Is This The Best Restaurant in Detroit?
Alpino has won a slew of awards since it opened, and it still holds up to the hype
Detroit — Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood is buzzing these days, with a slew of new hotels, restaurants, and apartment buildings popping up over the last few years. If there’s a debate over the hip spot to be in Detroit right now, Corktown is seriously in that conversation. The local restaurant scene, of course, figures prominently in that conversation.
Corktown is pretty loaded with great spots, but one in particular stands out—Alpino, a trendy, highly awarded restaurant inspired by the German/Swiss Alps.
Opened in 2023, Alpino immediately started winning a slew of awards. Best new restaurant of 2023 by Eater Detroit. Best restaurant of the year for 2024 by the Detroit Free Press. Best service, by the Detroitisit Food Awards for 2025, and one of Detroit’s best places to work by Crain’s Detroit in 2026.
That’s a lot of accolades for a German restaurant, an unusual niche for fine dining. Does Alpino truly live up to the hype?
You’ll find Alpino on Bagley Street, just south of Michigan Avenue, in a revitalized Corktown neighborhood surrounded by delightfully restored older homes, interspersed with some very modern square apartment buildings. It’s a pleasant place to walk around, actually, a rare coup for a Detroit neighborhood.
Walking into Alpino on a Wednesday night, the place was surprisingly packed. Even as a solo diner, there wasn’t an open table for me outside yet. I took a seat at the bar while I waited, the sun shining through a heavily frosted, colored glass window, drinking a very nice Aperol Spritz and perusing the menu.
Immediately, you’re struck by the singular concept of the menu. Hearty Alpine cuisine, fine ingredients, without a ton of fanfare, apart from an elaborate and extensive wine list.
It almost feels like Frankenmuth, if Frankenmuth was cool and modern, and not a kitschy little tourist town. There are no cuckoo clocks on the wall, no performative German decor. Definitely more modern Swiss Alpine than classic Bavarian German, if the two can reasonably be distinguished.
After a short wait, the hostess ushered me back to a table on the rear patio. A similar space to many other bar and restaurant backyards in the area, fenced in, with an alleyway out back. A tasteful little biergarten, with vines and trees growing around, planted flowers, wooden tables, and umbrellas.
I took my time with the menu. This is the sort of place where you order carefully, you plan out your meal, selecting the right beverage pairing. I’m sure the waitstaff would gladly help, but you know how men can be about asking for directions, especially when they think they know where they’re going.
Given the theme, I wanted the most German dishes imaginable, so I went with the Jägerschnitzel, a breaded veal cutlet topped with a Morel mushroom and mustard seed sauce. Two side dishes—Rotkraut, red cabbage stewed with cinnamon in duck fat, and Spätzle, a traditional German egg pasta, also topped with mushroom sauce.
The natural beverage pairing was a dry German Riesling, which ended up being the perfect wine to drink leisurely on a warm, late summer evening. A beer would have paired equally well with the fried schnitzel, but it depends on what you’re ordering. Several other pasta dishes, fish, and small plates such as their well-regarded Raclette looked enticing as well.
The food was, ultimately, completely worth the hype. The schnitzel was pounded thin and fried expertly, the mushroom sauce delightfully savory. The spätzle were perfect, though honestly they didn’t even need the mushroom sauce on top.
The standout, ironically, was the red cabbage. My family has made this dish dozens of times. It’s a classic of German cuisine, a simple stewed red cabbage. Alpino simply nailed it, with a savory and perfectly spiced quality I hadn’t encountered before. It was easily the best red cabbage I’ve ever had.
The food here, given its heritage, isn’t light and modern at all. It’s truly hearty, so prepare to be stuffed and stumbling out of there. It’s a classy place, so dress nice, but be advised, you might need to unloosen the top button on your pants at some point.
Some, however, would criticize the mere existence of a place like this. There’s been so much negative talk about gentrification over the years. Particularly in Detroit, and especially in neighborhoods like Corktown, which clearly have been gentrified, for lack of a better word.
The thing about gentrification though—what it really means—is new development, new things, new buildings, new restaurants. As much as some will criticize, they’re mostly just jealous. We all love nice new things, and we all love eating great food in nice restaurants when the occasion, or a random whim, calls for it.
It is good, in the end, for the city of Detroit to have nice things. To play host to nice restaurants, where people want to enjoy themselves and eat and drink. To have nice neighborhoods, where people want to live, and visit, and simply walk around.
Food is an important part of that, and it’s totally fair to judge a neighborhood by the quality of its restaurant scene. Corktown very well might have the best restaurant in Detroit, judging by the quality of Alpino. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and we’ll see what the other hip new spots have to offer.
