Birmingham, MI — I recently learned that a special month-long battle for the best burger in Birmingham was taking place.

Organized by the Birmingham Shopping District, BirminghamBURGER 2025 started on the first of the month and runs through the end of October. Upon realizing it had been some time since I last foodie adventured for a burger or visited downtown Birmingham, this event was the perfect motivation I needed to cruise up Woodward Avenue to see what the beef was all about.

Nearly 20 restaurants are participating in the second annual BirminghamBURGER, a culinary event giving foodies opportunities to try a wide range of unique burgers crafted by chefs at some of the top eateries around downtown Birmingham. Chefs are grilling up special, one-of-a-kind designed burgers for customers to come through and try throughout the entire month, who then vote for their favorite burgers via a ranking system on the city’s website.

At the end of the month, once all the rankings have been tallied for each of the 19 restaurants, one will be crowned the winner and earn the title of having Birmingham’s best burger for 2025. This friendly competition among the local chefs is a great way to spark their creativity and showcase their talent, all while providing some delicious and fun new burgers for folks to try around town — a boost for restaurants and the local economy.

In its first year, BirminghamBURGER drew food enthusiasts from all across Metro Detroit. The winner for 2024 was Adachi, a Japanese restaurant that specializes in sushi, sashimi, as well as cooked Japanese-inspired meals. Owner Blake George said even though Adachi is known for Japanese cuisine, they decided to showcase their chef’s creativity in a new way to introduce Adachi to guests who may not have discovered them yet. Going into the competition’s second year, Blake and his team took lessons learned from last year to inspire this year’s entry, the Oops I Did It Again burger.

“This year, we leaned even more into being different. A lot of the competing restaurants, many of which have incredibly talented chefs, took elevated spins on classic burger styles. We decided to push boundaries and layer flavors and ingredients you wouldn’t typically associate with a burger. I’m excited to see how people respond to that level of creativity,” Blake said.

As you’ll see in the gallery below, some of this year’s burger entries do indeed employ quite a bit of creativity and distinctive styles from this year’s participating restaurants. For a full list of this year’s competing eateries and a breakdown of their burger entries, click here.

Since people often eat with their eyes, it’s no surprise that thousands would flock to Birmingham throughout the month to get their hands on these mouth-watering creations. I asked Blake what it meant as a restaurant owner to be able to participate in these city-wide foodie events that help drive business into the local economy and bring in newcomers to restaurants.

“Events like this bring great energy to the city and encourage people to step outside their usual routines. Everyone has their go-to spots, but a competition like this shines a light on places they might not visit as often. For Adachi, I hope it’s an invitation for more people to walk through our doors and experience what we’re doing here—we like to think it’s something truly distinct in Birmingham,” Blake explained.

Speaking of Birmingham, I reached out to the city’s Shopping District and spoke with Executive Director Erika Bassett to learn more about what led to the wonderful inception of BirminghamBURGER, which, turns out, replaced the city’s Restaurant Week after several rounds of discussions with business owners and community members.

“The reason that we started doing BirminghamBURGER is because when we did Restaurant Week down here for many years, it was a way to highlight our fine-dining establishments, kind of bring people into town at a time that was traditionally a little slower for restaurants; late January, early February, you know, post-holidays but before Valentine’s Day. People really loved it, but one of the things that we found after Covid, when we were kind of planning our events again and asking for participation, our restaurants felt like that wasn’t really the best fit, and wanted something a little bit different. So we pulled together a focus group of some of our more active restaurants and came up with this kind of idea for the BirminghamBURGER and how it could work,” explained Erika.

The collaboration resulted in a month-long, city-wide competition with restaurants invited or open to participate, with patrons utilizing the Birmingham Shopping District’s rating scale online to determine a winner at the end of the month. Guests are asked to rate a burger based on its creativity, presentation, and taste. Erika said her team was excited to see the huge amount of interest from last year’s BirminghamBURGER, with over 3,500 ratings cast by the end of the event. She said not a single burger received a poor rating last year, and that based on the number of ratings that have already come in for this year, excitement has grown for the second annual BirminghamBURGER competition.

“We actually have seen a lot of voting, and a lot of voting early on. It’s not like you go on there and vote for one burger; you actually can go on and rate each burger that you try, and then that’s all tabulated. And the ones with the highest ratings in all those categories is the winner. So, you can really try as many burgers and rate as many burgers as you want,” Erika explained. “We, of course, want to continue this. It’s been a really fun thing. Not only for something unique to bring people downtown and kind of try different restaurants, but also, amongst our restaurants themselves, which is always great when you can have that like dual community building in response to these types of things.”

After all the burger talk, I had to get up to Birmingham this past Saturday to try at least one establishment and enjoy what would likely be the last nice weekend weather-wise for the year. I figured I would walk around and gather some photos and b-roll of several establishments, but when it came to determining who I should reach out to and sit down with to ask about the BirminghamBURGER experience, I decided to follow up with last year’s winner, Adachi!

Adachi

Adachi was a stone’s throw away from the parking garage I chose in downtown Birmingham as I crossed E. Brown Street and approached the historic Victorian Peabody Mansion right at the corner of Old Woodward Avenue. It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon as I shot exterior footage of the large and remarkable home that had been converted into several small businesses, including Adachi restaurant.

I walked in at the tail end of the lunch hour and noted a very well-kept and tidy restaurant with attentive staff and servers who welcomed me immediately upon walking inside. The owner, Blake, had arranged for me to interview Executive Chef Eppie Connolly to learn more about the restaurant and what the BirminghamBURGER experience has been like for the competition’s first winner. As the hosts went to notify Chef Eppie, I selected a table for a base of operations to set up my gear and got to work on collecting my interior content. I was pleased to see several tables had the Oops I Did It Again burger (or what remained) and even overheard a gentleman at the bar order one as I sat back down at my table after noticing Chef Eppie making her way to me from the kitchen in the back.

Eppie’s culinary journey to becoming the Executive Chef at Adachi is both inspiring and uplifting. Growing up in a fishing village in the Philippines, she discovered her passion for cooking at nine years old after hearing the magical crack and sizzle of an egg in a pan. She learned a lot from her grandma, who helped raise Eppie and her five other siblings. Her grandma stressed to her the importance of getting a good education, which motivated Eppie over the years as she would go to school during the day and then go out and fish at night to help support her family.

She said she knew from early on that cooking and working in food would get her somewhere someday, and says she never looked back. After graduating from high school with honors, she immigrated to the United States in 2009. Eppie bounced around from Montana to Michigan, to Tennessee, and then finally back to Michigan, where she began working at several different restaurants over the years around Metro Detroit. She eventually found her way to Adachi, where she continued to hone her craft under the former Executive Chef Lloyd Roberts. When deciding if Adachi should enter BirminghamBURGER’s inaugural competition last year, Eppie said she was ready to push the culinary boundaries and creativity of the restaurant.

“I said, okay, let’s do it. I did not even expect that it would become very successful. And in the moment when they announced that we won, that’s when I noticed, like, wow, I did something amazing because we’re not known for that. We’re known for sushi, we’re known for sliders, and other things in the kitchen. We got a good variety of food in the back as well, so having that competition really did change a lot for me personally and also for the rest of my hardworking team,” Eppie explained.

I asked Eppie what some of the biggest takeaways were for her after winning last year’s competition, and how it drives her path forward.

“So what I learned from last year’s competition is to push yourself; no limits at all, think outside the box. Think about every ingredient that you put into a plate, so that it makes sense, not just for the people, but for you inside. Do it from the heart because anyone can follow a recipe, but the recipe doesn’t mean anything if your heart is not involved in it, and that’s how you shine,” Eppie said.

I followed up by asking Eppie how that inspired this year’s burger entry, which she says is a more enhanced version of last year’s with more layers and flavors involved.

“With this year’s burger, it has more components in it. It’s not a traditional burger that you usually go out for at any other place. I’m combining in every level different flavors, the spices that I’m combining, to the sauces. It has three different kinds of sauces, and then there’s about eight ingredients that go into that burger,” said Eppie.

Eppie and I continued to talk about food, the BirminghamBURGER competition, and what she hopes for the future of Adachi. But for conciseness, the foodie adventure will continue on to that very burger aforementioned by Chef Eppie.

Oops I Did It Again

For starters, for a restaurant not geared toward traditional burgers, Adachi sure serves up one phenomenal Asian-infused creation with their Oops I Did It Again. The buns are homemade ‘Everything’ seasoned brioche with a dry-aged Wagyu patty, chipotle cheddar, Asian-spiced braised pork belly slices, crispy Brussels sprouts, pickled red onion, plum sauce aioli, Yuzu mango chutney, and a Miyazaki tallow reduction. And to top it all off, this beast of a burger comes served with chili-parmesan fries and a side of spicy ketchup blended with truffle oil and seasonings. This burger was as delicious as it was visually stunning. The care taken in assembling this burger by the Sous Chef was greatly appreciated!

The buns were as soft as pillows, which made squishing everything together much easier in order to ascertain a full bite of all the ingredients. I was a big fan of the contrasting densities from the soft, yet crispy Brussels sprouts along the bottom to the more thicker pickled red onion, which contributed their own unique bite to the flavor profile. The pork belly was incredibly tender, to the point where it essentially melted in your mouth and was very tasty. I enjoyed the twist of Asian spices woven into the pork belly as well, making it stand out separate from the beef patty. The wagyu patty was cooked to a perfect medium-rare (as requested) and had a more savory, umami flavor to it. This paired beautifully with the plum sauce aioli and Yuzu mango chutney.

I give serious props to Blake, Chef Eppie, and the team at Adachi because they sure can whip up a great burger, even if a bit outside their usual culinary wheelhouse!

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If all the other restaurants are serving up burgers like this, it’s going to be a close competition. And while the Oops I Did It Again burger was the only one I was able to try on Saturday, I’ll definitely circle back before the end of the month to try a few more while BirminghamBURGER is still ongoing. Erika and her team at the Birmingham Shopping District helped curate a great month-long event that is a win for foodies and restaurateurs alike.

There’s still a whole week left to enjoy and explore all of the restaurants participating in BirminghamBURGER 2025, so review the eateries and plot your course of action! And remember, you can rank as many of the burgers as you’re able or willing to try. Even if you can’t catch ’em all (hehe) in time, some of the restaurants do continue their specialty burgers for a limited time after October, but be sure to check with the specific restaurant in advance before adventuring.

For more information about BirminghamBURGER 2025, or additional details about the participating restaurants, click here.