Eating Ann Arbor, Part 2

Here are the rest of my Ann Arbor restaurant ratings (part 1 is here and includes my rating system):

8. No Thai (Thai) – I overheard a very heated conversation about this place last semester. The consensus was that the food is Not Thai. It’s not. When I went with my parents, we ordered pad thai and green curry. I’m not sure what we actually got, but there was a lot of it, and it was edible.
Rating: 1.5/5

9. Palio (Tuscan – Italian) – I paid this restaurant a visit with some ChemE friends during Restaurant Week when they were doing two meals for $28. For $14, we got an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert to share. The tomato soup I started with was good, but nothing too special. For the entree, I ordered the veal tortellini, which I really liked. There were mushrooms, I ate all the mushrooms, and I don’t even like mushrooms. Then dessert was Nutella bread pudding. Nutella. Enough said.
Rating: 4/5 (This was the most satisfying meal I had all month. Meat that wasn’t dry chicken, dessert, free bread, and special pricing.)

10. Panera (American) – I am aware that Panera is a chain restaurant found across the United States. I like Panera. They make good sandwiches.

11. The Lunch Room (American – vegan) – Did not pick this place. Did not realize it was vegan until after lunch even though the cream cheese in my bagel tasted nothing like cream cheese because it was cashew cheese. I also accidentally ate blue cheese once, so that should give you some idea of how my brain reacts to my taste buds. As long as you don’t expect the vegan substitutes to taste like their animal counterparts or insist on meat at every meal, you’ll be fine at The Lunch Room. I’ve heard their desserts are really good though I haven’t personally tried any.
Rating: 3/5

12. Tomukun Korean BBQ (Korean) – Ate here after the Ford Museum. I don’t know if it’s completely authentic, but I liked it. They have a variety of soups, noodles, stir fries, and hot pot, as well as bbq. If I remember right, we ordered an appetizer, an entree, and one order of bbq.
Rating: 3.5/5

13. Tomukun Noodle Bar (noodles) – Ramen is pretty good, though the noodles and ingredients come swimming in a sea of broth that’s on the salty side. It’s also a bit lacking in meat and vegetables. I’ve had better ramen back home in New England. I’d go here for an easy meal but would otherwise try another place since there are so many restaurants nearby.
Rating: 3/5

14. Zingerman’s (American) – On one hand, they make really good sandwiches. On the other, they’re just sandwiches. That cost as much as a fancy meal at other places. Zingerman’s is Ann Arbor’s famous restaurant, and they do sandwiches and everything else really well, it just feels overpriced because I can make a peanut butter and jam sandwich¹ for less than a dollar and be only slightly less satisfied.
Rating: 4/5 (food), 3/5 (value – still worth going to so you can say you’ve been to Zingerman’s, but some of their sandwiches cost more than half of my weekly grocery bill)

Overall, excepting whatever was going on at No Thai, I haven’t paid² for a bad meal in Ann Arbor. I’m not super picky about authenticity, except if I’m trying to get closer-to-actual Chinese food³. I also don’t eat out that much so I don’t mind paying a little more for my meals occasionally ($15-$20 – I'm a single grad student with no car on a stipend, so money's not tight, but I'm not running around throwing $20 bills around like confetti either). So far, I’ve been happy with the variety and quality of restaurants in Ann Arbor. The only things missing are Dunkin Donuts and a waffle place, then I would be completely satisfied⁴.

¹With good ingredients, by which I mean not the super economy sized jar of hydrogenated fat peanut butter, high fructose corn syrup jam, or low volume fraction white bread.

²We had these research ethics seminars last semester and one of the times they gave us pizza, it was pretty lousy pizza.

³Pro tips: Cheese is not a traditional ingredient in Chinese cooking. Throwing bean sprouts (or water chestnuts, or bamboo shoots) over eveything doesn’t make it Chinese. And spaghetti is not noodles unless you’re a desperate college student.

⁴With my eating-out food options. I still have plenty else to complain about, because I’m a chemical engineer.