As Seen in Travel + Leisure: Why There Has Never Been a Better Time to Visit Detroit

When Travel + Leisure wanted to make the case for Detroit as one of the country’s most compelling travel destinations right now, they asked someone who grew up there to tell it.

Alice Randall is a Detroit-born novelist. She knows this city the way only someone raised in it can, which makes her account of returning to it as a Travel + Leisure contributor something different from a standard travel piece. It is a homecoming report, and Detroit Foundation Hotel is where it leads.

After spending the morning at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Randall caught an Uber to Detroit Foundation Hotel. The Apparatus Room was her destination. Writing in Travel + Leisure, she described it as the centerpiece of the property, and the details she chose say everything about what makes this kitchen worth the trip: sourdough bread made from a starter now 16 years old, a main course built around Michigan-sourced trumpet mushrooms, spinach, and black garlic, and the Ambassador Old Fashioned, made with both Canadian rye and Michigan bourbon. Of that last detail, she observed that when a whole lot of southerners migrated north to work in the car factories, they brought their love of brown liquor with them. It is the kind of line that only a Detroiter writes.

Travel + Leisure has recognized Aparium Hotel Group among the Top 25 Hotel Brands in the World. The Apparatus Room is a significant part of why that recognition holds in Detroit. Randall’s visit puts that into personal terms.

Detroit is having a moment. The Apparatus Room has been ready for it.

Reserve a table at the Apparatus Room | Plan your stay

Originally reported by Alice Randall for Travel + Leisure, June 2026.