‘Fish Fry Night Milwaukee’

German rivaled English as the spoken language of OldMilwaukee. Socialists ran a clean municipal government and Old World craftsmen built a city of impressive public buildings andpleasant neighborhoods of modest, well-crafted bungalows. A canopy of Dutchelms covered the streets. Once one of America’s most distinctive towns, anhonor shared with New Orleans and San Francisco, Milwaukee has lost some of itscharacter over the decades, becoming more like everyplace else and less likethe city of memory.

But not when it comes to food. Along with bratwurstand cheese, Milwaukeehas clung tenaciously to the fish fry. The documentary Fish Fry Night Milwaukee by local filmmaker Ron Faiola doesn’t seekto explain the meal’s enduring popularity but to show that it remains at theheart of the city’s culinary and social life. Signs of the old custom’spopularity are easy to find. On Fridays, traffic is backed around the corner atthe Packing House, which serves fish at a drive-through window. Many driverswait 20 minutes or more for their order. Revenue at the meat counter of Ray’sButcher in Greenfieldsank so low on Fridays that he was forced to compensate by adding a fish frycarryout.

“Ask Milwaukeeans for their favorite fish fry andyou’ll get five different answers,” says the film’s narrator, longtime WMSEannouncer Dewey Gill. Fish Fry NightMilwaukee is a tour of a cross-section ofvenues serving the city’s favorite comfort food, visiting everyplace fromGreendale’s St. Alphonsus Church, where the entire community pitches in toserve fish cafeteria style, to the annual South Shore Frolics, where deep-friedfish sizzles in the summer heat. Don’t want to leave the house? P. Demarini’sdelivers fish fries along with its famous pizza.

The settings are as diverse as the city’spopulation. Wegner’s St. Martins Inn is a barroom crammed with racingmemorabilia; Libiamo, originally built by Schlitz’s beer barons from remnantsof European castles, is an elegant ratskeller of dark oak. Erv’s Mug has beenin the same family for two generations and Hooligan’s operates from a buildingthat’s been on the same corner since the 1890s. Lakefront Brewery offers theclassic Old Milwaukee experience, with its own line of beer, family-styleseating in its cavernous hall and a performance by the Brewhaus Polka Kingsevery Friday. Café El Sol dresses up its fish in the fiery spices of Mexico andserves brightly colored margaritas as an alternative to beer.

The fish fry’s local origins, as the documentarypoints out, came from a convergence of Roman Catholicism and abundant lakeperch. Dwindling fish stock in the Great Lakes combined with globalization hasexpanded the menu to include haddock, cod from the cold waters of Iceland andcatfish from the deep South. Beer batter became popular in the 1960s. Mostrestaurants still serve the fish with the classic rye bread and coleslaw,french fries or potato pancakes, although here too variety has become morecommon. At El Sol, you can have your fish with Spanish rice and beans.

There are, however, boundaries that won’t becrossed. “No, we won’t do it,” says the owner of P. Demarini’s when asked abouta fish fry pizza. “It would be inedible.” Filled with local history and localfaces, Fish Fry NightMilwaukee is a charming and informativeexploration of food and community.

Fish Fry Night Milwaukee will be screened at2 and 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11, at Times Cinema. Faiola and Gill will be onhand to discuss the film.