Visitors to Grump's Cafe will soon be able to listen to live music while enjoying their burgers and drinks thanks to a unanimous vote by the Annapolis Board of Appeals.

The board members granted the Bay Ridge Plaza restaurant permission to have limited live music and to officially designate their bar area as a bar.

"A lot of the folks that come to use prefer not to go downtown, and they requested from us to have some dinner entertainment," Grump's owner Duncan Bradbury said. "We have a nice little corner of the world here."

Duncan opened Grump's in 2002, and he said he decided to start hosting live music last year.

"We used to have a kids night with this Key School teacher who plays kids music," Bradbury said. "We had her playing some music in the evenings, but we found out that we didn’t have the zoning for it."

He plans to bring in local musicians a couple of nights a week now that he has official permission from the city. Bradbury said Dave Glaser and a duo called Artificially Hip are both on his short list for upcoming acts.

"Anything Grump's wants to do, you should let them do it," said David Prosten, who spoke on behalf of Grump's at the appeals board meeting. "They operate a wonderful business. I really recommend their hamburgers."

Ray Sullivan also voiced his support for the restaurant calling it a "great asset to the community."

No one spoke against the proposal, and the board quickly decided in favor of Grump's.

The bar area at Grump's won't change in appearance for now, but the new designation paves the way for what Bradbury said could be Grump's future.

"We needed it if we decide to go to the liquor board and upgrade our liquor license to be able to serve alcohol without food," Bradbury said.

His current licenses only permits the sale of alcohol when people buy food. In order to serve someone just a beer, a restaurant needs a designated bar area as part of its establishment.

"It would be nice to have that option," Bradbury said. "The real incentive for us was the new restaurant that’s coming in next door."

The Annapolis Smokehouse is under construction in the Bay Ridge Plaza and plans to open in the coming weeks. The new restaurant is nearly twice the square footage of Grump's and has been approved for a license to sell liquor without the purchase of food.

"Some of it was self defense," Bradbury said. "We wanted to do entertainment for a while now. We kept saying we were going to get the zoning approval and them coming in was the final nudge to do it."

What do you think about live music a Grump's?