Shelby’s hidden entrance grants it Speakeasy status, its vaulted blue door hiding on the basement floor of downtown Detroit’s old U.S. Mortgage Bond Building. It’s a cozily cloistered interior—a smallish area dotted with high-top and dining tables, an all-aglow back bar running the width of the room—that pays homage to the property’s history.
The menu changes seasonally, and you’ll want to start with a cocktail, like the State Fair Old Fashioned: high-proof Elijah Craig bourbon blended with aged apricot brandy, almond syrup, and bitters of orange and walnut, served with a paper cone of candied almonds clipped to the glass. Pair it with the Pink Moon oysters: Shucked perfectly whole with no manhandling scars, they’re plated simply with lemon and salt, save for the slightest, perfuming spritz of sherry vinegar gastrique.
Not to be outdone, the beef tartare offers lightly cured and ground eye of round glistening in a toss of light oil and herbs on a lightly brushed base of homemade mayonnaise, along with blistered crusty bread from Ann Arbor’s White Lotus Farms and crisp leaves of iceberg sprayed with a dried beef reduction. Shelby should bottle this. For carnivores, it could make salad dressings obsolete.
For dessert, try the Poor Man’s Bread Pudding. It’s more cake-battered than the classic custardy construct; the restaurant bakes in maple cream, ladles on cider caramel, and flambés the confectionary with Myers’s rum to finish.
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