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Did you have pickled herring and cannibal sandwiches on your family’s holiday table as a kid? Did you get hot ham and rolls every Sunday after church, or go out for custard to celebrate a good report card? If you’re a native Milwaukeean, chances are you either grew up with at least some of those traditions, or know plenty of friends and relatives who did.
The historical cultural food-related traditions of a region are called foodways, and southeastern Wisconsin has a plethora of unique examples. Some, like Friday fish fry and supper clubs, have a regional reach beyond Milwaukee, while others like hot ham and rolls and Danish kringle are confined to a much smaller geographic area. Chances are, unless you lived in another state for a time, you don’t even realize that Milwaukee’s foodways are so localized.
Sometimes it’s difficult to pin down exactly where or how a food tradition started. Sunday morning hot ham and rolls likely stemmed out of the Catholic practice of not eating before church, making for throngs of hungry folks wanting something quick in the late morning. A smart bakery owner on the South Side likely saw the potential in this untapped market, and began offering a simple cut of meat along with free rolls. People were hungry, they liked getting something free and a tradition was born that has never really taken hold anywhere else.
Other foodways can be traced back to very specific starting points, like frozen custard. Gilles was the first custard stand to open in Milwaukee back in 1938, likely having been influenced by custard’s inclusion in the Chicago World’s Fair. From there came Leon’s in 1942 and Kopp’s in 1950. While custard stands exist in other parts of the country thanks to Coney Island, Ted Drewes and Culver’s, nowhere else has a real culture of custard that supports as many stands as we do.
Thanks in part to Wisconsin’s drinking culture, we have a number of beverage traditions as well. Beer chasers with bloody marys are uniquely Wisconsin, and the restaurant format of burgers and bloodies is Milwaukee-based. The brandy old fashioned with muddled fruit would make bartenders gasp in other states. And while a Brooklyn-based bartender claims to have coined the term “pickleback” in 2006, we’ve all been chasing shots with pickle brine for as long as we can remember.
Milwaukeeans are lovers of tradition and familiarity, which is probably why we have such strong, unique foodways. We like to eat what our grandparents ate, at least to some extent, which is one reason why the Friday fish fry is still so popular, and bratwursts outsell hotdogs at Miller Park. Food traditions are one of the most intimate, relatable ways of connecting with our history, and deserve to be celebrated every chance we get.
