Zingerman's Roadhouse — Restaurant in Ann Arbor

Zingerman’s roadhouse is arguably one of the most thoughtfully curated restaurants in the Midwest with intentionally selected, meticulously researched ingredients. Last night, my friend asked the owner if he was in an alternative reality what he would do differently for work, and he made it clear that this is inDEED his dream fulfilled. His and his team’s collective work, researching & traveling to find delicious and unique traditional foods around USA to create nourishing traditions for us lucky patrons is something I appreciate immensely. This establishment fortunately a local haunt genuinely increases the quality of my life.

While it’s common place to hear jokes about the price point of menu items, it’s really comparable to many other table service restaurants, and with ingredients coming from local farms or curated sources of higher quality (the butter is cultured Vermont butter, the grits are from some special place) and not Cisco etc, as most other restaurants, it is, TRULY, by the book, a BETTER value. Case in point subway- it is “expensive” in the sense that cost of ingredients is low and markup high, not a good value.

Came here inspired to write a review based on my recent awesome experiences there, the customer service is unparalleled. You see the owner almost every time you go, making sure customers are happy, and educating us about cool rare-gem culinary finds offered on the changing menu of that week.

I had a delightful, perfectly spicy fresh vegetable loaded appetizer on top of an amazing green salsa called something that I can’t remember but makes me want to say “Casablanca” ;), sorry for butchering the title.

The fried ribs were to die for, but I will go to the gym or on a bike ride today so that I won’t.

My go to is the Caesar salad, chopped, with added anchovies along with whatever is new on the menu specials. The Caesar dressing there is homemade and outstanding. I’ve tried to replicate it but still theirs is better. The Tempranillo wine selection is always on point. The specials are always great, love the Passover traditional dishes when it’s that time of year. The kale pine nut salad with adding a some sort of medium rare steak will make people around you jealous they didn’t order it or know about that one, again the dressing is outstanding and will leave you craving it for the future.

All in all, it’s a great vibe, you can hack the menu and not spend over $30, or you can have a smorgasbord and spend $200 easily on two people, and will leave feeling like you had a wonderful experience...

We were heading home back from Canada trip and was told to check out this place on the way home to Chicago.

Oh boy was this place so worth the trip!

They have plenty of private parking and we were able to sit down fairly quickly for a Sunday dinner.

When you enter the place you see that there was plenty to tables to sit from private rooms, sun room, the bar, in front of the wait staff area getting people’s orders to eating at the bar.

Hubby ordered an old fashion and made they made it spot on and it was hella strong lol!

There was plenty of interesting wall art and poster boards.

They also sell their own Merch - this place is part to a little conglomeration of other family zingermans businesses from a deli, to bakery, to creamery, etc. in this area.

We were greeted by our server we called her Ms Tracy, we told her we were new here and she gave us a history of the place and some popular dishes here and why they are so special and how it was made, amazing.

We asked for bread and butter for the table. We got slices of their homemade sourdough and rye breads with their homemade butter wow.

We ordered their ribeye dinner that came with three sides.

We got sautéed spinach, Mac and cheese (we paid extra) and Carolina gold rice.

Our family also order ribeye and rice Mac n cheese and roasted squash.

The entire dish was excellent so good and flavorful the steak was made median rare so soft and juicy!

I would order the steak again, grass fed finished!

While we were waiting for our dinner, Ms Tracy our waitress offered us tapas size samples on the house of their famous pulled pork with a little kick flavorful soft and juicy.

New Orleans pot roast with grits and cheese, bed was so soft and grits tasted like corn with melted cheese, also russet skinned mashed potatoes with beef gravy…wow wow all was so good!

I was also able to order a piece of their buttermilk fried chicken too, if you like black peppery chicken skin it had a bit of a kick and skin was really crunchy.

I got the breast but next time I’ll stick with the dark meat thigh or drumstick.

What we couldn’t finish, she put them in containers and love that she put in the date and what is in it!

We ended with dessert of fried cherry pie with vanilla gelato and whip cream. It took a few minutes to deep fry the pie, served hot and crispy crust!

All our dishes were made from scratch and locally grown meats and vegetables.

Overall, What a wonderful experience, I will definitely come back here again if I’m...

Zingerman’s Roadhouse had gone downhill since the pandemic.

I used to visit once a week or so, but then moved a bit out of town.

My go to thing is to take out a burger medium with blue cheese, vegetable topics on the side and a side of sweet potato fries.

The burger itself has always been quite good. One of the better tasting burgers in town, maybe the best. I realize that is relative.

A few years back, I used to order bacon on the burger, but they forgot it a couple times and I figured out that the burger is still pretty damn good without the bacon.

One visit, I got a “medium” burger dripping blood in the packaging…. Gross and inedible. Unfortunately, I had left before opening it.

Two visits they forgot my bacon.

Another visit, they gave me an extremely small side of veggies.

Another visit, they forgot my the dip for the fries.

The sweet potato fries vary greatly in side and quality. Often there are far less than would be served in the initial serving if you were to dine in. Also, when dinning in, the fries are always rather dry on the outside. For takeout, often they are very greasy.

KNOWING that they are going downhill, when I called yesterday, I specifically asked for a proper portion of sweet potato fries. I mentioned the previous visit had been about half of normal. My request was acknowledged.

I rolled up, she handed me the order and put credit card reader out, showing tip options of none, 18%, 20% or 25%.... Nothing seems cheap, but 18% on a $25 order just to have someone hand me the wrong food, it not cool at all! So, I gave 18%.

I rolled around the building and checked my order…. .NO fries! What the hell?!

So, I rolled back around and requested my fries. They had me hold on….. Apparently there were no fries even made. It was quite a wait, finished most of my burger and toppings. . Then someone handed me a bag of fries. They were fresh and hot, dripping with oil….Just a wet disgusting mess.... wanted to pull around again and ask if she would eat them....But, i don't have all day to spend managing a simple order at Zingerman's Roadhouse...

Not cool at all! No quality control at this place any more. Sad because they used to be top notch.

Zingerman’s needs to get some standards. If the burgers were not great, I would never...