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Food/Dining : Bars: Sturgeon Bay

Birmingham’s
4709 N. Bay Shore Rd
Sturgeon Bay
920-743-5215

Just down the road from a couple of great resorts, the Bay Shore Inn and Westwood Waterfront Resort, Birmingham’s (open since the 1930’s) is a genuine Door County place, where locals like to hang out, chat, play cards, eat, and toast a few. Before it was Birmingham’s, it was a grocery store serving ships that would dock in the bay. We like it just like it is now!

Walk in, and you’ll find the bar immediately ahead and to the left, while the dining room is to the right. The décor is nautical, with some ships here and there and some nautical wallpaper in the dining area.

The atmosphere is bar. On winter Thursday afternoons, you might find a bunch of locals sitting at the bar playing bar dice, or Sheephead – a card game. So we wandered in, sat ourselves down for a mid-afternoon lunch, to the rhythm and music of the bar dice cup whacking the bar nearby, and the screech of dice across the bar top. Nice!

This place is open year-round, and offers for very solid food in an unpretentious décor. Lunches include burgers, cheeseburgers, grilled ham and cheese, hot ham, hot ham and cheese, chicken breast, fries, breaded mushrooms and cheese curds (hey, of course, it’s Wisconsin – you have to have lots of cheese!) Naturally, you can get a cheese pizza, or cheese and sausage, or a pepperoni, or a sausage and pepperoni, and even a deluxe.
Dinners range from a bunch of daily specials, Monday through Sunday. Some offerings are repeated on some days, and some are unique. From the “famous Birmingham Burger” to whitefish, deep fried lobster pieces, bbq ribs (Wednesdays), peel and eat shrimp (Thursdays), frog legs (wow – in a bar?!), and Fridays with pan-fried perch, whitefish and “double perch” (I guess if you’re doubly hungry). Take a rib-eye steak on a Saturday of a grilled boneless pork chop on Sunday. These dinner entrées come with some sides, depending on the dish: maybe a salad, a potato, home made sour dough bread, and more.

Check your diet at the door.

Our Lunch
Well, Birmingham’s IS famous for their burgers, so we had to try them out. We ordered up a cheeseburger, and a hamburger, a salad, cheese curds and two Cokes. The salad was a generous portion of crisp, fresh lettuce and tomatoes. With the Russian dressing, it was just right. My burger showed up on a small cake-plate sized dish, served on white bread cut in half diagonally. This is a REAL burger – thick, juicy, flavorful and just plain great! With some lettuce, tomato and onions it was perfect – without putting on any other condiments! It comes one way – the way they cook it – so don’t expect them to ask if you want it rare, or medium, or well. It comes out when it’s done, and it’s done when the cook says so! Pan fried, this is one great fall-apart-when-you eat-it burger. Ask for lots of napkins.

The cheeseburger was equally good. The cheese curds (made from Vern’s Cheese) were deep-fried, slick and had the perfect texture. These were genuinely good.

Check your heart at the door to keep your diet company.

We’ve eaten lots of burgers over the years, and this is one of the best. No pretense, no fancy-schmancy stuff; just a bar with good people, and good food.

Oh, you might even get Connie to wait on you – she’s been at Birmingham’s since 1974. That’s nice, and so is she. A real delight.

Seek this place out – or, you might be passing by it someday. Pull over, go in and enjoy. It’s a super Door County experience, without trying to be one.