Cooking Carberry's Wood-Fired Pizza, Munising Michigan: Blueberry on Pizza, and Other Things That Work

Hi, I'm Ino.

We had just stepped off the Pictured Rocks cruise back at the Munising City Dock. Two and a half hours on Lake Superior in an open deck will do something to your body temperature — the kind of cold that settles in gradually and doesn't announce itself until you're back on land and realize you've been gripping the railing with both hands for the last hour.

We needed something warm. Something with cheese. Something that came out of an actual fire.

We found it about a three-minute walk from the dock, at the corner of Maple Street, in what appeared at first glance to be a backyard with string lights.

The order counter at Cooking Carberry's — outdoor, unhurried, and cash only.

How It Works — Two Businesses, One Backyard

Cooking Carberry's Wood Fired Pizza is not a restaurant in the conventional sense. It is a small outdoor pizza operation run by three Carberry sisters and their families, set up in the beer garden of East Channel Brewing Company at 209 Maple Street in downtown Munising. East Channel is a family-operated craft brewery that opened in 2016 and has become one of Munising's most reliable gathering spots — with a rotating tap list, an indoor pub, and an outdoor beer garden strung with lights.

Every summer, the Carberry sisters set up their wood-fired oven in that beer garden and start making pizza. The arrangement is straightforward: you order and pay for pizza at the outdoor counter (cash only — more on that shortly), then take your beer or drink from the brewery next door, sit wherever you like, and the pizza comes to you. The two operations are separate businesses that happen to share a very agreeable piece of real estate.

Cooking Carberry's runs from late May through mid-October, daily from 1 pm to 9 pm. Outside those months, the oven goes dark and Munising returns to its quieter winter pace. If you're visiting the UP in summer and you're within fifteen minutes of Munising, this is worth building into the day.

Tip: The pizza counter and the brewery are separate — you pay for pizza at the outdoor counter and drinks at the bar inside. They'll deliver the pizza to your table in the brewery if you're seated inside, which is the right move on a cold evening. Bring cash for the pizza; the brewery accepts cards.

Cash Only — and That's Fine

The pizza counter does not accept cards. This is, by now, a well-documented fact about Cooking Carberry's — and it generates strong feelings. One TripAdvisor reviewer called it "honestly embarrassing" for a tourism-dependent town in 2024. Another shrugged it off entirely and said the pizza was so good it didn't matter.

My view: find an ATM before you arrive. There are a couple in Munising, and the inconvenience is genuinely minor. The pizza is worth it.

The Savory Blueberry Pizza — Michigan on a Crust

There is one pizza at Cooking Carberry's that you need to know about before you arrive, and it is this: the Savory Blueberry. It is the most-ordered pizza on the menu, the one that gets mentioned in every review, and the one that confuses first-time visitors into hesitation before they try it and immediately understand.

The composition: mozzarella cheese on a thin wood-fired crust, topped with blue cheese, ham, bacon, diced onion, and whole blueberries, finished with a blueberry-balsamic glaze, fresh basil, and grated Parmesan. The menu at the counter includes a note that reads — and this is worth knowing before you try to customize your order — DON'T ASK US TO CHANGE THE PIZZA UP. THE ANSWER IS NO.

That note tells you something important: the Carberry sisters have been making this pizza long enough to know that the combination works, and that well-meaning modifications almost always make it worse. The blueberry balsamic glaze is not an afterthought — it's the element that ties everything together. The acidity of the balsamic cuts the richness of the cheese; the blueberries burst against the saltiness of the bacon and ham in a way that reads as savory rather than sweet. The whole thing is coherent in a way that fruit on pizza has no business being.

Michigan grows more blueberries than any other state east of the Mississippi. The UP is blueberry country. This pizza is, in a small way, the most Michigan thing you can eat in Munising that isn't a pasty.

The Savory Blueberry — mozzarella, blue cheese, ham, bacon, onion, blueberries, and balsamic glaze. Don't ask them to change it.

The Fig and Ham Pizza

The second pizza we ordered was the fig and ham — a combination that follows a similar sweet-savory logic as the blueberry but lands differently. Where the blueberry pizza is bright and acidic, the fig version is denser and more concentrated in sweetness. Fig preserves or roasted figs have a jammy, almost wine-like richness that intensifies under heat, and paired with the salt of the ham and the smoke of the wood-fired crust, the effect is something closer to a charcuterie board than a pizza.

It is, as the Korean food vocabulary would put it, 단짠 at full volume — sweet and salty pushed to their respective extremes and somehow meeting in the middle. Rich enough that one or two slices is probably the right amount before you want to move on to something more straightforward. But memorable in a way that makes you think about it the next day.

The fig and ham — sweet and salty at full volume, with the wood-fired crust holding it all together.

The Artichoke and Mushroom Pizza

After two fruit-forward pizzas, the artichoke and mushroom was a welcome recalibration. This one sits firmly in savory territory — roasted mushrooms and artichoke hearts on a white base, finished with fresh basil and Parmesan, with what looked like bacon crumbled through. The mushrooms had charred slightly at the edges from the wood fire, which added a depth that you don't get from a conventional oven. The artichoke brought a mild bitterness that cut through the richness of the cheese.

If the blueberry pizza is what Cooking Carberry's is known for, this one is what you order when you want to understand how good the crust actually is. Thin, slightly blistered from the fire, with a crisp edge and a soft center — the kind of Neapolitan-style base that makes everything placed on top of it taste better than it would otherwise.

The artichoke and mushroom — the one that lets the wood-fired crust do the talking.

What to Drink — Root Beer and the Brewery Next Door

The pizza counter itself doesn't serve drinks. For that, you walk the few steps into East Channel Brewing, order at the bar, and bring your drink back to wherever you've settled.

East Channel has a rotating tap of craft beers — typically six to ten on draft at any given time, leaning toward approachable styles: lagers, wheat ales, an IPA or two, and seasonal options. Their Big House Blueberry Wheat is a natural pairing with the blueberry pizza, which is either delightfully on-theme or a little too on-the-nose depending on your perspective. The Hobo Nectar Lager comes up repeatedly in reviews as the most crowd-pleasing option.

If you're not drinking alcohol, East Channel also serves handcrafted sodas — and this is where root beer enters the picture. Root beer is a non-alcoholic carbonated soft drink made from a blend of roots, bark, and herbs — historically including sassafras, though modern versions use artificial flavoring or other botanicals. It has a distinctive taste that resists easy description: slightly medicinal, faintly sweet, with a herbal quality that most Americans grow up with and many international visitors find unexpectedly strange. Some people love it immediately. Others need a few sips to adjust. It has almost nothing in common with anything else in the soda category.

After an afternoon of blueberry glaze and fig jam on pizza, a cold root beer is the right call. The carbonation is sharp, the herbal bitterness cuts through the residual sweetness on your palate, and by the time the glass is half empty you're already reaching for another slice.

Root beer from East Channel — non-alcoholic, herbal, and the right pairing after a round of sweet-savory pizza.

Tip: If you've never had root beer, try it here. It pairs well with the blueberry pizza in the way that a slightly bitter drink balances something rich and sweet. If the flavor is unfamiliar — and for many international visitors it will be — give it a full glass before deciding. It usually improves with familiarity.

And Then, a Cheese Pizza

After three specialty pizzas, we ordered one more: the simplest thing on the menu. Just cheese. Tomato sauce, mozzarella, cut into squares.

It was, without question, the right decision. The sauce was bright and slightly acidic — a good tomato sauce, not overcooked, not too sweet. The mozzarella had melted evenly across the surface with small amber spots where the cheese had caught the heat directly. The crust at the edges was thicker than the center and had a satisfying chew.

After an hour of layered, complex flavors, a plain cheese pizza is a reset. It reminded us how good the foundation was — the crust that everything else is built on. Wood-fired at high heat, blistered and charred in the right places, with a flavor that no electric oven at lower temperature can replicate.

The classic cheese pizza — ordered last, and the one that reminded us why the crust matters.

Ino's Practical Tips for Cooking Carberry's

Getting there
Cooking Carberry's is at 209 Maple Street in downtown Munising, inside the East Channel Brewing beer garden. It's a short walk from the Munising City Dock — if you're coming straight from the Pictured Rocks cruise, you can be seated with a pizza in front of you within fifteen minutes of stepping off the boat. The location appears on Google Maps under both "Cooking Carberry's Wood Fired Pizza" and "East Channel Brewing Company."

Tip: Bring cash for the pizza counter. There are ATMs in Munising, but finding one after a long day on the lake is less fun than finding one before. Pull cash when you're already in town — or before you leave for the cruise.

Hours and season
Pizza is served daily from 1 pm to 9 pm, from late May through mid-October. The operation is seasonal — once October arrives, the oven shuts down for the year. East Channel Brewing stays open year-round, but without the pizza. Check the brewery's social media before visiting in shoulder season to confirm the pizza is still running.

Pizza size and portions
Each pizza is a personal 9-inch thin-crust Neapolitan — roughly the size of a standard dinner plate. One pizza per person is a reasonable starting point, but if you're planning to try multiple varieties (and you should), order one at a time and share. The specialty pizzas — especially the blueberry and fig — are rich enough that you'll want variety rather than volume.

Tip: Order the Savory Blueberry first. If you're on the fence about it, read the menu note — DON'T ASK US TO CHANGE THE PIZZA UP. THE ANSWER IS NO — and trust that confidence. Then order whatever else sounds good. The classic cheese pizza makes a good finishing note after the richer options.

The brewery
East Channel Brewing is a genuinely pleasant place to sit — indoor pub seating, outdoor beer garden, and an atmosphere that feels like a local spot rather than a tourist operation. The tap list changes seasonally; the lagers and wheat ales are consistently recommended. If you order pizza and want to eat inside the brewery, let the bar staff know — they'll make sure the pizza finds you.

Wrapping Up

Munising is a town built around big natural experiences — the Pictured Rocks cliffs, Lake Superior, the surrounding forests. Cooking Carberry's is the evening after all of that: a wood-fired oven in a beer garden, run by three sisters who have been making the same blueberry pizza long enough to put a note on the menu telling you not to mess with it.

The pizza is good. The blueberry pizza is genuinely surprising. The root beer is an experience worth having at least once. And the combination of cold air, a warm crust, and a glass of something from the brewery next door is, after a day in the UP, about as close to perfect as an evening gets.

If you're planning a full day in Munising, the natural sequence is: pasty at Muldoon's for lunch, the Pictured Rocks cruise in the afternoon, and Cooking Carberry's for dinner. Three things, one town, one very good day.

If you're driving east along M-28 from Kitch-iti-Kipi, Munising is the natural next stop — about 50 miles east and worth every minute of the drive.