Detroit is a legit contender these days when it comes to first-rate restaurants.
The New York Times picks one of them, Ladder 4 Wine Bar at 3396 Vinewood St, as "The 50 places in the United States that we’re most excited about right now."
It opened in Feburary 2022.
Brett Anderson writes for the Times:
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.”
Bon Appetit has also named it one of the 24 best new restaurants in 2023.
Kate Kassin writes:
At Ladder 4 Wine Bar, chef John Yelinek doesn’t traffic in the sort of predictable small-plates-meant-for-sharing menu we’ve come to expect of a wine bar. Case in point: A homemade chicken sausage arrives, beak and all, in a pool of glistening jus with islands of celeriac and potato purée.
To create the links, Pennsylvania golden chicken necks are stuffed with a mix of pork fat and chicken meat until they blow up like balloon animals. Dishes like these make Ladder 4, which is housed in a century-old firehouse, feel like so much more than a wine bar. The food isn’t just delicious; it’s exciting and even a little cheeky. While all the plates are wonderful—the sweet potatoes cloaked in soft cheese and pumpkin seed dukkah, for instance, or the juicy, lavish pork chop schnitzel—more technical dishes like that sausage, along with the stellar setting, add up to a truly memorable meal. And after the wining and dining is through, you can nab a little something from the thoughtfully curated bottle shop on your way out.
Here's some menu items from a recent day:
- spicy greens shallot mustard vinaigrette 11
- chicken liver parfait tomato honey, baguette 14
- scott’s sungolds stracciatella, country ham vinaigrette 18
- drive-thru hash browns sour cream + chives 99
- + 28g amber kaluga caviar 1
- hokkaido scallop crudo gazpacho, charlotte’s vegetables 22
- burnt leeks sauce gribiche, trout roe 19
- pan con tomate aioli, cantabrian anchovy, olive oil 14
- creamed shishitos parmigiano, summer truffle 24
- grilled eggplant danny’s potatoes, salsa verde, jimmy nardello 28
- whole rainbow trout charred onion, piquillo, spruce 38
- fried chicken maitake mushroom, hazelnut, zucchini fondue 41
- dry aged steak au poivre 18oz. bone-in NY strip 89
- burnt basque cheesecake pedro ximénez, olive oil 12
- lemon posset basil, macerated strawberry 11
- chocolate cremeux espelette, capers 10
- 24 month comté alpine cow’s milk cheese arbois, france 9
