Town run.
Hyperion Coffee Co. at 306 North River Street roasts single-origin, direct-trade beans and treats coffee with the attention a winery gives its grapes. Light roasts that preserve origin character. The pour-over is the order. Sit by the windows overlooking the Huron River. It's a good place to start a Depot Town morning before the lunch crowd arrives.
Aubree's Pizzeria & Grill at 39 East Cross has been feeding the corridor since 1972. Order the feta bread first. It arrives warm, salty, and gone before the pizza does. Every food corridor needs a place where a group of six can show up without a plan and leave satisfied. Aubree's is that place for Depot Town.
Downtown: The Case for Haab's
Michigan Avenue downtown is where Ypsilanti's oldest restaurant still operates, and it's one of the better arguments for crossing the river.
Haab's Restaurant has been at 18 West Michigan Avenue for over 90 years, as the restaurant tells it, in a dining room that has barely changed in decades. Thick wood booths, white tablecloths, the kind of menu built around the idea that a proper dinner involves soup, a salad, and a main with sides. German and American classics: sauerbraten, pot roast, liver and onions. The prime rib on Friday and Saturday evenings is reportedly the dish that regulars plan around. Prices run moderate by current standards, which is part of the point. Haab's does not try to be anywhere but where it is. It is one of the few places in the region that can make you feel like you have slipped back forty years, without the trip feeling forced.
Beyond Downtown: Bona Sera and the West Side
Bona Sera, on West Michigan Avenue, is an Italian kitchen with a wood-fired menu and a patio that draws crowds in warmer months. Pizzas from a wood-burning oven, pasta made in-house, a wine list that takes Italy seriously. Bona Sera opened in recent years and has built the kind of following that makes weekend reservations a reasonable move. The patio is the draw in spring and summer. The wood fire is the reason to go in the cold months too.
On Cross Street's west end, Basil Babe at 701 West Cross opened in early 2023 from a mother-daughter team. Mom owned Siam Square in Ann Arbor until 2018. The kitchen is Thai and it is serious: massaman curry with cardamom and tamarind built into the sauce, pad see ew with proper wok char, pan-fried dumplings that disappear faster than you expect. If you have been driving to Ann Arbor for Thai food, stop. Basil Babe is closer and the cooking is better.
Michigan Avenue: The Institutions
The stretch of Michigan Avenue through Ypsilanti has the kind of history that accumulates slowly and does not announce itself.
The Bomber at 306 East Michigan has been open since 1936, named for the nearby Willow Run Bomber Plant that assembled B-24 Liberators during World War II. Owner Johanna McCoy runs it today, continuing the WWII aviation theme her late husband John Sebestyen restored when they bought it in 1986. Order the Cap'N Crunch French Toast at least once, if only to understand why Food Network came to Ypsilanti for it. The Bomber Skillet with hash browns, eggs, and your choice of meat is the better regular order. Cash and card. Open daily for breakfast and lunch.
Ma Lou's Fried Chicken at 15 West Michigan is what happens when someone who grew up eating great fried chicken decides his hometown deserves it. K.C. Knipple opened in March 2017, and MSN and LoveFood have since named it the best fried chicken in Michigan. Three spice levels. Tofu sandwich and catfish as genuine alternatives. The space is small. The line on a busy day is not. Go anyway.
Encuentro Latino at 228 West Michigan has been serving Guatemalan and Latin American food since 2015, filling a lane nobody else in Washtenaw County holds. Pupusas thick and griddle-crisp. House-made tortillas under everything. Combination plates that feed you for under $12. This is not the cuisine the Ann Arbor food conversation typically covers, which is a gap in the Ann Arbor food conversation, not in the cooking.
Out on Washtenaw
Casablanca at 2333 Washtenaw Avenue sits in a strip mall that gives no indication of what is inside. Metro Times has called it Michigan's only Moroccan restaurant, and the claim holds up. Lamb tagine with preserved lemon, slow-cooked until the meat yields to a fork, the sauce layered with saffron and ginger and the sharp salt of the preserved lemon. Handmade couscous. Merguez with snap and spice. Pull off Washtenaw and go in.
Coffee and Between Meals
Hyperion Coffee Co. is the pour-over anchor for Depot Town. On the west side, The Rocket on Michigan Avenue runs a casual cafe in the kind of room that suits a slow morning. Ypsilanti also has enough neighborhood coffee shops that you are unlikely to need to drive back to Ann Arbor for a working lunch.
734 Brewing Company handles the taproom end. If you want something quieter, Mash at Thompson & Co. opens for drinks without a full dinner commitment.
How to Use This Guide
Ypsilanti's corridors are close enough together that you can move between them in an evening without much effort. Bellflower for dinner, Hyperion for a post-dinner pour-over, Mash for a late drink. Or Sidetrack for the burger and patio, 734 Brewing after, and The Bomber the next morning.
The restaurants here are not a consolation prize for not getting a reservation somewhere in Ann Arbor. They are the reason to go to Ypsilanti. Some of them, on merit alone, are the best restaurants in the county. The prices are lower. The parking, outside of Depot Town on a summer Saturday, is easier. The dining rooms are not full of people performing the fact that they are eating at a good restaurant.
You just have to know where to look. Now you do.
Plate & Press will update this guide as Ypsilanti's restaurant scene continues to change. For individual restaurant profiles, see the links throughout.