Cornbread Restaurant & Bar

If Southfield has a signature restaurant, it might be this one. Cornbread Restaurant & Bar is the sequel to Beans & Cornbread, the award-winning soul food institution Patrick Coleman has run since 1997 — same recipes, same soul, a slightly slicker room just up Northwestern Highway. This is the metro’s soul food benchmark: fried chicken, farm-raised catfish, salmon croquettes, the signature Bayou Combo and “Kitchen Sink,” collard greens, candied yams, mac and cheese, and cornbread that arrives warm, crumbly, and just sweet enough. It’s been voted “best soul food” for three decades and named a “new classic American” restaurant by GQ; the walls, hung with African American memorabilia and nods to Do the Right Thing, make the point that this is a place with a story. Coleman’s Black History Month “shoebox lunches” — honoring how Black travelers packed meals during Jim Crow — are a beloved local tradition. It’s the Sunday-dinner-out, bring-your-out-of-town-guests, celebrate-something spot, and it’s earned every bit of the reputation. On our list as Southfield’s soul food standard-bearer.