Just One Michigan Restaurant Makes New York Times Top Restaurants of 2023

For the third year, The New York Times has release a list of "50 places in the United States that we’re most excited about right now".

Get our free mobile app

While states like California and New York have multiple eateries on "The Restaurant List" - just one Michigan restaurant is being honored.

I will say, at least the Mitten State is represented? States like Alabama, Indiana, and Ohio have zero on the list...

So which Michigan restaurant is the New York Times pumped about?

Ladder 4 Wine Bar in Detroit, which just opened in 2022.

The restaurant is located inside a historic firehouse. According to their website,

We celebrate simple human values: gathering around a table or at the bar for food and wine to sustain and delight, music to move your feet, conversations to connect and humor because we are fun and not fussy.

On Ladder 4's menu you'll find items like a spicy greens salad, chicken liver parfait, scallops, leeks, creamed shishito peppers, eggplant, rainbow trout, pork, fried chicken and steak. There are also specials like burgers and softshell crabs.

Here's the Time's praise for the Detroit eatery,

When it opened, Ladder 4 was so focused on serving natural wine that John Yelinek, one of Detroit’s gifted young chefs, took a job pouring drinks, never expecting to cook. His move to the kitchen, later last year, is when the erudite bar, built in a converted firehouse by the brothers James and Patrick Cadariu, became an alluring restaurant as well. You’ll leave raving about charred leeks crowned with gribiche and trout roe, or pork schnitzel escorted by a salad of fresh peas and mint, in the same breath as Sipon, the Slovene skin-contact wine recommended for its 'funky-kampucha-dried-apricot vibes.'

Open Table has a full list of the 50 restaurants honored by The New York Times.

The restaurant is having a good week as it was also recently named among Bon Apetite's 24 Best Restaurants of 2023.