Image Courtesy of Dairyland Old Fashioned Hamburgers on Facebook
“We believe Wisconsin is the best place on planet Earth to produce dairy,” enthuses chef Kurt Fogle.
A dedication to Wisconsin’s dairy heritage is what led Fogle, his wife, Katie Fogle, Kurt’s cousin Brent Fogle, and their friend Joe McCormick to launch Dairyland Old-Fashioned Hamburgers this past September at Common Cookhouse, a workspace for food entrepreneurs at 924 Rawson Avenue, in Oak Creek. There, people can order curbside pickup or delivery. They also have a food truck at Zocalo Food Park (636 S. Sixth St.).
Image courtesy of Dairyland OFH on Facebook
Dairyland’s menu is inspired by the traditional burger and frozen custard stands found throughout Wisconsin’s landscape. They’ve got several styles of hamburgers and cheeseburgers, along with fish and chicken sandwiches, fries, onion rings, scratch made cookies and brownies, and Sconnie favorites like fried cheese curds and Friday fish fry. Brunch, available Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., features several sausage and egg items. (Zocalo’s menu is slightly more limited.)
Custard and Mid-Way Bakery Coming Soon
The quartet of restaurant industry veterans will expand Dairyland with a stall at the new 3rd Street Market Hall, anticipated to open in September in the former Grand Avenue Mall/Shops of Grand Avenue. The business will rebrand as Dairyland Old-Fashioned Frozen Custard and Hamburgers to reflect the addition of the classic Wisconsin treat.
Kurt had studied with renowned pastry chefs and learned how to make ice cream under the guidance of Jacquy Pfeiffer, a master pastry chef and co-founder of the French Pastry School, in Chicago. “We have a rolling list of potential custard flavors,” says Kurt. “We really like to focus on things that are super-traditional and make the best versions of that.”
Next to the Dairyland stall will be Mid-Way Bakery, operated by Katie. Kurt says the name Mid-Way is tongue-in-cheek, inspired midway between the European pastry chef masters the Fogles trained under, while tugging on apron strings of their grandmothers. The full-service bakery will offer breads, croissants, Dutchies, cookies and brownies. In addition to bakery, they’ll have soup, grab-and-go sandwiches and salads.
Dairyland’s deal with the 3rd Street Market Hall includes managing four “hawker stalls” that will serve as incubators for local chefs and food entrepreneurs to experiment and launch food businesses under the Dairyland team’s guidance. “We want to help people get started and be the people that we needed 10 years ago,” Kurt says. (Watch future Eat/Drink columns for a feature on the 3rd Street Market Hall and its vendors.)
Supporting “America’s Dairyland”
Dairyland uses Clock Shadow Creamery cheese curds, as well as Grassland Butter, and bacon and sausage from Jones Dairy Farm. They’ve recently partnered with Hundred Acre, a new hydroponic farm on Milwaukee’s North Side. They source some items from V. Marchese food service distributor.
Although they source as many Wisconsin-made products as possible, McCormick notes that as a young restaurant, they don’t yet have the volume to exclusively source all products farmer-direct. “It’s hard for a dairy farm to work with us when we’re only buying 30 gallons of milk a week, but 200 to 300 gallons per week makes it easier for a famer to say yes.”
Kurt adds they want to make custard using only Wisconsin milk, but they’ve found that it’s not always easy to verify that. “Some of the milk companies are getting large. Sometimes we find the milk is packaged in Wisconsin, but they can’t tell us with 100 percent certainty that the milk is from Wisconsin dairy farmers.”
California currently leads Wisconsin as the nation’s top dairy producing state. More than 800 Wisconsin dairies closed in 2019 alone. “If you told anybody that Wisconsin was losing the battle with California in dairy production, it would ignite them—it ignited us. We can’t change the industry or change the world, but what we can do is make sure that everything we use comes from a highly curated source of Wisconsin farmers and vendors,” Kurt concludes.
For more information, visit ilovedairyland.com.
