Weekend Getaway: Ann Arbor, Michigan
At the home of the University of Michigan, you'll find great delis, bakeries, breweries, and more.
Welcome to the weekend! As we enter the heart of college football season, we are continuing our dive into America’s great college towns with a trip to Ann Arbor, home of the Michigan Wolverines. If you missed our earlier stories, check out last month’s explorations of Columbus and Oxford, as well as our previous dispatches from Madison and Northampton. Here’s what you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:
Weekend Getaway: Our culinary tour of Ann Arbor’s best spots includes everything from tomato-taleggio Danish to soy-glazed Korean fried chicken, with plenty of stops for drinks along the way.
October’s Featured Field Guide: Ready to plan your trip to Ann Arbor? Our full list of favorites is available in our Field Guide to Ann Arbor — a free download this month for our paid subscribers. This 29-page dining guide includes a curated three-day itinerary with more than a dozen vetted recommendations for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks.
Weekend Reading: Dispatches from Houston, Boise, and New Orleans plus Milwaukee’s Dan Jacobs talks with the hosts of Joiners in a recent podcast episode.
It's Great to be a Michigan Wolverine!
ANN ARBOR, MICH. — If you know one thing about Ann Arbor, you probably know Zingerman’s. Oh, the University of Michigan campus, too. But Zingerman’s Delicatessen, which opened in 1982, is such a juggernaut in this college town and the greater food world, and you may already be aware of its fabulous reuben or at least the colorful, cheesy catalogs, from which you can order everything from sour cream coffee cake to an entire jamón ibérico de bellota.
Our culinary tour of Ann Arbor, which is just 45 minutes outside of Detroit, will start here, because it’s not a trip to this town without a Zingerman’s reuben. It’s an epic sandwich made with house corned beef, Swiss Emmental cheese, local sauerkraut from The Brinery, and Russian dressing on grilled rye from Zingerman's Bakehouse. You’ll get a choice of an “old pickle” or a “new pickle” with your sandwich - both are good, but we prefer the fresher, crunchier “new pickle” to the tangy, garlicky “old” one. After lunch, take time to peruse the well-stocked shelves, which feature housemade ingredients as well as delicious things sourced from around the world. On our most recent visit this spring, we came home with peanut butter, tinned mackerel, and a bag of gigante beans.
But Ann Arbor’s food scene goes well beyond the Zingerman’s empire, and we’ll take you to spots serving Asian-American pastries and phenomenal croissants (we thrive on baked goods at American Weekender, what can we say?), griddled flatbread wraps with spit-roasted marinated chicken and zhoug, Cuban burgers, and pan-fried walleye and shrimp cocktail. We’ll also head to a prix fixe wine bar, an airy brewery that uses Michigan grains and hops, and two terrific spots for cocktails. Let’s go explore.
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