Traverse City Chef Shares Her Favorite Michigan Restaurants
Chef Jennifer Blakeslee, a 2025 James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef in the Great Lakes region, loves eating good food and exploring others’ creations. She owns The Cook’s House in Traverse City with co-nominee Eric Patterson. Their beautiful, 25-seat restaurant sources nearly all its ingredients from over 70 nearby farms and foragers. Plus, it’s known for hosting “young chef” nights and collaborating with chefs outside their restaurant. Ahead, Blakeslee dishes on which restaurants she recommends in Michigan, from venues run by chefs she’s cooked with to others that serve up dishes she simply loves.
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Hazel’s
Birmingham
With its inviting, comfortable atmosphere, Hazel’s not only sparks cravings for its coastal seafood dishes but also earns admiration for its thoughtful operation. The restaurant is led by two dynamic women – Beth Hussey, who oversees the business, and Chef Emmele Herrold, who brings the menu to life. The restaurant has a downloadable app that’s getting a lot of buzz for how it trains servers and lets guests customize orders. Plus, the menu rotates to pay homage to a different coastal region. One of its top qualities? Blakeslee says the restaurant serves up the “best cheddar biscuits on the face of the earth.”
Selden Standard
Detroit
“It’s my go-to place,” she says of Selden Standard, the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist of both 2024 and 2025. “It’s just fantastic the way executive chef Andy Hollyday puts everything together in his dishes. And it’s good, clean food.”
Because the culinary staff uses mostly local, fresh fare, the menu at the Michigan restaurant changes continually, making it hard to name a favorite dish. One memorable dish, though, is the vegetable carpaccio salad.
“It was very thinly shaved vegetables with a light, lemony dressing,” she says. “It was great.”
Ladder 4 Wine Bar
Detroit
This modern wine bar juxtaposed inside a restored red brick firehouse made Blakeslee’s favorites list for its terrific wine collection and unexpected menu, which lends itself to sharing. Head chef and fellow James Beard Best Chef nominee John Yelinek is “super talented,” and the experience is excitingly unexpected.
“The menu is made up of things like caviar with the best little hash browns you’ll ever have and a nice dipping sauce. And they do a burnt Basque cheesecake, which they’re really well known for,” Blakeslee says. “Everything is cooked as it should be. It’s clean, and flavor profiles all hit with one another. It’s just beautiful.”
The Dixboro Project
Ann Arbor
Blakeslee still hasn’t forgotten the meal that visiting chef Garrett Lipar created in The Cook’s House’s kitchen a decade ago. It revolved around “a super creative menu with things like moss that he’d gotten from the woods.” That makes his newest endeavor, The Dixboro Project, an exciting one to keep an eye on. It’s a complex of restaurants and lodging situated on 7 acres with a focus on creating community around food. The two-time James Beard semifinalist still draws from nature and what’s locally grown and foraged.
Artisan
Traverse City
This Michigan restaurant, perched along a pretty stretch of East Grand Traverse Bay within the Delamar Hotel, is a favorite for Blakeslee, thanks to the contributions of executive chef Sarah Bobier, someone she describes as “a firecracker of a human being.” The young chef is one of several talented northern Michigan locals who collaborates to continually elevate the craft, and her food is light and fresh.
Blakeslee says she loves the citrus-forward salad topped with a lace tuile – “a different style from what many in northern Michigan are creating” – and the Great Lakes chowder that blends whitefish with clams (and supports what’s local).
India Garden
Traverse City
Locally, Blakeslee is known for her passion for Indian cuisine, something she occasionally serves at a nearby pop-up, so it makes sense that she’s scoured Michigan restaurants to find her favorite take. And until India Garden opened in 2025, she hadn’t.
“I’ve tried looking in Detroit and Ann Arbor,” she says, “but this is the best Indian food I’ve had in Michigan.” She especially loves the “spot on” tandoor paneer tikka, the fresh roti and the great chai.
The Mill
Glen Arbor
This renovated working mill has been restored into something straight out of a design magazine. With its farm-style wooden tables, bright interior and handmade pottery plates and vases, Blakeslee says it’s “as pretty as its food.” There’s a casual cafe and high-end restaurant, and the building, which is on the Crystal River, is again working as a mill. The Mill uses locally milled flour for all its breads, shortbread and cookies.
“They use mostly local products, and it’s very approachable food, but it’s elevated,” Blakeslee says. “They’re making the croissants they’re serving the chicken salad on. It’s that sort of thing.”