Black Sheep Pub & Grill - Green Bay, WI

A crisp Thursday evening, one of the first in October, set over town on the night of the Alton Brown show, Beyond the Eats, that my husband had ordered tickets for me for my birthday when the visit to Green Bay was first announced. We had to be at the Weidner Center at UW-GB in a few hours, but we wanted to go out for dinner. It looked like other people attending the show had the same idea. There was one restaurant close to campus that looked promising-- Black Sheep.

Black Sheep Pub and Grill has been an active social media presence in the Green Bay food scene for long enough that I’ve watched them longingly at a distance. I never make it in the direction of campus, and I never really knew exactly where Black Sheep was until I started making plans for the evening of the Alton Brown show. The pub was within a less than ten minute drive to the Weidner center, making it a perfect place to sit down for a meal and a drink before the show.

My husband and I arrived to a packed parking lot. I can’t say for sure that it was only Alton Brown Show traffic. UW-GB students were at some of the tables, but there was not a single open seat at the bar. The three parties that arrived behind my husband and I had to wait a little while for some of the other interior tables to clear out. My limited restaurant experience told me that a perfect storm was brewing.

Dark & Stormy

​And yet we as customers didn’t feel it. The hostess may as well have been on wheels as she went from table to table, covering for her busy waitresses that had no free moments to breathe. Food arrived to each table surrounding us in a timely manner, and the bar staff got drinks out to the tables as fast as the bar guests. Black Sheep was ready for that Thursday evening, and I applaud them for it.

Neither service nor food quality suffered under the crunch of the night. My husband and I ordered an appetizer platter of white truffle tater tots-- yes, you read that one right. The kitchen was sparing with the white truffle oil, keeping it under control so that it didn’t overwhelm the rest of the flavors. A nice dusting of parmesan and parsley over crunchy tater tots with a garlic aioli for dipping made for a great bar snack while we enjoyed each other’s company and wondered what a live Alton Brown show might be like. The high level of savoriness keeps you thirsty. We were going to need a second round.

I eat like a bird, and with the threat of not having time to run leftovers back home, I ordered a small side salad for myself as my entree. This may seem like an odd thing to discuss as part of a restaurant review, but I find that side salads are often a good way to keep an eye on the way the kitchen works. The greens were not wilted. The cut on the red onions was thin and reasonable for a bite of salad. They worked on that salad as much as one can and made sure it went out to the tables fresh.

My husband didn’t have the same concerns about leftovers as myself and ordered as he would any other night-- he indulged himself on a mixed fried oyster and shrimp po’ boy. He had little complaint as a man who misses really only one thing about our time on the east coast-- that thing being the seafood. You can’t go wrong frying shellfish. His only thought that he expressed at dinner time was that he might have liked more remoulade, but he demolished it. We sent back clean plates.

Black Sheep Pub and Grill has quickly risen in the ranks of restaurants that we will bring any and all visitors to when they come to see us in Green Bay. I welcome the opportunity to see if the dinner crowd is always as large as it was that night that Alton Brown was at the Weidner Center, and I applaud the staff that night for keeping up and keeping their customers happy.

You can take a look at their menu on their website or follow their social media on instagram and facebook to watch for specials. They still have their summer drink menu at the tables, but that will likely transition soon as it has started to with most of our city restaurants now that the colder weather is beginning to finally settle in on the bay. 

Black Sheep also has what appears to be a large wedding reception venue behind their quaint little pub if you’re planning to marry in town-- I have no doubt that their catering would be absolutely stellar. I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with the level of service at the level of crowd in the building the night my husband and I ate there. They killed it. I don’t doubt they can do that in any other circumstance.