It had been just over twenty-four hours since we arrived in Ann Arbor and I simply could not eat or drink another thing. Clearly, I had failed as a professional eater.

Bon Appétit has a feature called The Big Fat Weekend where one of the editors spends a weekend eating and drinking his or her way through a city and then writes an article filled with the tips and recommendations gleaned from all that eating. When my husband and I decided to spend a long weekend in Ann Arbor, the town where we met while attending the University of Michigan Law School, on his agenda was strolling through campus and visiting the newly renovated law school buildings. On my agenda was a Big Fat Weekend.

I love Ann Arbor. Not only is it the place where I met my husband and many dear friends and had way too much fun for someone who was in school at the time, it is also a great college town. The campus boasts beautiful quads, imposing libraries and great public art. The town is full of amazing restaurants, raucous bars, quirky stores, not one but two old-fashioned art house movie theaters, and, of course, the best deli in America. While my husband wanted to revisit the campus on our trip to Ann Arbor, I wanted to revisit the town. And by “the town,” of course I mean “the restaurants.”

Eating in a town where you went to school necessarily involves revisiting some old haunts. Even though it had been fifteen years since we graduated, my husband and I were amazed to see how many of the restaurants we remembered were still there. One of my husband’s main goals for the weekend was to have a Collider — a concoction of frozen yogurt and various candy, fruit, and cereal toppings —  at Rod’s Diner, which was a staple of his law school days. Rod’s Diner was a dump then and it is a dump now, but the colliders are very solid.

Right before our colliders, we ate lunch at Red Hawk, a bar and restaurant on State Street where I introduced my father to my then-boyfriend, now husband, way back in 1999. The food at Red Hawk is pretty typical pub fare, but the wide plank floorboards and exposed brick walls give the room a certain charm and it remains an Ann Arbor classic.

Naturally, we ate our other lunch at Zingerman’s Deli, the aforementioned best deli in America. A trip to Ann Arbor without a meal at Zingerman’s is like visiting Paris without seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre. (Actually, we didn’t go either of those places on our last trip to Paris. Bad example. The point is, don’t pass up an opportunity to go to Zingerman’s.) While our student budgets did not allow for frequent pilgrimages to Zingerman’s during law school, it was certainly a favorite special-occasion destination. Since those days, my husband and I have often sent baked goods and meats from as gifts, and even occasionally indulged ourselves.

These days Zingerman’s Deli is bigger and has much more seating than it used to — which does not mean that there aren’t still long lines, by the way — but happily the menu has stayed the same. I had my favorite sandwich from fifteen years ago, a combination of rosemary baked ham, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and red wine vinegar on semolina bread known as a “Jimmy Wants Rosemary’s Baby” and a side of Zingerman’s Potato Salad, which is second only to my grandmother’s in deliciousness. Food nostalgia, meet food Nirvana.

Before we left, I stocked up on bread and cookies from Zingerman’s Bakehouse to bring home for my freezer. But the truth is, the desperate need to buy as much Zingerman’s baked goods as possible before leaving Ann Arbor has been mitigated somewhat by the opening of Plum Market, which sells Zingerman’s bread, cookies and brownies right here in Chicago.

One Zingerman’s experience in a weekend is simply not enough. So for dinner on Friday night, we drove out of the main downtown area to the nondescript strip mall that houses Zingerman’s Roadhouse, a restaurant specializing in classic American fare from barbecue to macaroni and cheese. Five years ago, we were supposed to return to Ann Arbor for our tenth reunion and months in advance, I made a reservation at the newly opened Roadhouse. A family wedding prevented us from going to that reunion and hence dinner at the Roadhouse.

But this time, nothing would stand in my way and the Roadhouse did not disappoint.  Admittedly, I did not love my salad of sugar snap peas and corn shoots. (Corn shoots: sounds cool, tastes bitter and grassy.) Our main dishes, however, were delicious. I had a special entree of grilled bluefish with Anson Mills cheese grits and bacon-braised collard greens. I love bluefish — it’s so much more flavorful than the ubiquitous flaky white fishes like tilapia — and yet I rarely see it on restaurant menus. My husband had barbecue beef with mashed potatoes and vegetarian greens. It was all perfect. And, as with any Zingerman’s experience, the customer service was phenomenal. I was torn between two different cocktails, so our adorable waitress brought me a small sample of each to try. That has literally never happened to me before and why not? How hard is it to offer that level of customer service, restauranteurs of America?

On our first night in Ann Arbor, we tried another new restaurant, MANI Osteria & Bar, an Italian small plates restaurant that has received some national attention, including being named one of the best new pizza places in America by Food & Wine. If only there had been a restaurant this good in Ann Arbor fifteen years ago! Everything we ate was fantastic from the antipasti (pickled tomatoes with whipped ricotta and olive tapenade; fried cauliflower and shallots with bacon jam) to the artisanal pizza — we opted for the burrata and balsamic pizza with spinach. I loved how the pizza was presented on top of a giant can of San Marzano tomatoes. The open kitchen at the back of the restaurant allows curious diners to watch the action and the casual atmosphere and reasonable prices makes MANI Osteria a perfect fit for this food-loving college town.

As if it weren’t enough to eat large lunches and dinners punctuated with the occasional Collider or ice cream at Stucchi’s, Ann Arbor’s indigenous ice cream parlor, our days in Ann Arbor began with elaborate, Pinterest-worthy breakfasts at our delightful B&B, Avalyn Garden. So you can see why, twenty-four hours into the trip, I could not even contemplate a pint of Bell’s Amber and Stilton fries at our old watering hole, Ashley’s as planned. We opted to see a showing of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” at the endearingly rundown State Theater instead. And without a box of Junior Mints even! Clearly I was an amateur at this Big Fat Weekend thing.

But the following morning, after another two-course, homemade breakfast, I was rested enough to tackle the wonderful Ann Arbor farmer’s market. In my Chicago suburb, I feel lucky to live close the wonderful fruit orchards of Michigan, but of course the people of Ann Arbor are that much closer. The Ann Arbor farmers market truly reflects the bounty of the surrounding farms with an enormous variety of local fruits and vegetables. The selection was overwhelming, but I tried to hone in on some of the more unusual crops and ended up coming home with two quarts of gooseberries, a quart and a half of red currants and two quarts of sour cherries.

The Ann Arbor farmers market takes place in a covered arcade near the Kerrytown Market and Shops, a collection of independent boutiques that is definitely worth a stop. Some of the boutiques are food-focused, like the spice store and the wine shop, but there are plenty of other shops including a toy store, a jewelry store, a women’s clothing store and a charming stationery store. My favorite was Found Gallery, an eclectic mix of vintage and new items made with recycled materials.  It was food styling prop heaven and I scooped up some vintage silverware, bakeware and tall parfait glasses. (I reluctantly passed on the vintage, hand-cranked ice cream maker.) You will be seeing my new purchases in come upcoming photos, I have no doubt.

Finally, with our main objectives achieved, it was time to leave Ann Arbor and return home. But we will be back. Ann Arbor is too fun and too close not to revisit every few years. And who knows? Maybe we can convince one of our children to go to Michigan for college so that my husband will have an excuse to attend more football games (and basketball games and hockey games) and I will finally have that pint of Bell’s Amber and plate of Stilton fries that I just could not face this time around.