City Bakery

Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is mad for brats. A brat, short for bratwurst, is a sausage about four to six inches long made of pork or a combination of beef and pork. Whatever its ingredients, a Sheboygan brat is always cooked over charcoal and it always is served inside a special roll known as a brat roll. Large enough to hold two sausages (the preferred way to eat brats hereabouts), a brat roll is tender inside so it can sop up the large amounts of melted butter in which the cooked sausages are bathed, and it has a tan surface that is never brittle or dry. The supple exterior is crucial for gripping the sandwich; plus, it serves as a dam to hold all the juicy stuff inside, functioning as a kind of edible mitt.

The place that many of Sheboygan’s top brat restaurants get their rolls is the City Bakery. Nothing grand of fancy about this establishment. It is a small town bakery with shelves of cakes, cookies, and nice-looking breads. It’s claim to fame, the brat roll, is like not exactly like any other breadstuff. We were told by the gals behind the counter that the rolls are lightly steamed as they bake in the brick-floored hearth, the steam giving them the durable exterior that makes them tough enough to hold two brats with the works. We think the rolls are delicious just to gnaw with any sort of cheese, salami, or smoked fish; but when wrapped around a butter-drenched, charcoal-cooked Sheboygan brat, they sing!