Banfield’s Bar and Grill

Where the townies/​locals eat and drink. Leave your hipster at the door. Decent bar food, stiff drinks, and lots of loud talking from the regulars at the bar. Any kinda bar food is a safe bet and even their salads are good. Wait staff are usually good and usually friendly. Use the bathrooms downstairs vs. the one in the pool room if you are a woman ;)

Only in Ann Arbor would this be considered a dive bar. It’s just low key, a bit weathered, has a largely blue collar clientele and no pretense of cool… actually no pretense period. Other than the bathrooms (as bad as some reviews have alleged), nothing scary or decrepit here.
The highballs here are cheap and generously poured. Most of the beers are weak and yellow, but there is usually at least one or two decent craft beers on offer. And yeah, they’re pretty cheap too. The burgers aren’t the best in town, but they are far and away the best bar-​burger value in town. $ 6 buys a half-​pound number that’s better than a lot of patties that have cost me double. Chili is very good too.
Service has never been a problem, except for on our first visit when the bartender informed us the servers hadn’t showed yet and she was covering everything. Understandable, and we didn’t mind waiting once we had the first tall beer in hand. Banfield’s is the kind of place you come to linger and just take things in, listening and maybe chipping in a point to the regulars’ conversation as dim lights, flickering screens, and slowly receding glasses of amber usher the rest of the world from your sphere of concern.

This Place. What else to say.
It’s great for it’s own reasons. it’s kind of like an old car you like to drive. A little dirty, the seats are sticky.
Don’t come here unless you feel like getting drunk. There is no other reason for this place other then get drunk and talk to a bunch of townies.

Great place for drinks and bar food.
They have a variety of food specials, at times very noisy when crowded.
Great local dive bar.

This is a solid dive bar. Like old school, bowling alley-​esque, drop ceiling used to be white and is now yellow and smoke stained, karaoking, mirrored signs, nonworking Smokeeter still installed, kind of dive.
If you’re cool with all that, they are cool with you. Friendly, no BS staff. The food is no frills bar food, but drinks are cheap AND they have free wifi!

Food gets 5 stars. Service gets 1 star. So, we’ll go ahead and average at 3.
Food: start with wing dings with ranch. Then have a side tossed salad with ranch. Then pick one of their specials. (i.e. scallops. yes. scallops are good here). Or the burger special (and get a side of ranch for your fries). Or the wet burrito. or fish & chips. Again, get a side of ranch. If all else fails, get a pitcher of beer and an order of wing dings. You’ll thank me.
It is divey and that’s the charm of the place. There’s live music on some Friday evenings and it’s a really good time!!!
Service is crap most of the time… there is a long wait for just about everything you order. The servers here don’t care. Don’t complain.
Oh, and the drinks are really really really stiff. get a side of water. or not.

Working class bar, in Ann Arbor there aren’t too many like this left. Really good bar burgers with blue cheese and grilled onions for under $ 6.00. Yum. They have homemade soup and a special of the day on the chalkboard as you walk in.
This used to be the old Fireside bar. It has been here at least 25 years that I know of, probably longer. It even has a «game room» in the back with video games.
This bar is big on charm and friendliness and low on hype. The décor is old and circa 1970’s as are more than a few of it’s clientele. They serve a good breakfast on weekends from 11 to 3.

The upsatirs bathroom was filthy. It was hard to take a seat thinking about how that might reflect on the cleanliness of the kitchen. The food was ok… I sent my burger back to have it cooked right. The server made poor flimsy excuses. Made me feel like I needed to understand it was my problem not theirs. Hmm. I think I won’t go back. Too dirty… too indifferent about my food… I guess I’m too indifferent about them. Too many places in town to settle for mediocre.

Banfield’s is the best dive-​y, hole-​in-​the-​wall, Budweiser mirror-​covered bar Ann Arbor has to offer. Well away from downtown and campus, you will not find any twenty-​one year olds choking down their first shots here. Rather, the bar is populated by friendly regulars, townies, and the occasional low-​key grad students. If you go regularly enough, you’ll start to recognize some of the regulars — the guy who always wears gloves, the older super-​well dressed couple (I like to think of them as the Duke and the Duchess), the guys nearing retirement who came for happy hour and stayed to cheer on the game. Their are a bunch of TVs here, all permanently tuned to the golf and football channels.
The beer is cold, the draft selection is decent, and the mixed drinks are stiff. The food is surprisingly good. If you stick with the «munchies» section of the menu, you’ll have solid bar food, with the fried mushrooms and the wings as a highlight. Pro tip: order the wings well-​done or extra crispy, and you’ll have something that vies for «best wings you’ve ever had.» Skip the «extra hot» sauce and just go with regular — it’s plenty hot and won’t overwhelm you.
They also have burgers and other sandwiches (made with Knight’s meat!), as well as daily dinner specials. I haven’t had many of these, but my husband swears by them.
Best of all: on Mondays and Wednesdays they have a deal with City’s Pizza next door. $ 12.95 will get you a pitcher of ice-​cold beer and a large two-​topping pizza. This may not seem so exciting, but the pizza from City’s is actually really good — top notch, even. Another pro-​tip: the ranch here is homemade with buttermilk. A true Michigander would order a side of it to go with their pizza.

If your looking for a great non pretentious neighborhood bar than this place is for you.
Good bar food, reasonable prices and a good pour.

Ah Banfields, it is everything that every other bar in Ann Arbor isn’t. The drinks are cheap and stiff, the décor is old fashioned, and it’s not the slightest bit pretentious!
This is definitely a big after work bar. If you come between 5:00 and 8:00 (especially on a Friday night), expect this place to be packed. The crowd here can get pretty rowdy, but are generally pretty friendly and have a good time. They all seem to somehow know each other as well, so it certainly has a Cheers vibe to it.
The service is usually good but not always. We had the same waitress the first couple times we came here and she remembered what we drank on the second trip. Other times the servers have been slow and forgetful.
The bathrooms here are especially disgusting, but that’s not really surprising for a dive bar.
We came here a couple of times on Saturday nights and they occasionally have live music.
I’ve eaten here several times. The food is decent and pretty cheap. The burger and french dip are both solid. I even had a steak here once. While it wasn’t the quality of a fancy steakhouse, 12 bucks got me an 8oz strip with baked potato and cole slaw so it’s pretty hard to complain. I would not recommend the fish.

Good food. All the football games on a Sunday. Great game room with three pinball machines. Sometimes the patrons are a bit sketchy, like the lady that wants to talk to you, but doesn’t seem to speak any known language. It could use some help with things like chairs that don’t have 10″ rips in the them. Good beer prices.

Weird location in a strip mall, but if you’re a fan of hole-​in-​the-​wall joints with stiff drinks, you won’t be disappointed.
p. s. the fries, cheese sticks, and chicken is AWESOME as far as bar food goes.

I come here with my coworkers. The food is good, the drinks are cheap and it’s a great little hole in the wall.

Banfield’s was pretty close to where I lived, but I still don’t go here often. The Banfield’s on the west side of town is much friendlier.
I’ve never had bad service at Banfield’s east side location, but I frequently have the bartender talking over my head to a friend of hers behind me. Not a big problem, but it’s easy to know when you’re an outsider.
If you’re coming with your own group of friends, or just looking to drink enough to forget for a night, Banfield’s could definitely be the place for you.

If you’ve ever caught Banfields out of the corner of your eye while traveling down Packard and felt that cold chill run down your spine as you imagined what evils must lie within, I’m here to tell you — its everything you’ve imagined.
If Banfields didn’t invent the term ‘townie bar’, its certainly the epitome of the phrase. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say any of the above in a completely derogatory nature. Banfields is just a dark, cramped space for people to come and drink. Hard. Period. If your goal is to go ‘out’ but other than that just drink cheap and talk amongst yourselves, you could do worse. You could do much better, but you could also do worse.