In case you hadn’t heard, Green Bay, Wisconsin, will be hosting the NFL Draft for the first time this year from April 24 to April 26. Concurrent with the drafting of college players, the NFL Draft Experience is a free, family-friendly football festival in the Lambeau Field parking lots, featuring games, exhibits, player autograph signings, youth-focused activities, and various chances to test your football skills. But I’m not writing to tell you about the NFL Draft Experience as much as to guide you to the awesome things around town you need to check out and perhaps pack in your suitcase to take home with you.
Green Bay is the smallest city with an NFL team, and the Packers are the only publicly owned, nonprofit professional sports team (full disclosure: I am an owner). Lambeau Field, the tallest building in the city, stands like a holy temple to the sport. This is a town built on football. If you visit Green Bay on an away game day, the streets look practically abandoned.
By all means, take a stadium tour and visit the stadium’s atrium for the Packers Hall of Fame, Pro Shop, and great food and beer at the 1919 Kitchen & Tap. But be sure to venture out into the rest of the city. There are some things you really need to experience. And by experience, I mean eat (or drink).
The 2025 NFL Draft marks the first time that Green Bay, Wisconsin, has hosted the event. Jacqueline Dickens/Shutterstock
The Competitive Bloody Mary
The tomato juice (or V8) and vodka drink is a Sunday morning tradition, served with a snit (a small beer) on the side. Traditional garnishes were either a celery stick or a pickle spear. Then, in a spirit of one-upmanship, someone started adding other things. Maybe it started with an extra olive or a pickled mushroom. Cheese cubes were inevitable. But now you can find large mugs with a grocery basket of food skewered above it.See for yourself at Anduzzi’s, where you can get the Ultimate Bloody Mary, garnished with a cheese cube and sausage goal post, buffalo wings, boneless wings, grilled jalapeno bacon kickers, pretzel bites, a chicken and waffle slider, a cheeseburger slider, and a pulled pork slider. From the menu: “Please allow 20 minutes anticipation time.” Accurate.
A Bloody Mary with an abundance of garnishes. Kevin Revolinski
Wisconsin Cocktails
The state cocktail is the brandy old-fashioned. It’s often made with Korbel brandy (Korbel sold more than 60 percent of its brandy production to Wisconsin in 2024). You can order it “sweet,” topped with 7 Up, or “sour,” with Squirt. Say “Press” and you’ll get a squirt of seltzer instead. In the bottom of the glass is a slice of orange, a couple of cherries, a cube of sugar, and generous dashes of Angostura bitters.
If you expect the original traditional whiskey drink, you need to let them know, or you’re likely getting brandy with fruit. Even so, it’s delicious.
Whatever you order, unless it’s a craft sort of place, you’re likely to get a 2-ounce shot rather than the 1.5-ounce, with a possibility of a little extra squirt as they dump it in the glass, just to be safe—no one wants to serve you a weak drink.
A brandy old-fashioned. Kevin Revolinski
Cheese
Stock up for the trip home. First and foremost, try fresh cheese curds. During the cheese-making process, these little pieces get pressed into a block of cheddar or the like. But someone thought, Why wait? Eat them fresh from the vats and they squeak in your teeth. Head to Scray Cheese, just outside of De Pere, for the daily curds. They also specialize in cheddar, edam, gouda, and fontina, and they sell gift boxes. If you’re in a hurry and on a curds run, they have a drive-through window, because it’s Wisconsin.We also love curds breaded, or even better, battered, then deep-fried. Almost every restaurant or tavern serves them. Get them with your bloody at Anduzzi’s.
Booyah
Stop in at The Booyah Shed for some booyah, a slow-cooked chicken soup/stew that is credited to Walloons from Wallonia (part of modern Belgium) who settled in the area years ago. What used to be a large-batch church fundraiser cooked over a fire outside is now made here on the daily. The rest of the menu is pretty great too, from burgers and chili to a mother’s recipe for cherry pie. Plus they have fried cheese curds served with housemade ranch dressing, another Wisconsin favorite.
Booyah is a chicken stew or soup originating from Wallonia, Belgium. AS Foodstudio/Shutterstock
Fish Fry
A longstanding Wisconsin tradition on a Friday night, the fish fry was once associated with the Catholic Lenten season’s fasting and no-meat Fridays. In Green Bay, you need to try Maricque’s (pronounced like “Merricks”), founded by a commercial fishing family and in their current tavern location for more than 60 years. They serve on paper plates with no tableware (it is considered finger food, after all) with a choice of lake perch, whitefish, bluegill, walleye, cod, or catfish. You can choose the serving size too. There are no reservations, but that line moves fast.
Maricque's has been in business since 1932. The Green Bay Guide
Local Beer
You can’t swing a cat without hitting a brewery around here. On the west side of the stadium, in the Titletown development, is Hinterland Brewery, home of Packerland Pilsner and a load of other great brews such as Luna Coffee Stout, Door County Cherry Wheat, and Grand Cru 22, if they have it. The food is top-notch and more upscale than you would expect from a brewery. Honestly, it’s casual fine dining.On the east side of the stadium is Badger Brewing Co., a great taproom with a spacious beer garden outside. It serves more great beer, including BRW-SKI Light American Lager and Grassy Place Hazy IPA. For the NFL Draft, they have special plans: beer, bourbon, and cheese!
Along with their beers, try an old-fashioned from the pop-up bar serving Wisconsin hand-crafted bourbon and rye from J. Henry & Sons. Fresh curds and other cheese will be on hand from Ron’s Wisconsin Cheese, as will a special beer cheese spread crafted using BRW-SKI just for the event. Expect food trucks and live music for this event and for football games.
Kringle
The official state pastry is the large O-shaped Danish kringle. Most of us associate it with Racine, Wisconsin, where many Danes immigrated and a few great bakeries compete to be the best. There are no losers here, and the biggest winners are Wisconsinites and office break rooms.Uncle Mike’s Bake Shoppe in Green Bay surprised many as a non-Racine bakery that won Best Kringle in North America in a 2014 competition hosted in Madison. They have more than 20 flavors of filling, and they travel well if you don’t eat them first.
Uncle Mike's kringles have won first place at the North American Kringle Competition. Uncle Mike's
Meats
Wisconsin is famous for brats, of course, and I don’t mean the Johnsonville stuff exported to other states. Local meat markets make them too. Consider Maplewood Meats, which sells brats fresh or frozen. Salmon’s Meats, located in the town of Luxemburg, 15 miles east of Green Bay, has great brats and the best hot dogs you’ll ever have, and you can find them in Green Bay grocery stores.Don’t want to carry them home? Have a brat or a well-regarded local burger at Kroll’s West, next to the stadium, for instant brat-ification.
Supper Club
The supper club has become a Wisconsin institution. It served as a fancy restaurant in small towns throughout the state, a destination for special occasions or maybe prom night. More than just a fancy urban steak restaurant—and there are surely plenty of those here, such as Republic Chophouse—the supper club has a certain old-fashioned atmosphere. Arrive early for your reservation and sip an old-fashioned at the bar while you wait for your table. Providing lodging and dining since 1883, The Union Hotel in De Pere fits the bill. We may not make a Packers fan out of you, but you can claim you’ve had the NFL Draft Experience with a side of the Wisconsin Experience.If You Go
Fly into Austin-Straubel Airport (GRB). Alternatives such as Milwaukee (MKE) and Appleton (ATW) are good if you don’t mind the drive or find a killer ticket price.As the event gets closer, go to Packers.com and click Lambeau Field for confirmed hours of operation for the Lambeau Field Atrium, Packers Hall of Fame, and Pro Shop, as well as scheduled time for stadium tours during the special event.
Be prepared with plastic or phone-pay options, because it sounds like many vendors will be cashless.
