Dive bar sliders
Vollmer’s
2040 Park Ave.
Detroit
Jan. 20, 2026
The dive bar food tour marches on. We’ve covered the lemon pepper wings at Kelly’s in Hamtramck, which are the best we’ve ever had. The hardest-working slice of pizza in Detroit is still hard at work at the Garden Bowl.
Now we head downtown to the admittedly elevated dive bar decor of Vollmer’s and their brioche bun sliders.
I’ll admit I was scared off by the price point at first. How good can a $6 slider be?
As it turns out, they can be aggressively delicious and worth every penny. For a single diner, you can happily spend $12 on two premium sliders and $8 on cheese curds and be a happy little camper. Twenty dollars a head is the average spend per person here on food and is about the going rate for any meal you’re going to get going out in downtown Detroit.
Thankfully, we didn’t document how much I drank while here, too. That costs more.
Chris Vollmer (the namesake of the bar) was behind the bar when we arrived. It’s one of the sleekest dive bars downtown; a true neighborhood spot that could sneak its way into Architectural Digest for its design if they had better public relations.
Vollmer suggested we start with the special for the day: hot honey chicken finished with avocado and garlic sauce (a signature around these parts).
Next were some staples from the menus, including Laura’s FGT – a fried green tomato slider with pepper jack, arugula, remoulade and garlic sauce. (There it is again.) This is, without a doubt, the much buzzed-about star of the menu. Add bacon and be amazed (another recommendation from the bartender – always trust your bartender).
The Hawaiian Connection featured Vietnamese-style pulled pork, a bit of BBQ sauce, pepper jack, pineapple, sriracha mayo and – you guessed it – garlic sauce. (You really won’t get sick of it, we promise.)
We had to try the basic-ass slider, too: VB’s Classic. No frills here. Beef. Cheddar. Romaine. Pickle. Mayo.
We washed it all down with an order of cheese curds in a bevy of flavor dustings including cheddar, sriracha and pickle with ranch. These are highly addictive, even if they don’t have that signature cheese squeak that some might associate with curds.
Here’s the greatest thing I can say during this review … it’s making me hungry just to write about it, looking off wistfully into the sunset about when I’ll eat these sliders again. You know that feeling where you eat so much that you’re uncomfortably full, but then you get home and wish you ate more because the food was that good?
Vollmer’s is doing that for me with their sliders. The secret here, like with any sandwich, is the quality of the bread. Vollmer’s uses these puffy little brioche buns that are buttery and simple, adding the perfect amount of heft to these bites of bliss.
A sandwich is only as good as its bread. And Vollmer’s sliders are as good as they get.
