The journey to the best burger in Wilmington — according to the late Winnie Hansley Swanson Walker — began during World War II.

In 1941, the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company set up shop at the Port of Wilmington, tasked by the U.S. government with building vessels during the early days of the war. At 20 years old, Winnie went to work at the shipyard. She began as a tool-checker and quickly graduated to welder, spending thousands of hours hidden behind a welding hood and showered in sparks as she helped construct vessels in the global fight against fascism.

Before she opened her namesake restaurant, Winnie contributed to the war effort at the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington. Photography courtesy of New Hanover County Public Library, Local History Room; ID courtesy of Winnie’s Tavern

Winnie Swanson (pictured in 1942) Photography courtesy of Winnie’s Tavern, Photographed by Matt Ray

As one of the many women who’d contributed to the war effort, she was inspired to keep working, and as peace settled, she got to it. She served and managed at diners and drive-ins across town, including the once-beloved Chic-Chic Grill, gaining the experience she needed to open her own. In 1957, with the help of Chic-Chic owner James Merritt, she opened Winnie’s Drive-In at the corner of 16th and Dawson streets.

“Back then, a woman couldn’t get a business loan or lease property, so without the help of James Merritt, there’d be no Winnie’s,” says her granddaughter, Wendy Fincher-Hughes.

By 1962, Winnie had closed the drive-in and bought a block on Burnett Boulevard, a dozen paces from the Port of Wilmington. Her patch of land included a trailer park and a bar that would become Winnie’s Tavern. The tavern drew daughter Jeanne into the mix and eventually captured the third and fourth generations — Wendy and her children, Jessica and Owen Hughes.

Today, Winnie’s Tavern is a far cry from the smoky bar its namesake opened. Where it once served mostly port workers, these days it’s full of families and couples and gaggles of college students, with only a few port workers in sight. Still, the soul of the place is anchored to its roots.

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In the parking lot, flecks of quartz send up Morse code flashes amid the gravel, grit, and loose change. At the far edge of the lot, the strata of Winnie’s history shows. Among the rocks and modern bottle caps lie pull tabs, relics of beers 50 years gone.

“It’s a Winnie’s tradition,” Wendy explains. “Back when beers were 35 cents, a lot of change was dropped in the parking lot. Every morning, this guy would come around with his metal detector and dig holes out there as he hunted for nickels and dimes. Winnie said, ‘I’ll fix him,’ and tossed every pull tab and bottle cap they had in the parking lot.”

Decades’ worth of bottle caps tossed in the parking lot — a tradition started by Winnie herself — and nautical decor, like a life ring honoring the Battleship North Carolina, speak to the restaurant’s long history in the Port City. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

The family continues that ornery tradition, even though most sales are done by card, rendering loose change as much of a relic as a pull tab. Winnie would be proud. She was tough, her strength and independence forged in the shipyard during the war, and she didn’t suffer fools.

“Do you know why we don’t carry PBR?” Owen asks. “As I heard it, there was a guy who used to come around, and my great-grandmother didn’t like him. PBR was all he drank, so she refused to sell it so he wouldn’t come around. It worked, and we still don’t carry PBR. I don’t think we ever will.”

No PBR by the can, and none on draft. In fact, there’s no beer on draft and no soda fountain. Why? Tradition. Winnie preferred canned Coke to fountain, and draft beer went away once kegs grew too cumbersome for Winnie or Jeanne to move. To this day, sodas and suds are served exclusively in bottles and cans.

Winnie’s presence extends beyond bottle caps and single-serve sodas. Out of sight behind the bar: her mini baseball bat. Mementos celebrating her drive-in hang on the wall. There are life rings stenciled with “Port of Wilmington N.C.,” “Ocean Star Wilm. Del.,” and “USS North Carolina BB-55,” among others.

Winnie’s Tavern photograph by Matt Ray Photography

City of Wilmington license plates adorn a few walls, the product of Winnie’s win at a city auction. The prize? Twenty-seven boxes of Wilmington license plates, some 2,500 in all. Their story is preserved in the November 11, 1984, edition of the Sunday Star-News:

Mrs. Walker, who owns Winnie’s Tavern, on Burnett Boulevard, said she will sell the license plates for souvenirs. Many seamen who come into Wilmington’s State Port stop by Winnie’s for a beer or two. They all want a memento of the city, she said, and license plates are popular.

“It will be a true-blue souvenir,” she said. “The boys off the [HMS] Bristol stole mine and my husband’s.”

Today, Owen is the keeper of his great-grandmother’s collection. “I have a ton of those license plates,” he says. “She used to trade them to sailors, sell some, and give others away, and I’m keeping that family tradition going.”

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Each generation has piloted Winnie’s Tavern as best they could. Under Winnie, it was “a smoky old bar with pinball machines, a pool table, and shuffleboard,” Wendy says. She recalls that when Jeanne stepped in to help, there was a bit of a hands-off, “if it ain’t broke” philosophy to management. By 2006, when Winnie died, and 2016, when Jeanne followed, the place felt dated.

Winnie’s Tavern had grown apart from its drive-in progenitor, and as the demand for food increased, Owen recalls running the place as something like “chasing a snowball downhill.” Wendy saw a chance to change things, to bring Winnie’s into the future. With her kids’ help, she did. More than family connected them to Winnie’s: Owen and Jessica had a financial stake in the place. Jeanne, seeking a legacy, had made her grandkids part owners.

Today, Winnie’s granddaughter, Wendy Fincher-Hughes, continues the family tradition with help from her kids, including her son, Owen. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

“I was in middle school, like 14 or 15, and I’m co-owner of a bar and restaurant,” Owen says. “It was a little more normal for my sister — she’s five years older — but it changed the way we thought about the place.”

He continues, “My grandmother Jeanne helped Winnie. My mother helped Winnie in the last years of her life, then joined Jeanne in the business. My sister and I are part of that chain, and we shared the, ‘If Mom’s doing it, we’re doing it, too,’ attitude. When Mom said, ‘It’s time to remodel,’ we pitched in.”

Under Wendy, Winnie’s Tavern evolved. Smoking indoors was out, giving her the opportunity to steer Winnie’s back toward her grandmother’s original drive-in dreams. The family cleaned the place, got rid of the pool table, and repainted inside and out. For the interior, they chose Battleship Gray as an homage to Wilmington’s shipbuilding past. They turned Winnie’s into more of a restaurant than a bar.

“At first, some of the regulars resisted, seeing the changes as taking away their Winnie’s and not recognizing that it was time for the tavern to become a place everyone wanted to go,” Owen says.

But the changes worked. Corey Preece, the Cape Fear Foodie at WECT News, moved to Wilmington as a transplant from West Virginia. He found Winnie’s when he asked his new coworkers to recommend a lunch spot. “The thing about Winnie’s is that it’s a cozy spot where you immediately feel welcome, like you’ve been here a hundred times before, even if it’s your first visit,” he says. From his initial meal to the most recent, “that feeling of belonging has only grown.”

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One thing that’s never changed is the bragging rights Winnie earned for her burgers. She and Jeanne were never shy about telling everyone they had the best in Wilmington. As a teenager, it made Wendy self-conscious. “I don’t know why I found it so embarrassing,” she says. “Now I do the same thing — tell everyone I meet, ‘We serve the best cheeseburger in town down at Winnie’s.’”

They’re not the smashburgers that dominate so many menus elsewhere. “This is what I call a ‘backyard burger,’” Preece says. “Massive patty, sesame seed bun, thick-cut onion and tomato, crisp lettuce. It’s the best version of what you’d get at a backyard cookout.”

Options at Winnie’s include signatures like the Trailer Park Burger (left) and the Carolina Burger (right). photograph by Matt Ray Photography

His favorite is the Trailer Park Burger — a half-pound patty topped with fried green tomatoes, jalapeño pimento cheese, smoked bacon, lettuce, onion, bread-and-butter pickles, and chipotle mayo. “It’s a tribute to the trailer park Winnie owned and a perfect taste of the South,” Wendy says. Cookbook author Fanny Slater even sang the Trailer Park Burger’s praises on the Cooking Channel’s The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

Winnie’s work ethic, passed down through the generations, continues to guide her granddaughter and great-grandchildren. “She’d be proud of us,” Wendy says. “We really care about what we do, and our dive-bar history is just as important as our reputation for having the best damn cheeseburger in Wilmington. The nostalgia and the vibe make the experience — you can’t find that everywhere — and we owe so much of that to Winnie.”

Winnie’s Tavern
1895 Burnett Boulevard
Wilmington, NC 28401
(910) 762-1799
wilmingtonsbestburger.com