Labor Day is a time for burgers – though is there NEVER a time for burgers? Certainly it’s always burger time at Zo’s Good Burger – and hooray for that!
This burger joint near Wayne State University is serving up decadent iterations of its namesake food. These are not your father’s burgers – unless your father’s burgers are made of such luxe ingredients as pretzel buns, caramelized onions, and jalapeño poppers.
Zo’s offers both signature burgers (its House Burgers) and a build-your-own-burger option. It also has sandwich wraps in varieties such as Veggie and Chicken Bacon Ranch, plus chicken strips and nuggets and side portions of the decadent deep-fried goodies also featured as burger ingredients (cheese sticks and onion rings being prime examples).
There’s a build-your-own-fries option where you can soup up your spuds with add-ons such as crispy chicken, cheese sauce, and coleslaw. And what burger joint would be complete without shakes? Zo’s offers vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and Oreo varieties. The restaurant is also halal – meaning its quite-tasty bacon is turkey, not pork.
While House Burgers such as the Southwest (topped with pepper jack cheese, grilled jalapeños, and hot sauce – all spicy goodies I adore) and BBQ (complete with Swiss cheese, onion rings, bacon, and barbecue sauce) enticed me, I went the build-your-own route. That allowed me to construct the monster of a burger shown in the above photo, a quarter-pound beef patty nestled within a brioche bun and topped with bacon, tomato, pickles, raw onion, Good Burger Sauce (similar to the Big Mac’s special sauce – but better!), mustard, and my personal-fave component: mac ‘n’ cheese bites (!). I also ordered a side of the Cajun fries.
Digging into my carryout order from Zo’s was an absolute delight. How did hamburgers even exist before the mac-‘n’-cheese-bites add-on? The crispy-battered, creamy, and cheesy nuggets deliciously enhanced the juicy burger. They melded with the mustard, the Good Burger sauce, the pickles, and all the other ingredients I’d chosen to make one SPECTACULAR burger.
I gorged on that Zo’s burger and those spiced Cajun fries until they were gone, my stomach satisfied, my Labor Day weekend a happy one.
2894 W. Grand Blvd.
Detroit, MI 48202
(With additional locations in Canton, Dearborn, and Garden City)
100 Places in the D 
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