Why Birmingham's Best Burger Comes From a Sushi Restaurant
September 24, 2026
September 24, 2026
Walk into Adachi on South Old Woodward any night in October and you will find something strange on the menu: a burger. Not a rebranded roll dressed up in a bun, but an actual dry-aged patty, built by a kitchen that otherwise spends its nights on sashimi and miso-glazed everything. It should not work. Twice now, it has won.
Starting October 1, roughly twenty restaurants across Downtown Birmingham will spend the month competing for a single trophy in an event called BirminghamBURGER. Diners eat, diners vote, and at the end of the month one kitchen gets bragging rights for the next twelve months. The event is run by the Birmingham Shopping District, and on paper it sounds like the kind of promotional food crawl that shows up in every downtown in Metro Detroit each fall. What makes it worth paying attention to, if you already live here, is who keeps winning it.
The format has stayed consistent since the competition launched in 2024. Any participating restaurant creates one signature burger, available only during October, priced starting around $15 and varying by kitchen. Diners visit as many locations as they want, order the featured burger, and rate it online for presentation, creativity, and taste. There is no entry fee, no reservation system, and no limit on how many times you can vote. The final tally decides who takes home the Birmingham's Best Burger trophy for the year.
That openness is part of why the event has grown the way it has. In its first year, 18 restaurants participated and diners logged nearly 2,900 ratings. By the second year, the field had grown to around 19 or 20 restaurants and the vote count nearly doubled to 5,570. That kind of jump in a single year is not typical for a local food promotion. It suggests residents are not just trying the burgers once out of curiosity. They are coming back, comparing notes, and treating the ratings seriously enough to vote more than once.
Here is the detail that makes this more than a seasonal calendar item. Adachi, the Japanese restaurant on South Old Woodward known for sashimi and cocktails, won the inaugural competition in 2024 with a burger called "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover," built by executive chef Lloyd Roberts and executive sous chef Eppie Marie. In 2025, the same restaurant returned to defend the title with an entry named "Oops I did it again," a dry-aged wagyu-blend burger on a homemade everything miso brioche bun, layered with chipotle cheddar, Asian-spiced braised pork belly, crispy brussels sprouts, pickled red onion, and a plum sauce aioli finished with yuzu mango chutney. It won again.
In a report by C&G News, Adachi owner Blake George put the approach plainly:
"You can't just do a classic burger, right?"
That is one way to sum up the approach. Adachi's entries have put a distinctive spin on the burger. The contest rewards creativity and presentation as much as taste, giving diners several dimensions to consider when they vote.
In a report by Downtown Publications, Birmingham Shopping District Executive Director Erika Bassett described the contest's appeal:
"There is something everyone will love during this event."
If you think about it as a straight burger contest, Adachi's back to back wins look like an upset. If you think about it as a measure of which Birmingham kitchen is most willing to take a risk in public, in front of a voting audience, the outcome makes more sense. The restaurants that show up every October with a genuinely different idea, rather than a slightly better version of a burger, tend to be the ones people remember and rate highest.
That is worth knowing if you live here and treat downtown dining as part of your regular routine rather than a special occasion. The trophy offers a rough, once-a-year snapshot of which entries diners rate most highly. Watching who places well, not just who wins, tells you more about where the city's dining scene is heading than any single new opening announcement does.
The restaurant list for 2026 was still being finalized as of late summer, but the roster from the past two years gives a reliable sense of who tends to show up. Recent participants have included:
That is more restaurants than most people could realistically hit in a single week, which is the point. The full list and current burger photos are posted each year at downtownbirmingham.com, and the smart way to approach the month is the way locals already treat the Birmingham Farmers Market, which runs Sundays through October 25 this year. Pick a few new stops each weekend rather than trying to cover the list in one sitting. Pair a Sunday market visit with a dinner stop two or three blocks away, and you have covered both ends of a Birmingham weekend without much planning.
If you have a favorite that has not shown up on the list before, that is worth noting too. Restaurants opt in every year, and which kitchens choose to participate says something about how confident they feel putting their food in front of a crowd that gets to rate it publicly.
None of this requires any interest in real estate to enjoy. That is the point of an event like BirminghamBURGER. It exists for people who already live here, walk these blocks, and want a reason to try somewhere new before the weather turns. But if you are the kind of resident who notices which restaurants keep showing up in these competitions, which ones are expanding their menus to take risks, and which corners of downtown draw the biggest crowds on a Tuesday night in October, you are already doing the kind of neighborhood reading that matters far beyond one contest.
That habit of paying close attention to what is actually happening on the ground, not just what gets announced, is the same instinct Erin Keating DeWald brings to every conversation about Birmingham real estate. If you ever want to talk about what is changing in this city beyond the dinner menu, that conversation is always open.
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