The Cleveland Mustard War Nobody Talks About — But Every Local Has an Opinion On

Where This Started: A Century of Yellow Rivalry

Joe Bertman was making his ballpark mustard back when Babe Ruth was still terrorizing American League pitching and League Park was the beating heart of Cleveland baseball. A vinegar-forward, slightly sweet brown mustard that found its home alongside Cleveland Indians hot dogs and, eventually, became part of the architecture of a Cleveland game day.

Then came David Dwoskin. The story goes that Dwoskin had worked in the distribution side of the Bertman operation and wanted more control over what he was putting out. So he went and made his own. Added red pepper. Leaned harder into the heat. Called it Stadium Mustard and planted his flag at Cleveland Municipal Stadium — home of both the Indians and the Browns — where it became the condiment of record for Clevelanders watching football in December, bundled in their seats, a hot dog and a paper cup of beer their only defense against the lake effect wind coming off Erie.

Two mustards. Two philosophies. One city.

The rivalry calcified over decades. Progressive Field became Bertman territory. FirstEnergy Stadium — and later Huntington Bank Field — ran Stadium Mustard. And Cleveland fans, being the particular and opinionated people they are, chose sides the way they choose everything: personally, stubbornly, and with the kind of conviction most people reserve for things that actually matter.

The Actual Difference (And It Matters More Than You Think)

Let’s not be coy about this. These are not interchangeable products. They come from different culinary philosophies and they land differently on your palate.

Bertman’s is the one your grandmother probably had in her fridge. It leans sweet and tangy — distilled vinegar, a measured amount of sugar, brown mustard seed ground down into something smooth and familiar. It does not challenge you. It welcomes you. It is the mustard equivalent of a warm bar that knows your name.

Stadium Mustard wants a word with you. The red pepper in that recipe is not an accident and it is not subtle. There is a genuine kick to it, a brightness that cuts through the fat of a ballpark frank in a way that Bertman’s never quite attempts. It is not aggressive, but it is confident. Stadium Mustard has opinions.

Neither one is a craft mustard in the artisan, small-batch, farmers-market-table sense. They are both products of a specific American food tradition — the ballpark, the hotdog cart, the concession stand — and they wear that identity without apology.

That is part of what makes this argument worth having.

The Thing About Ballpark Food Nobody Admits

Here is what gets lost when food writers talk about stadium concessions: context is an ingredient.

A hot dog tastes different when you are in the upper deck and your team just scored. It tastes different in the fourth quarter when the score is ugly and the cold is winning. The mustard you reach for in those moments carries the weight of every game you have ever attended, every person who ever handed you that dog, every version of this city you have experienced from a plastic seat.

Bertman’s has decades of Progressive Field summers in it. It has afternoon games, fathers and daughters, the particular smell of a baseball stadium in July.

Stadium Mustard has late-season Browns games. It has everyone who ever bundled into that open bowl on the lakefront and refused to leave early even when the outcome was obvious, because that is what you do here.

You are not choosing between two mustards. You are choosing between two experiences.

The Record Is Messier Than the Marketing

The part that gets glossed over in the polite version of this rivalry is that the history is genuinely complicated.

Dan Coughlin’s book “Let’s Have Another” gets into the weeds of it: there is a credible account that in 1950, the concession manager at Cleveland Stadium instructed Bertman Food Products to source its stadium mustard from Chicago. And then in the early 1980s, when Bertman moved production back to Ohio, sugar got added to the original recipe. Which means what you are tasting as “original Bertman” is actually a reformulation of something that was already being produced in Illinois.

That does not make it less delicious. But it does make the “we are the authentic original” claims that both brands trade in a bit more interesting.

Both of them have that Cleveland DNA. Neither one is operating on a foundation quite as pure as their marketing would suggest. And honestly, that makes them more Cleveland, not less.

How Far These Mustards Have Actually Traveled

Here is a fact that should tell you something about what Cleveland put into these two bottles: astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Discovery requested Stadium Mustard for their 1997 mission. That actually happened.

Both brands ship nationally. Bertman’s has found shelf space in stores across the country, and Stadium Mustard has international shipping because apparently there are people in other countries who have tasted it and decided they are not willing to live without it.

Universal Studios has used Cleveland mustard on set. The logic being that when you need a prop that reads as authentically American, you reach for something that has been feeding sports crowds for a hundred years.

This is not niche regional food. This is stuff that traveled.

The Verdict That Is Not Really a Verdict

Nobody is going to tell you which one is right. That is not what this is.

If you grew up going to Indians games in the summer, Bertman’s is probably home. If your football memories are the ones that stuck, Stadium Mustard has a legitimate claim on your loyalty.

What is true about both of them is that they are the product of a city that took a condiment seriously. That paid attention to flavor, to history, to what it means to feed people who are gathered together around something they care about. Cleveland’s food culture is not always the first thing people think about when they think about this city. But it probably should be.

The mustard war has been running for over a century. It is going to keep running. And the correct response to that is not to declare a winner. It is to make sure you have tried both, have a real opinion, and are ready to defend it at the concession stand.

That is the Cleveland way.

Grab Your Side of This Argument

Both Bertman’s Original Ball Park Mustard and Authentic Stadium Mustard are available on the Pints, Forks & Friends Amazon Shop. Order them together. Do the taste test yourself. Come to your own conclusions.

And if you want more of this kind of writing — the real stories behind the food and drink this region runs on — join the Pub Ring Newsletter below. No noise. Just the stuff worth knowing.

Pints, Forks & Friends covers craft beer, culinary culture, and the community that holds it all together. Based in Northeast Ohio and traveling wherever the food is worth talking about.

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