The Roadhouse Is the Loud One, and That's the Point
Twenty-three years in, Zingerman's full-service restaurant on Jackson Avenue is still the most democratic table in Ann Arbor. Fried chicken, pit barbecue, mac and cheese made with Martelli pasta, and a room that seats hundreds.
The Roadhouse is loud. I want to get that out of the way because it's the first thing anyone mentions, and for years it was the thing I noticed most. The dining room at 2501 Jackson Avenue seats hundreds, the ceilings are high, the tables are close, and when it fills up on a Friday night the noise becomes a physical presence. They improved the acoustics during the six-week renovation that wrapped in February, and the room is better now. But this is still a place where you lean in to hear your dinner companion, where laughter carries from three tables over, where a kid dropping a fork is part of the soundtrack.
I've been eating here for years, and that noise is part of why I keep coming back. The Roadhouse is not trying to be quiet. It's not trying to be intimate. It's the big, democratic, all-ages restaurant in the Zingerman's family, and its volume is an honest reflection of what it is: a room full of people eating fried chicken and barbecue and macaroni and cheese, having a good time, not worrying about it.
The History
In the late 1990s, a chef in Pittsburgh named Alex Young called Ari Weinzweig and pitched an idea. Young had been thinking about American regional cooking, the kind of food that existed in pockets across the country but rarely got serious restaurant treatment. He and Weinzweig spent months driving back and forth, working out the concept. In 2001, Young moved his family to Dexter. Around 2003, the Roadhouse opened.
The building is a former Bill Knapp's in the Westgate Shopping Center, at the corner of Jackson and Maple. If you remember Bill Knapp's, you know the bones: a big, boxy, family-restaurant footprint. The Roadhouse gutted and rebuilt it, but the DNA of that original structure explains the scale. This was always going to be a large restaurant. The question was whether the food could match the room.
Young's answer was to treat American comfort food with the same sourcing obsession that Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw had applied to the Deli's corned beef and rye bread. The fried chicken would use Amish-raised birds. The mac and cheese would use imported Martelli pasta from Tuscany. The barbecue would be pit-smoked, low and slow. Every ingredient had a reason, and Young was willing to charge accordingly. In a city where Zingerman's Deli had already trained people to pay more for better ingredients, the bet paid off.
Young won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes, after multiple nominations. He also founded Cornman Farms, an agricultural operation in Dexter that grows produce for the Roadhouse and hosts events. The farm connection is real. Seasonal vegetables on the Roadhouse menu come from ground that Young's team works.
Today the kitchen is run by Bob Bennett, who has been at the Roadhouse since it opened. Young remains involved in the broader operation, but Bennett is the one cooking your dinner.
The Food
I'll start with the fried chicken because that's what most people come for, and they're right to.
The Buttermilk Fried Chicken is sold by the piece. A breast is $12. A thigh is $7. You can build a plate with sides, or you can order a few pieces and share. The chicken is brined in buttermilk, coated in seasoned flour, and fried until the crust goes dark golden and shatteringly crisp. The meat stays juicy underneath. I've ordered it dozens of times. The thigh is the best piece. The dark meat holds more flavor, the skin crisps better on the smaller surface, and at $7 it's probably the best single item you can buy at the Roadhouse.
They also do a Fried Chicken Sandwich ($25) that stacks a breast on a bun with pickles and slaw. It's good, but the standalone pieces are better. The sandwich compresses the crust. Eat the chicken with your hands, off a plate, the way it was meant to be eaten.
The Roadhouse Macaroni & Cheese is the dish that Food Network's Alton Brown reportedly praised on air. A small is $18, a large is $24. They use Martelli pasta, an Italian import with a rough, porous texture that grabs the cheese sauce. The cheese is a bechamel-based blend with sharp cheddar. It comes out bubbling, the top browned and slightly crusty, the inside loose and creamy. I find the small sufficient for one person, but I've watched tables of four demolish a large in minutes. If you want a variation, the Pimento Cheese & Bacon Mac ($22/$28) adds smoke and tang that works.
The pit-smoked barbecue is the other pillar. The Roadhouse smokes pork and beef low and slow over hardwood. The BBQ Plate ($38) gives you a sampler. The Pit-Smoked Spare Ribs run $38 for a half rack, $60 for a full. These are big, meaty ribs with a dark bark and a smoke ring you can see. The meat pulls clean off the bone without falling apart. I prefer the spare ribs to the South Carolina BBQ Ribs (same price), which get a mustard-based sauce that can overwhelm the smoke flavor. But both are serious.
The Pit-Smoked BBQ Pork ($30) is what I order when I want barbecue without committing to a rack of ribs. Pulled pork, smoky and slightly sweet, served with your choice of sides. The Pit-Smoked BBQ Beef ($32) is leaner, with a deeper smoke profile. Neither will disappoint.
For sides, the Bacon-Braised Collard Greens ($8) are slow-cooked and potlikker-rich. The Anson Mills Grits & Cheese ($7) use stone-ground grits from South Carolina, cooked until creamy, with enough cheese to make them substantial. The Mashed Potatoes ($8) are good but not remarkable. The Yellow Mustard Slaw ($6) is sharp and vinegary, the right counterpoint to rich meat.
Beyond the core dishes: the Roadhouse Burger ($21) uses beef from regional farms and comes on a Bakehouse bun. It's a thick, loose-ground patty, cooked to temperature, straightforward and satisfying. The steaks range from a $36 skirt steak to a $52 tenderloin. I haven't spent enough time with the steak program to have a strong opinion, but the skirt steak, sliced thin against the grain, was good the one time I ordered it.
The fish menu rotates but typically includes salmon, trout, whitefish, and redfish, all in the $32--$36 range. The Creole Pot Likker Fish Stew ($36) is a standout when it's on: a bowl of broth, fish, and greens that feels like it belongs in New Orleans.
One thing I appreciate: the Buttermilk Biscuits ($8) come to the table warm, with honey butter. They're Bakehouse biscuits, flaky and rich. Order them. Don't fill up on them before the chicken arrives. I've made that mistake.
The Drink Program
The bar at the Roadhouse was overhauled during the recent renovation, and the new room is an improvement. The bourbon list runs deep, which makes sense for a restaurant built around American food. Cocktails lean classic: Old Fashioneds, Manhattans, whiskey sours. The wine list is short but functional, with enough variety to match the menu without overwhelming you with choices.
The beer selection rotates and includes Michigan craft options alongside national picks. On a summer evening, a cold lager and a plate of fried chicken on the patio is one of the better meals in Ann Arbor for the money.
What the Roadhouse Means
In the Zingerman's universe, each business has a role. The Deli is the origin story. The Bakehouse is the quiet engine. The Creamery is the specialist. The Roadhouse is the gathering place. It's where you take out-of-town guests, where families go for birthdays, where you end up after a Michigan football game because the room is big enough to absorb a crowd and the food is good enough to justify the prices.
And the prices need justifying, because the Roadhouse is not cheap. A dinner for two with fried chicken, mac and cheese, a couple of sides, and drinks will run $80 to $100 before tip. Entrees range from $21 for a burger to $52 for a tenderloin. A half rack of ribs with two sides pushes past $50. This is the Zingerman's bargain: you pay more, and the ingredients are better than they need to be. Amish chicken. Martelli pasta. Anson Mills grits. Pit-smoked meat. Bakehouse bread. Whether that trade-off works for you is personal, but the sourcing is not performance. It's the actual model.
The Roadhouse also matters as a training ground. Like the Deli, it has cycled hundreds of cooks, servers, and managers through its system over 23 years. Some of them stayed. Some of them opened their own places. The Zingerman's approach to training, the open-book management, the emphasis on service as a craft, runs through the Roadhouse as deeply as anywhere in the organization. You notice it in small ways: a server who knows which farms supply the chicken, a bartender who can explain why the grits are from South Carolina.
Twenty-three years. A renovation that committed to the next chapter. A kitchen led by someone who has been there since day one. The Roadhouse is not the most refined restaurant in Ann Arbor. It's not trying to be. It's the one where you eat fried chicken with your hands, where the noise means the room is alive, where the mac and cheese is $18 and made with pasta imported from Tuscany because someone decided that was the right way to do it.
I ate there last week. I ordered a thigh, a leg, collard greens, and grits. The check was $34 before tip. The thigh was perfect. I mean that specifically: the brine had penetrated to the bone, the crust held its crunch through the last bite, and the meat was juicy without being greasy. I ate it with my hands, standing briefly to get a better angle on the last piece, and I didn't care that the table next to me was watching.
That's the Roadhouse.
Zingerman's Roadhouse is at 2501 Jackson Ave, Ann Arbor. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Reservations available through OpenTable.