1919 Kitchen and Tap

The roads thawed after an icy day of winter weather, and my husband and I craved an evening outside of our apartment for once. After more than two years in Green Bay, we finally went to 1919 Kitchen and Tap within Lambeau Field. We’ve walked past it on multiple visits with friends that have come up to the area, usually out of concern about price. For two people with a relatively limited appetite, willing to share a few plates, those concerns were much more easily bypassed.

To get to the restaurant, one has to go through the atrium of Lambeau and pass the fan shop to get up to the second floor. When we arrived, the shop was still open. It’s worth keeping in mind for friends in the future if we want to kill two birds with one stone– eat and shop in one stop. We came for food only, however, so we bypassed that opportunity to get to 1919 upstairs.

There was no wait when we arrived, likely because it was a Wednesday evening. The tables toward the center of the main dining area are surrounded by four very comfortable chairs, and being sat there wound up being a good thing for us over the course of the evening. We had a long wait and a mishap with our appetizers, but we had our drinks, an open kitchen to turn around and look into, and college basketball in every corner of the room to keep us busy.

There are two things I order whenever I go somewhere that the menu centers around bar food: the Brandy Old Fashioned and some french fries. I maintain that it’s the easiest way for me to determine the actual quality of the bar program and the kitchen. 1919 shows extra effort from their bar program in creating their own bitters to showcase in their Definitive Brown County Old Fashioned, forgoing the angostura bitters often seen to focus on a cherry wood and vanilla bitters formula instead. It’s obvious that they muddle the bitters in brown sugar behind the bar– my first sip had just a tiny grain of that sugar cube in the straw.

You can tell when you get an old fashioned in this town that’s made with a corn syrup mix. This isn’t one of those. The sweetness comes in low behind the bitter notes highlighted by the orange rind and the bitters incorporated into the drink, and it’s a delicious sip beside the fatty, rich bar food on the menu.

We got our appetizers after our actual shared entrée due to some confusion with the food runner delivering our appetizers to the table right next to us, but it all came out quickly once the mistake was realized. The staff were working hard with a large dining room to keep in mind. The atmosphere and the comfy chairs made it much easier to wait for our food to come out while sipping delicious drinks, and our waitress was deeply apologetic. This small service mishap had very little impact on the actual meal we enjoyed. 

​Buttermilk-parsley batter is all over every single french fry leaving that kitchen. If you get a burger off the menu, you’ll get the same fries I ordered on their own as an appetizer. Batter is the secret to truly crispy restaurant fries, and 1919’s kitchen staff pulls it off well. The saltiness level on the fries is so high that it will encourage you to order that second drink– and my husband and I surely did. Those fries play well with beer and cocktails. I was happy.

The pretzels with beer cheese are the measure by which my husband measures restaurants featuring brewpub items, so this was of course our second appetizer. Big, thick pretzels served beside a viscous beer cheese dip came to our table with our fries, and merely by looking at it, I knew that it would meet his criteria. Consistency on that beer cheese is key. They nailed it. Would a mustard have helped? I, personally, think so. The richness of that beer cheese needs something to cut it. Still, we destroyed it before leaving the restaurant.

For a couple like us in want of something to share, the flatbread menu at 1919 is the way to go. We had to get our phones out and use a die rolling app to figure out what we were going to order. Every flatbread on the menu spoke to us. We landed on the Green and Gold, appropriate for our first outing at the Lambeau Field resident restaurant.

The menu describes its toppings as follows: grilled chicken, bacon, fresh cheese curds, red onions, avocado aioli, calabrese chili sauce. Our flatbread was the first item to arrive at the table after the mishap with our appetizers, and each of these individually listed ingredients can be plainly seen. The calabrese chili sauce feigns a tomato base for any other flatbread. The melted cheese curds over the top leave gold rings spaced evenly across the other cheese. Chicken, bacon, and red onion all peak out from underneath the drizzle of aioli.

The pizza oven used to produce the flatbreads in 1919 can be seen in the open kitchen when you arrive. The fire flares up the back so strongly that you can see it from your seat if you’re in the right place. It takes skill to cook in one of those things. I wouldn’t expect much from myself standing in front of one of those for the first time. The high heat of the oven created a well spotted crust on the bottom of the flatbread and reduced the cheese curds to little cheese blankets without trouble.

​The flatbread benefits from the avocado aioli to cut through the richness of the cheese and bacon fat. The chili sauce is a notable source of heat, but the sheet fattiness of the other toppings subdues the spice. The namesake flatbread is one I will order again when sharing the Lambeau location with visitors in the future.

Despite the aforementioned appetizer mishap, 1919’s kitchen provided a delicious meal. In the wake of COVID and its impact on food service, I struggle to hold servers deeply accountable to the point I’d be angry that my appetizers landed one table over. Our server apologized for the food runner’s mistake, and our replacements came quickly. My husband and I had a good view of the restaurant from our position at the center of the dining area, and this did not appear to be a common problem.

1919 Kitchen and Tap on Lambeau’s second floor is an easy choice when you’re coming to visit the Pro Shop or the stadium itself for tours or pictures. The sports bars all over Titletown, while delicious, aren’t physically in the stadium. If you get to sit at the window, it’s a view worth stopping for. While the entrees may be outside of the price range for some diners, if you’re not afraid of sharing plates, you can dine well for less.

For all these reasons, I have no doubt I’ll wind up cozying up to another Old Fashioned in those comfortable chairs and catching up with old friends when the snow melts and they make their next trek north to join us.