You may be thinking, “I know about the Roadshow. What the heck is the SideShow?” What a wonderful question. Happy to offer a good answer to go with it.

The SideShow is a coffee trailer pop-up that’s across from the Roadshow during the month and a half that the Phoenix Construction Crew is renovating the building. The SideShow—along with Greyline, which is offering Sunday brunch and Sunday and Monday dinner—is serving up the Coffee Company’s classic Roadhouse Joe, espresso, cappuccino, and a small selection of Bakehouse pastries. We’re also stocking the Roadhouse-renowned New Mexico fire-roasted Green Chile Breakfast Burritos and egg sandwiches.

On top of all that, the SideShow is debuting one of the tastiest things we’ve added at the Roadhouse in a while: an exceptionally good Granola and Yogurt Parfait. Like so much of what I like best, it’s super simple but also super delicious! Zach Milner, one of the wonderful Roadhouse dining room managers, is currently doing a stint as manager of the SideShow. Here’s what he says about these wonderful new offerings:

I’ve loved parfaits ever since I was a kid. Something about a crunchy granola to mix in with creamy yogurt—it’s just a perfect cup of breakfast. Opening up a pop-up during the Roadhouse’s renovation, I saw an opportunity to bring in the best granola I’ve ever tasted, G’s Granola from the Deli. And then, when Ari showed me the Bellwether yogurts, I was in love instantly. You mix these two things with my favorite fruit, blueberries, and you have a richly nutritional meal and/or snack that will keep you coming back for more. I start my SideShow shifts every morning with one, and I hope you can join me in enjoying this new creation I hope to see on our menus well after the renovation.

The key, of course, is the quality of the ingredients. Let’s start with the yogurt. We use what, to my taste, is one of the best yogurts anywhere: A2 Organic Jersey Milk Yogurt from Bellwether Farms in Sonoma County, California. Man, it is so, so, so good!

What makes it so special? The quality of the raw material might well be the biggest driver. It’s made with milk from the family’s herd of Jersey cows, generally acknowledged in the cheese world to give the creamiest, most delicious milk. The Callahan’s Jerseys naturally produce milk containing only A2 protein, which, I’ve been learning, might be easier for many lactose-sensitive people to digest. The yogurt is thick and creamy, but it’s made without adding any thickeners.

Next up in the parfait is a bit of blueberry jam—just enough to add a touch of sweetness to the otherwise unsweetened yogurt and a touch of color to offset the creamy white color. We get it from the folks at Blackberry Patch in South Georgia, who have been crafting artisan jams since 1988. Like American Spoon and the French firm of Olbia, whose apricot jam I wrote about last week, Blackberry Patch relies on a high fruit content to make the full flavors that we’ve come to count on at the Roadhouse over the many years we’ve been serving their products.

Last but definitely not least is Zach’s favorite, that super-fine G’s Granola from the Deli. The recipe for it came from Deli chef and co-managing partner Rodger Bowser’s wife, Giedra. “I used her home-sized recipe and figured out how to make large batches. We cook it really dark, in a nice single layer,” Rodger explains. I agree with his assessment! It really is great. The base ingredients are organic oats from the Grainery in Kalamazoo, where they mill old-school whole oats. As Rodger says, “If you made this with industrially milled ‘rolled oats,’ it would be a totally different product.” It’s got a range of nuts and seeds—almonds, walnuts, pecans, pumpkin seeds, and cashews. Coconut oil-based instead of butter-based, so there’s no dairy. No white sugar, just Michigan maple syrup and organic Muscovado brown sugar from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Last but not least, it’s enhanced with real vanilla, Indonesian Korintje cinnamon, and some sea salt.

Ready to try the SideShow Granola and Yogurt Parfait? We’re open Monday through Friday, 7 am to 1 pm. Swing by soon—only four and a half weeks of construction to go! Thank you all for your kindness, patience, and support.

See the full SideShow menu

Pardon Our Dust

After years of dreaming and planning, we’re rolling up our sleeves and renovating our building! 

We’ll be temporarily closing for approximately six weeks, starting January 4, 2026, to make these necessary improvements. 

Our beloved building has served us well for 22 years (and served others well prior to that—built in 1958, it was originally a Bill Knapp’s!), but now it’s in need of a little TLC. When we reopen, you’ll find the same Roadhouse charm you love—just brighter, comfier, and better than ever.

COMING SOON:
• Updated, more comfortable seating
• A completely reimagined bar room
• All-new flooring and lighting
• Acoustic improvements
• Energy-efficient kitchen equipment and coolers

“I feel like we are opening a new restaurant. Outside of our tried-and-true food recipes, there is very little in our restaurant that isn’t getting a fresh start. I’m excited to welcome back both our longtime guests and first-time diners to show them around.” — Chef Bob Bennett

“We’re so excited about the projects happening around the restaurant this winter. We just finished picking out fabrics, paint colors, light fixtures, sound-absorbing mechanisms, and more—I believe it will feel like a new restaurant in many regards. Do come by to enjoy our new look and feel, perhaps for a delicious post-Valentine’s Day celebration in February. I hope you like it as much as I already do!” —Lisa Schultz, Managing Partner

Craving the Roadhouse While We Renovate? We’ve Got You Covered

Sunday Brunch • Sunday Dinner • Monday Dinner
Enjoy your Roadhouse favorites at Zingerman’s Greyline at 100 N Ashley St.

Plus, keep an eye out for:
• A Roadhouse food truck parked along Stadium Blvd, serving Zingerman’s coffee drinks, Bakehouse pastries, and a limited breakfast menu
• Rotating chef-crafted dinner selections available for pick-up to reheat at home (location & times TBD)We look forward to serving you, albeit a little differently, for the next few weeks and can’t wait to have you back at the Roadhouse in mid-February!

For more information about our service offerings and closure updates, please follow @zingermansroadhouse on Instagram and Facebook, or check back regularly at zingermansroadhouse.com.

The excellence of Enzo’s early-harvest oil arrives in Ann Arbor

Some foods are so seasonal that they’re only available for a few weeks a year, even in the Industrial Age. Three of my favorites come to mind. Michigan strawberries in June. Fresh Great Lakes smelt in April. And new-harvest olive oil in the fall! Though I could eat all three of them happily year-round, the natural reality is that the window in which we can enjoy them is relatively short!

New-harvest oils are always extra peppery because of the abundance of polyphenols that are present in high ratios right after the oils are pressed. They’re big, bold, and beautiful, with grassy greenness that gives them a considerable wow factor. Unlike wines, which will generally stay stable in the bottle, olive oil softens in flavor a small bit every day. From one day to the next, you probably wouldn’t notice, but by the time the new-harvest oil is a couple months old, it will have lost a fair bit of its natural peppery pungency. It will, mind you, still be delicious—just less intense than when it first came out of the press. Which means that now, not after the holidays, and not next spring or summer, is the premier time to appreciate its full flavor!

One of my favorite times of the annual culinary calendar has officially arrived in Ann Arbor: The first new-harvest olive oil of the 2025 season has hit the Deli’s shelves! This year it’s a super-tasty oil from the Ricchiuti family—the fourth generation to work the family’s farms. Their oil, packaged under the label Enzo, is named for the great-grandfather of Vincent Ricchiuti, the creative successor to this inspiring family legacy. Made from Koroneiki olives, it’s so good that a few years ago it made Food & Wine’s “Five Favorite New California Olive Oils” list.

The new-harvest oil is fantastic on anything you like to drizzle olive oil on—bruschetta, pasta, vegetables, fish, steak! Use it to take your popcorn to a whole new level. Try it on toasted Paesano bread. Pour it onto a nice slice of good feta or a bowl of fresh ricotta. If you want a great breakfast, toast a thick slice of bread, pour on a bit of olive oil, and spread it with one of the wonderful jams or honeys we have on hand. It’s edgy, engaging, and excellent!

One little-known note on new-harvest olive oil: Although they never taught me this in Hebrew school growing up, in the years after we began working with great olive oils, it became clear to me that the Chanukah miracle is actually tied to the arrival of new-harvest olive oil. Think about it. The priests were waiting for more “holy oil” to arrive at the Temple. In pretty much every culture, what is offered first is always the first fruits of a harvest. What time of year are olives harvested in the Northern Hemisphere? And what holiday happens around the same time? Add all these questions together and the obvious answer is that the Maccabees were waiting to bring the new-harvest olive oil to the Temple to relight the Eternal Light with the “holy oil” we hear about when the Chanukah story is told.

By the way, if you want to taste the oil in action, swing by the Roadhouse for the Cal-Fiorentina dry-aged, pasture-raised steak. Finished with a generous dose of the Enzo new-harvest oil, it’s fantastic. To give some context, La Fiorentina is the classic steak dish of Florence. Combining “La Fiorentina” with the California origins of the oil, we got … Cal-Fiorentina!

Whether you’re at the Deli, the Roadhouse, or your house, if you like attention-grabbing green oils like I do, do not miss this one.

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Terrific taste of Kentucky that’s soon celebrating 100 years!

Looking for a lovely lunch this week? Want a terrific taste of American culinary history? The Roadhouse kitchen crew might have just the ticket: the Kentucky Hot Brown, a classic recipe from Louisville’s legendary Brown Hotel, is on the midday menu this month!

This sandwich also makes me think of synchronicities and coincidences. In line with the work of Erik Pevernagie, American writer and life coach Anthony Lombardo defines the two terms like this:

Synchronicities and coincidences are the magic within the mundane. They are sprinkled generously throughout your day, but if you’re not paying attention, you’ll surely miss them.

When we both pay attention and take advantage of them, coincidences can help build momentum. To wit, it turns out that I actually stayed at the Brown Hotel 20 years ago this past summer, when I attended the American Cheese Society conference! And better still, the ACS’s 2026 conference will, by coincidence, be back in Louisville. I’ll be there and will almost certainly swing back by the Brown to taste another Hot Brown at its original best.

Speaking of coincidence, 2026, which is now less than a month away, will mark the 100th anniversary of the creation of this sandwich. As someone whose roots are in being a line cook, I have to laugh a little at the origin story. Back in the 1920s, the Brown Hotel was apparently quite the hot spot for late-night dancing. Late-night partiers, as partiers are wont to do, would head to the bar to get something to eat well after the dinner hour. By far the most oft-ordered item was ham and eggs, something to “start” the new day that was already arriving. The chef, Fred Schmidt, growing increasingly tired of making the same, unglamorous dish all the time, decided to develop a new one! The Hot Brown is what he came up with. Sliced turkey on toasted white bread, topped with a couple strips of bacon and a creamy Mornay sauce—one of the three classic sauces, a list that also includes Hollandaise and Bernaise. Today, 99 years later, the Hotel serves something like 80,000 of them a year!

At the Roadhouse, all of the ingredients, per what I wrote about in the “A Taste of Zingerman’s Food Philosophy” pamphlet, are great to begin with. The bread is the outstanding Bakehouse White. The turkey is from Amish farmers down in Indiana, roasted right here in the Roadhouse kitchen. The bacon was cured in-house by head chef Bob Bennett. The Swiss cheese in the Mornay is what I think is the best Baby Swiss in the U.S. It’s from Chalet Cheese in Monroe, Wisconsin, the oldest cheese co-op in that very dairy-centric state! The gentle savoriness of the turkey, the smokiness of the bacon, the creaminess of the cheese, and the delicious bread all come together to make a pretty marvelous meal! The whole thing comes out piping hot, bubbly, and lightly browned—open-faced and ready to eat. Full-flavored cold-weather eating with a whole lot of history behind it!

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A culinary homage to Ann Arbor’s Greek community

In his inaugural address as the president of the University of Michigan (U of M) in 1852, Henry Tappan shared a piece of his vision for the still-young university town: “Here a new Athens shall arise.” Tappan was speaking about the commitment to learning, philosophy, and art that he imagined ancient Athens to have had. He also imagined U of M attaining a level of fame and excellence equal to Europe’s finest institutions of higher learning!

At the time, the enormous university we know today was five years younger than the ZCoB is now. U of M was founded in 1817 in Detroit and had moved to a relatively empty 40-acre plot in Ann Arbor in 1837, right around the same time the house and barn at what we now know as Cornman Farms were being built. At the time, the faculty of Science, Literature, and Arts was only eight professors, and there were all of about 60 students in undergrad programs—not even enough to make a busy lunch rush at the Deli. The university’s first African American student arrived to study medicine in 1853, a year after Tappan gave his speech..

Despite the appeal to Athenize Ann Arbor, Tappan was not, I’m pretty confident, suggesting that the town should become a focal point for Greek immigration. On the day he spoke, not a single one of the 3,000 or so residents of Ann Arbor would likely have been of Greek origin. The first Greek arrivals came nearly half a century later, starting in the late 1890s, not long after Rocco and Katherine Disderide, who built what’s now the Deli’s building in 1902, moved here from northern Italy. Most of the new Greek immigrants were single men who came to find work.

At the time, Greeks in the U.S. were “classed” as “non-white” and were often discriminated against; in the Immigration act of 1924, Greeks were put into the smallest allowable quota category. The Greek population of Ann Arbor stayed relatively small until its first Orthodox priest was brought to town in 1927. In the 1930s, Ann Arbor’s first Greek church, St. Nicholas, was built, and the community grew rapidly from there. Many Greek families at the time anglicized their names to fit in. William and Adriana Skinner ran the Ideal Restaurant in the 1930s on East Washington Street, and the Curtis family ran Chicken in the Rough on Main Street in 1947. The Parthenon on the corner of Main and Liberty, opened by the Gavras brothers, was a classic in town from around the time I came to school here in the ’70s until they sold it in 2012. (My friend John U. Bacon—whose wonderful book about the Edmund Fitzgerald, The Gales of November, came out recently—wrote a lovely homage to the Parthenon.)

All of which is a lead-in to a description of this great dish of wild-caught shrimp that’s on the Roadhouse specials list this month. These amazingly flavorful shrimp are cooked with a traditional Greek lemon olive oil dressing and served with wonderful Carolina Gold rice and roasted organic carrots (the best in the county, in my opinion!) from Tantré Farm. This dish is delicious and, to my taste, most definitely worth driving across town for.

The shrimp, to be clear, are the key. They are so, so, so seriously good! As one guest said the other evening, “These taste totally different from what everyone else gets. This is the only place I order shrimp around here!” We get them from the team at Locals Seafood in North Carolina. The Locals story starts back in the later years of the Aughties, when Ryan was living in the Outer Banks. A year or two later, in 2010, he and his longtime friend Lin started selling wild shrimp that were caught off the coast of Stumpy Point Bay on the north coast of the state. A few years later, they had a fish shop and restaurant in Raleigh and a thriving wholesale business that recently added the Roadhouse as a customer! Of their outstanding work, the Locals crew offers:

We’ve forged strong personal relationships with the folks who catch, harvest, and process the product we sell… these relationships result in a better product for our customers and a shorter supply chain for our seafood. We know where our product came from, when it came out of the ocean, and how it was caught or harvested.

North Carolina shrimp, like what we get from Locals, are renowned for their clean flavor and finish, and these fill the bill. They’re the top choice of many of the country’s best chefs.

The day-to-day, in-restaurant reality of the shrimp market is, unfortunately, not so great. In the New York Times, my friend Melissa Clark wrote, “Domestic, wild-caught shrimp accounts for less than 10 percent of all the shrimp we eat in this country.” Chef Edward Lee says, “Most farmed shrimp from Asia have no detectable flavor, good or bad.” The Locals shrimp are the opposite: 80 percent come from Pamlico Sound and the rest from boats fishing just off the coast, nearly all of which are caught by “day boats” that fish and then return quickly to port to ensure freshness. You really can taste the difference. The flavor is mellow but meaty, clean, and complex, with a beautiful, long finish.

The wild-caught shrimp show up in other spots on the menu, too, but here they’re cooked in a classic Greek sauce of fresh lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, shallots, and a bunch of fresh herbs. In the pan, the dish is finished with some of that remarkable Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter I keep talking about! Swing by this month and grab a taste of this super-tasty wild shrimp dish!

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Super tasty and cured by a longtime friend!

The food section of the New York Times shared a then-cutting-edge insight into the centuries-old tapas culture of Spain 40 years ago next week. “SPAIN’S TAPAS BECOMING INTERNATIONAL!” the headline announced. The article, by food writer Moira Hodgson, referenced the then-new work of author Penelope Casas. Casas’ classic, The Foods and Wines of Spain, came out in 1982, the year we opened the Deli. With her informative insights in hand, the traditional foods of Spain entered into the Zingerman’s ecosystem. Her next book, Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain, came out 40 years ago this year, in 1985. Around that time, we got to know Penelope personally when she came to Ann Arbor to teach classes on Spanish cooking at the Deli. Without question, she was at the cutting edge of introducing authentic regional Spanish food to American audiences.

All these years later, we’re excited to offer an amazing American-made artisan chorizo, crafted true to the Spanish style by Charles Wekselbaum and the crew at Charlito’s Cocina! Back in the ’80s, there was nothing close to this quality level being made in the U.S. One had to go to Spain to enjoy it. Today, we live in a wonderful and completely different culinary world.

Chorizo, as you and I eat it today, most likely originated in the 17th century. It was, historically, the first “tapa.” Slices of it were used to cover glasses of sherry and, so the story goes, to keep the flies out. It remains hugely popular. Native Spanish Tapas says that the “best Spanish tapa in Madrid is undoubtedly CHORIZO, yes, Spanish zesty pork-sausage!” This is the way it is when you eat out in Spain. Small plates of sliced chorizo are everywhere. This means that although the newest addition to the Roadhouse’s appetizer list may seem novel to some in southeastern Michigan, anyone who has been to Madrid or anywhere else in Spain will know that chorizo’s presence is ubiquitous.

The quality of this cured chorizo is truly special, and what’s on the Roadhouse’s menu right now is exceptional. Charles Wekselbaum has spent nearly a quarter-century studying traditional curing techniques. He is also, as we are here, determined to use exceptional raw materials. We both understand that it’s pretty much impossible to make amazing food out of so-so ingredients. For the Spanish chorizo, Charles and crew begin with heritage breed, Animal Welfare Certified pork. Charles spices it with Pimentón de la Vera—the remarkable, denomination-of-origin-controlled, oak-smoked paprika from western Spain—sea salt, and a very gentle bit of fresh garlic, curing salts, and that’s pretty much it. Careful curing, time, and natural molds (similar to those on cheese) do the rest of the work. The flavor is truly fantastic—clean, complex, and mouth-filling, with a fantastic long finish.

You can nibble the chorizo on its own, sip some wine, beer, or a cocktail. Great, too, alongside a plate of Bakehouse bread with Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter, a glass of single-origin peanuts, or a couple of choices off the cheese list. A 2-ounce portion is plenty for two people, even three, though, to be honest, I ate a whole half-portion the other evening on my own. The 4-ounce would be more for a four- or six-top, though your appetite will dictate how far it goes. The good news is you can always order another round.

Although Charlito’s Cocina and Charles himself are both in New York City, his family’s roots, at least in our era, in Cuba, and before that, Eastern Europe. His grandfather came from the town now known as Pruzhany, the same town where the Torah scholar Joseph Soloveitchik was born. The 10,000 or so Jews who did not leave around the time that Charles’ grandfather did were all murdered by the Nazis in 1941. When he decided to cross the Atlantic, Charles’ grandfather’s intention was to come to the U.S., but he wasn’t able to get in, so he diverted to Cuba as a short-term solution. He ended up in a small Cuban town called Colon (as in Christopher Colon) on the northern end of the island, At the time, his was the only Jewish family in town. Soon after, he heard that a second Jewish family had arrived in the area from Warsaw. That family included Charles’ grandmother.

The first Jewish presence on Cuba may have come 400 years earlier, in the form of one of Columbus’s original crew, Luis de Torres, a converso (a secret Jew, pretending to be a Christian in the autocratic setting of 15th-century Spain, where being anything but Catholic put one at risk). Most of the Jewish community in Cuba, though, came much later. A number of American Jews began to go there in the latter years of the 19th century. By 1924, there were nearly 25,000 Jews on the island. The American Immigration Act of 1924 closed borders to most refugees seeking asylum and made it much harder for many Jews fleeing persecution in Europe to get into the U.S. This increased the Cuban Jewish population still further. Then the vast majority of them left Cuba before 1959, when the Cuban Revolution began, and in the years that followed.

And now, thanks to his grandparents and parents, we have Charles Wekselbaum in New York, where he started his small craft salami company in 2011. Charles has long been a generous supporter of what we do in the ZCoB, so I’m especially happy that we can return the favor by featuring his chorizo at the Roadhouse. Here’s what Charles shares about his own passion for cured meats:

I was fascinated by the process of transformation, how I could turn a highly perishable food—raw meat—into something that does the opposite of perishing, by leaving it in the zone in which it is most prone to perishing. It is a way of elevating the food into something completely different than it was to begin with, something delicious and beautiful. It is a true triumph of human ingenuity!

I keep that in mind every time I savor a small slice!

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