First, let’s set the scene. The image that sticks out in my mind is the beauty, on a summer day, of riding bikes through an industrial urban area that’s astonishingly quiet and overgrown. Amid warehouses, chain link fences and maybe a few run-down houses, tall weeds sprout unchecked in sidewalk cracks and vacant lots. I hear birds chirping but see no humans, and sometimes no cars either. I’m overcome by the surreal beauty of it, disoriented by the hushed prairie vibe of this inner-city landscape. It’s glorious in a way and surely won’t last — and I can’t imagine a similar scene anywhere else in the U.S. “That’s why I wanted to move here,” says my friend, who first visited three years ago and got to town a month and a half earlier. “It’s like the country inside the city.”

Of course, Detroit isn’t all like this. It’s a city of neighborhoods, from slick Midtown, home to everyone’s favorite new restaurant, Selden Standard, to the mansions of Indian Village to up-and-coming Corktown, which Slows Bar BQ helped put on the map when it opened 10 years ago. Geographically, this is an enormous place: Urban Detroit (not counting the suburbs) could encompass Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan with room to spare. At the city’s mid-20th-century height, several million people lived here; now it’s just 700,000. That leaves room for the in-between spaces I’ve described, where the weeds grow high.

But let’s get to the restaurants. I rolled into town just as a glitzy newcomer did:Townhouse, the sequel to Jeremy Sasson’s popular eatery in the upscale suburb of Birmingham, had bowed on the ground floor of One Detroit Center over the weekend. The sprawling downtown space has a horseshoe-shaped bar at the entrance, with a whiskey room offering 300 pours behind that. The main dining room is an indoor-outdoor space with a retractable roof, and there’s plenty of al fresco seating along Congress Street and Woodward Avenue. Townhouse staff wear aprons locally crafted byDetroit Denim Co., and the restaurant sources some of its produce from urban gardenRecoveryPark Farms. On the menu, you’ll find a $19 dry-aged burger, comfort food like mac and cheese and truffle fries, and even creative sushi. When my friend and I tasted the latter and found it to be solid, she celebrated the coming of good raw fish to Detroit

If this place opened in New York, it would be another clubby spot for the bridge-and-tunnel or finance crowd, but here it’s significant. There just aren’t many restaurants like this in central Detroit: somewhere to dress up and make an evening of dinner out, or to head to after an event for drinks and late-night snacks. While noshing, we ran into a venture capitalist pal of my friend’s, who pronounced the restaurant “the new power-broker spot.”

That’s appropriate, since Townhouse is part of the Bedrock Real Estate empire, an arm of Dan Gilbert’s Quicken Loans. Gilbert, the billionaire majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was born in Detroit and grew up north of the city. Since 2011, Bedrock has purchased more than 75 buildings in the area, spending $1.8 billion. We’re talking entire abandoned skyscrapers. A recent acquisition, the striking, 35-story David Stott building, still looms grand and empty over the shiny new places.

The Gilbert factor is hard to ignore when discussing Detroit’s revival. Yet some people I spoke with expressed a certain amount of resentment over the tycoon’s laser focus on downtown, or they dismissed the newly revitalized area as a playground for suburbanites who come into the city, then leave. References to Gilbert are often guarded, and they generally begin with, “Well, I guess I’m glad for the revitalization he’s done, but…” A few people, after a few drinks, went so far as to paint the man as a sort of megalomaniacal Big Brother watching from a video-camera-equipped control room — a portrait that’s painted in part by local media.

That camera room, located in the Chase Tower, is a routine stop on the tours Bedrock gives many times a week to new employees and anyone else who’s interested. I took a modified version geared toward showing off food and drink outposts. We scoped out food trucks in Cadillac Square near revitalized Campus Martius Park; passed by Central Kitchen + Bar, a spacious gastropub in the First National Building that was preparing for its August 10 opening; and checked out Bon Bon Bon, a shop selling beautiful chocolates, many of which are made with local ingredients. We didn’t quite have time to make it to Wright & Co., up Woodward Avenue, a sophisticated year-old place whose chef, Marc Djozlija, received a James Beard nomination for Best Chef: Great Lakes.

Almost every restaurateur I spoke to in Detroit seemed to have something on the horizon. Sasson may have just opened Townhouse days earlier, but he was already telling me about Rhype, the grocery store and quick-service spot he plans to open later this year. It will offer fresh, healthy foods for breakfast, lunch and “early supper,” with pop-up chef dinners on weekends.

The team behind Green Dot Stables, a casual two-year-old spot that usually has crowds lined up for its $2 to $3 sliders and $3 cocktails, is also planning another venture, to follow on the tail of Asian spot Johnny Noodle King, which they rolled out last October. When Huron Room debuts in Mexicantown next month, it will serve fried lake perch, a local specialty, alongside Michigan beers and wines.