The problem with any trip to New York, aside from the cost, a frustrating inability to eat everything you want to eat, and again, the cost, is that no matter where you live, inevitably you’ll have to come home to your city's comparative small town-ness. Eventually you will get back, and eventually you will wake up hungry once again, somehow find new funds to go out to eat, and with brow furrowed, hoping for inspiration, peruse a list of the top restaurants in town.
You might happen upon the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Top 30 Restaurants, Ranked. At which point you'd be met with the usual, yearly suspects: your James Beard nominees, your spendy suburban steakhouse, trendy hotel fare. In short, you'll get the old school, parochial food journalism.
But then you might flash back to that last day in Brooklyn, where you found yourself ambling up the avenue of Puerto Rico, toward East Williamsburg, past a Russian bar, an Indian restaurant, countless pizza places, toward a Lebanese joint named Wafa's. A spot with mom cooking, son prepping, some kind of tertiary uncle schlepping meat back to the kitchen from the rear of a double-parked Cherokee, with wafts of steaming kafta, plumes of roasting eggplant, spits spinning toward infinity with lamb and Middle Eastern promise, pungent, garlicky homemade hot sauce, and the most juice-spurting of chicken shawerma. It's the spot that would rightly make you wonder why you fretted for so long over reservations at Peter Luger Steakhouse—with button-down aesthetic, comically brusque waiters, instagramming tourists, loud mouth brokers seemingly still high on the last viewing of Wall Street. In short, Wafa's is the kind of spot to remind of the magic of going out to eat, of digging for another world.
Maybe it's just a penchant for the esoteric. For finding one's own hidden gems. But it gets at a deeper issue: even the New York Times' stodgy Pete Wells, in his Top New York Restaurants of 2016 piece, recognizes that "the growing distance between the very rich and everybody else is replicated, in miniature and with less alarming implications, in the city’s restaurant scene." Then he gives thanks for the fact he's able to include three places in his Top 10 that "bowed to more moderate budgets."
Now, with the rise of egalitarian treatment of low and high food, with the revelatory genius of Jonathan Gold, with the likes of Eater’s Essential New York Restaurants placing hipster pizza and downhome barbecue alongside the likes of old guard’s like Luger, it seems that, away from haute cuisine and fine French, the valet-level expectations, real food is elsewhere. We're past the point where we should confuse how the mouth feels with a price tag, with professional courtesies and hot hostesses, with overpriced wine, with a need to iron your pants, with some kind of perceived taste quality corollary to the bill amount.
Sure, I've never been to Sanford, but neither have the vast majority of Milwaukeeans. For the rest, there might exist a counter list, for the everyman, for the family, for midweek, for those who prefer steak tacos to steak houses. For those who believe the spice of life is, well, spice itself. And who think the best cook is still grandma, or, in a pinch, mom.
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C-Viche
Most good restaurants have a signature dish. Here we have mouthfeel dreams of at least four: the anticuchos—beef hearts, though that sounds much less romantic—are as juicy and earthy as steak bites get, even for the offal-squemaish; the esquites, easily the best corn dish in town, are served off the cob with a velvety queso crumble, citrusy kick, and creamy, gently spiced chipotle finish; patatas bravas, fried potatoes with homemade chorizo and indefinably spiced rocoto sauce, have all of the salt, grease and crispy carb happiness as is responsible for a before meal dish; and pork beans, whose addictive, lardy creaminess goes full Magritte: by comparison, every previously encountered refried legume seems like it was maybe not a representative of beans at all.
And these are just the apps and sides. Kick everything up with aji verde sauce—a serrano pepper and mayo marriage of spice and texture to float away on. Wash it all down with citrus-bursting caipirinhas or yolky pisco sours. And only now, finally, can you get down to entrees. The lomo saltado, a beef tenderloin sauteed with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and cilantro makes even the best steak frites offering seem suburban and soulless. Or there’s the tostadas, with deeply smoky, spiced chicken, topped by generous crema and avocado. There’s also the matter of their eponymous seafood stuff, fresh and lime-zinging. Actually it’s a bit of everything. The pan-Latin smorgasbord is equally good for taco Tuesday or Sunday brunch, for day drinking with a Peruvian spiced ham sandwich or for a churrasco date night. C-Viche combines all things into a soul all it's own, of the sort and quality not even approached anywhere else in town.
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Points East Pub
Every sports bar in America does wings. Every gastropub too. Not to mention most Asian places, many Mexican spots and the five convenient Milwaukee-area Wingstops. Yet, few seem to realize or care that the majority are doing America’s favorite snack wrong. Crispy—they are supposed to be crispy. Points East not only does them right, they make them completely their own. Fried, then sauced, then grilled, they get crispy caramelized, with heat and drip from the sauce and a smoky grilled essence, a black-flecked char and tender juiciness combined in happy, hot union. It's an inspired riff, made all the better by a stubborn realization that one million flavor sauces does not a good wing make. They do them one way. Their way. Every order at Points is a tasty testament to specialization, to ignoring the masses to stay true to yourself. It's also the best chicken wing this Buffalo native has ever tasted outside of the motherland.
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Tsunami Taqueria Y Marisco
2001 W Lincoln Ave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53215Forget steak tacos. The tacos al carbon from this sliver of a corner dive on Lincoln are so much deeper, richer in smoky charcoal taste, smacking of fire-love and something ephemeral, that the asada offerings from, say, the beloved Guanajuato, might as well be Chipotle.
It calls back to an older country, an older time, and it’s a reminder that just when you think you know Mexican food, there’s another layer, another foodstuff. Of course it helps that they also have maybe the best version of that ubiquitous Southside sauce-creamy, avocado-touched, emulsified serrano salsa. This alone might make an El Paso-seasoned offering taste great. But then you can round out a taco order with arguably the best chorizo in Milwaukee—crumbly and porky and guajillo-and-garlic-noted. Or try the stewed beef desebrada. Or opt for a fish entree coated in the spicy, buttery diablo sauce, or really anything from the massive seafood section. Actually the latter can be sampled just by sitting down—a ceviche dip is gratis, with warm chips and two popping table salsas, and is slung your way as soon as you get comfortable. It’s a portent of a spot most generous in all ways.
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La Merenda
Milwaukee’s original proprietor of the small plate, farm-to-table aesthetic is still the best. The warm, colorful joint is hip, while holding claim as O.G. of the Walker’s Point foodie scene. It is under the buzz radar, yet always bustling. You can get Panang curry next to seafood escabeche. Merenda is everything and yet completely it’s own. Personal favorites: chipotle pork tostadas, goat quesadillas, Argentinian beef, patatas bravas con chorizo. That’s a lot, and it disregards half the menu, half the world.
There’s also the likes of shrimp masala, veal potstickers, pork belly crepes. If that’s too much taste mileage for one meal, bring everything back home with the most essential menu offering: goat cheese curds. LaClare Farms cheese nuggets with a chorizo cream sauce and crostini. It’s exotic ‘Sconnie, it is fat guy foodie-dom, it is a gold label bar snack. And, like most of the menu, it is pure taste bliss.
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Pho Hai Tuyet
204 W. Layton Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53207This airport-adjacent dive would warrant a top-five spot solely on the bahn mi: crisped, juicy pork scrags, equal parts flattop char and chewy, spiced and greasy, bedded in a pillowy French baguette that is pleasantly slicked with garlicky mayo, topped with a bursting bounty of cilantro, chopped carrots, and fresh, seedy jalapeno. That is but a list though, and the product is far greater than the sum of the parts. Meaty, salty, saucy, bready and tangy, the sandwich is a considerably girthed taste torpedo, almost too big, and full of consistent, with-everything bites. It’s the type of offering to render the other 70 some menu items as afterthought, and easily takes the title as best sandwich in town. But, it is in the name, so a responsible eater should at least sample some pho.
Of the offerings, I prefer the meatball varietal, with baseball-sized orbs of spongy beef, floating languorously in rich, salty broth. Top everything with chunky garlic chili sauce, wash it all down with a Thai iced coffee, and don’t question the weird calculus of milk, sugar, and condensed milk, the surprising ability of a decidedly non-coffee shop to craft such a satisfying caffeine concoction. It gets at the kind of intangible, comforting charms found in the likes of far-flung Queens, or in a wistful Jonathan Gold article. And it’s just kitty corner from our own General Mitchell.
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San Giorgio Pizzeria Napoletana
Whatever VPN (Vera Pizza Napoletana) means or doesn’t mean, whether it is adherence to the grandest Southern Italian tradition, or merely a marketing ploy, this is the best Neapolitan pizza in town. The neighbor of Calderone Club is a long overdue Downtown dinner spot, equal parts relaxed and classy, inspired and traditional, perfect for an in-the-know date night or a before Bucks game snack. But the background barely matters. Even the sight of the slick from-Italy oven, the how-the-sausage-is-made pizza bar, or the toppings themselves—smoked provola cheese or bufalo mozz, soppresata or Genoa salami or prosciutto—should be afterthought. It’s about flour-meets-flame: the doughy, charry, leopard-skinned crust is a bed of appetite dreams. A perfect canvas. A paradigm of the simple, somehow transcendent joys of wood-fired ‘za.
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The Vanguard
It’s hard to imagine Bay View before Vanguard. The bar is the meat of the coolest neighborhood in the city. But it’s even harder to imagine Milwaukee before Vanguard. In a land known for sausages, the city had no true sausage spots. Now the likes of the “Salazar” (Hungarian sausage with cream cheese, cheddar, and bbq sauce) and the “Kilig” (an Asian-leaning pork sausage with hoisin, soy and chili sauce) are household names, while the Duck BLT and the velveeta-draped Dirty Burger—yes, a sausage burger—are pigout game-changers. Co-owner Jim McCann brings Michelin-star pedigree—he is also part owner of Chicago’s Longman & Eagle—and big city, Hot Doug’s-ish inspiration toward a cheffy, artistic approach to tubed meats. The menu changes frequently, a neat analogy for the ‘hood. But sociological analysis here seems beside the point, Vanguard is simply a killer neighborhood corner bar that is also the ultimate fat guy food emporium.
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Odd Duck
It's easy to want to exclude Odd Duck, what with the hip zip code and clichéd “small plate” aesthetic and rustic motif by now embraced by every restaurant ever. But the Duck somehow manages to sidestep hipster tropes and attitude and maintain the feel of a neighborhood joint—one that is endlessly friendly, surprisingly affordable, and so damn interesting, time and again. Short rib carnitas, lamb kofta and Hungarian peppers stuffed with spiced beef are some recent highlights, alongside the always-extensive charcuterie and cheese plate offerings. These are also some of the stiffest, craftiest of craft cocktails around. That very statement deserves an eye roll, yes. But every trip here reminds that trend fatigue is no match for quality, care and execution.
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Guadalajara
901 S 10th St, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204Behold the power of the mighty arbol. The innocuous looking little dried chile that most novice Mexican chefs have a barely-cracked bag of in the back of a cabinet from that one time a too-hot Bayless salsa recipe called for them is the MVP (Most Valuable Pepper) at this old school haunt. Primarily, in the bistec en chile de arbol. Tender skirt steak is drowned in the devilish red sauce. Creamy and creeping, it comes with a little voice in your ear that urges you to keep eating. It’s self-preservation, because the burn sets in when you stop. This is probably the best spicy dish in town—but, like, beads of sweat from a workout spicy. There’s also a request-only arbol-based salsa, perfect for taking everything else on the menu to the same Dante-ish level. Speaking of everything else, from the table salsas on up, it is solid, and slung with a smile in a Walker’s Point corner joint that feels like your Grandma’s basement bar that was finished sometime in the late ‘70s.
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The Tandem
1848 W Fond Du Lac Ave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53205Socially, it is the most important restaurant in Milwaukee. When Caitlin Cullen left Bavette to strike out on her own, she eschewed Walker’s Point and Bay View. Instead she set up shop in Lindsay Heights, the oft-overlooked West Side neighborhood with a near 50% poverty rate. She asked the community what type of dishes they would like to see on the menu of her new venture. She decided to focus on hiring exclusively from within said neighborhood. She sought to go further, banking on her Detroit-area teaching background, to offer extensive kitchen training to new employees, even those with no experience, hoping her spot is a kind of launching pad for the restaurant industry within the entire city.
But that refreshing do-gooder-ism isn’t even why it makes the list. It’s the fried chicken. The Memphis style is impossibly crispy, red-flecked, crumbly, succulent underneath, and refreshingly not just in the hip vain of Tennessee’s other chicken city. There’s also a golden Georgian variation, and the likes of smoked kielabasa, burrata, chicken liver mousse or simple Coney Island dogs. At the bar there is also a sense of good will, good times and a good reason to get fat and leave a huge tip.
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Palomino
Nobody seems to care much about Palomino anymore, and that’s fine. That means less wait for the impossibly juicy griddled burger, for the spicy pimento cheese, the fried bologna, or the most satisfying, consistent soul food dish in town: the hot chicken sandwich. It’s a crispy thigh, slick with mayo, popped with homemade pickles and tangy homemade hot sauce, housed in a soft but sturdy brioche. Top it with more of the hot sauce, wash it down with whichever double IPA is fresh—there always seems to be a new one. Palomino has no more bingo, or down home aww shucks, curds-and-High Life-and-Packers game vibe. But now the curds are exquisite, big and gooey and smartly battered, indicative of a food level that is vastly improved. Every meal here, even when it’s half empty on a Friday night, seems to remind that in life, things change, that that’s not bad, and going out to eat should be about quality and taste—not nostalgia.
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AMY DUONG
Zarletti
Every legit big city downtown should have one old school pasta place fit for the conjuring in that Billy Joel song. Zarletti is our pick, though from the house ragu of the day to the house ravioli of the day it’s clearly dedicated to far more than a bottle of red, a bottle of white. The Crostini Misti—crunchy bread topped with either roasted pulled lamb, mortadella pate, or a piquant peperonata—is appetizer genius. Decadent, especially considering, if you’re doing it right, it should be setting the place for either the ossobuco or the veal in lemon pan sauce. You’re worth it, sometimes. Sure, here, there are always suits, valet parking, and the aforementioned feel of special occasion. But the sliver of a bar always feels laid back enough, especially for a solo meal and chat with the bartender, and the al fresco dining is no big deal in the simple fashion of the way they do it in the old country.
Wherever you happen to fit in, I stand by the idiom that you should judge all Italian chefs and restaurants by their carbonara. Simple, satisfying, with popping pancetta, a hint of onion, generous Pecorino, it’s the al dente chewiness of consistent comfort, of fat and cream, egg and cheese, of just the right amount of craft and downhome-ness. No matter Zarletti’s Milwaukee Street location or that Porsche parked in front, at it’s best it slings this perfected peasant food.
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El Tucanazo
3261 South 13th Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53215This splinter of space on 13th Street feels like a roadside spot somewhere in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. At least according to someone from there. To me it feels like a favorite hidden secret. Colorful and dingy, all meat smoke and spatula crack on the flattop and Tecate swill and futbol on the TV, it’s the epitome of the conclusion of Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain: “heaven is a Mexican restaurant.” We go back to the bistec en salsa verde, the steak treading, but going toward drowning, in its salty, sheeny bath of peppery, onion-and-cilantro-chocked verde sauce. But there’s so much: marinated pastor, deeply smoky cochinita pibil, greasy chorizo, a satisfying chipotle salsa. Or, in other terms, they have the basics, done right, with passion and flair, a huge menu, some attitude, and a consistent serving of a saucy, spicy, Southside slice of paradise.
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Anodyne Coffee and Pizza (Bay View)
Whether it’s our town’s coffee king or not is a personal opinion. But Anodyne’s groundbreaking nitro cold brew is, objectively, the best caffeine offering in Milwaukee. Frothy, bold, creamy, it’s the game-changer every summer morning deserves, like starting your day with a well-poured Guinness. Speaking of which, they also have beer, which follows a need necessitated by pizza. Owner Matt McClutchy followed his backyard passion of making ‘za to a from-Naples, top-shelf Stefano Ferrara wood-burning oven that is the heart of the shop’s Bay View location. The few-years development of the crust, from spotty, to respectable, to occasionally-perfect, shows the art, the practice, the tasty rhythm within making a great pizza. Now, with pies like the white sauce and sausage Bianca, the sopressata and chili flaked “Spice” or a traditional margherita, it seems fully astride, to the point it’s easy to wonder: is Anodyne a great coffee shop with pizza, or a great pizzeria with coffee? The answer is yes.
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Kopp's Custard (Greenfield)
Kopp’s is the Tom Petty of Milwaukee restaurants. Universally beloved, everyone agrees on the All-American satisfaction level herein, even if they only think about it once a summer or so. The old school burger and ice cream joint is also a highly professional pleasure-bringer. Everything is done swift, smart and proficiently, like the solos you know, the way you want to hear them—the beefy, smoky wafts hitting you from the parking lot, tapping into some protein-craving primality. Whatever your patty base, customization is the key to the lock of one’s personality. We like goopy mayo, running with hot sauce, fried onions, and jalapenos. We also need regular therapy. We also prefer a double, and how it takes gluttony as far as is advisable, stopping just short of State Fair freakout foodstuffs. Like the best of old school burgers, there is always an almost unappetizing amount of grease. That almost is key. Because then there’s taste space to wash it all down with a sundae.
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Tomkens, FB
Tomken's Bar & Grill
8001 W Greenfield Ave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53214Points East-West. The fry-sauce-grill method perfected on Jackson Street has a spiritual home in this ‘Stallis haunt—the wings are similarly charry, crispy, still-saucy, ever-tender, with Frank’s Red Hot-hued tang scorched right into the skin, smacking of salt and vinegar and ephemeral tongue burn. It’s an honorable understudy, an apt homage to Buffalo—the city that’s made a spiritual art out of second place, and another inspired take on everyone’s favorite bar snack, one that maybe constitutes enough of a presence to deem this “Milwaukee style.” Maybe. The spot also says “Friendly Fried Chicken” right on the marquee, and indeed it comes lovingly wrapped in napkins like a steaming newborn, maintaining juice and fryer essence. It’s really indicative of a spot that takes bar fare seriously, in a city where it’s far too easy to phone in your burger and fried curd offerings.
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Restaurante Juquilita
2344 S 27th St, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53215Another testament to the layers upon layers of Mexican cuisine is the layers upon layers of flavor within a well-made tlayuda. It’s a thin, crunchy, lightly fried tortilla pocket lovingly stuffed with refried beans, queso fresco, avocado, salsa, and your choice of meat - which should be pork. It’s a Oaxacan specialty, hitting all flavor points, satisfaction spots, orgiastically combining everything your mouth may want to feel at the same time. There’s crunch, grease, a savory pie-like delivery system, creaminess, fatty bean smear, gooey, hot cheese, charry grilled meat, plenty of bright pepper pop. Top bites in rotation with salsas that are in turn fresh and bright, silky and hot, smoky. It’s one of the few tlayudas in town, perfect for nights when you can’t decide on Mexican or pizza. Don’t wait for tomorrow, have both now.
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El Canaveral
2501 W. Greenfield Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204Still another way to fit everything in there at once, to rebel against refinement, to embrace hedonism in bite form, is the Mexico City specialty known as the alambre. Essentially a Mexican stir fry, Canaveral’s specialty is a pork-on-pork-on-steak skillet, with crisped asada, salty chorizo, and chopped bacon, topped with cilantro, onion, tomatoes, jalapenos, and an irresponsibly generous layer of goopy melted queso. It’s a greasy, heady, make-your-own taco mash. It’s also what your hangover hunger stomach dreams about, and can be topped by salsas that show off the kitchen’s penchant for emulsification. Creamy, spicy, with habenero or jalapeno, it’s a table sauce trio that shows the oft-overlooked fact that texture is one of the most important aspects of salsa. Also of note is the fact that Canaveral is the rare kind of Mexican dive: a warm-wooded, old school Milwaukee bar room you’d actually want to hang at. Really, for an alambre, we’d probably want to hang anywhere.
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Thai Bar-B-Que
3417 W. National Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53214With the likes of Thai Lotus, Bamboo, Vientiane and the salsa bar at Fiesta Garibaldi’s Chicken Palace, Silver City’s strip of National Avenue is rife with faraway spices and exotic appetite options. But Thai Bar-B-Que remains the regional monarch. The menu is a bounteous smorgasbord, bouncing between lovingly grilled meat, and spicy, aromatic stews. The city’s best soup, in highly meaty, salty, noodle-laced, comforting pho form, can be sided by impossibly succulent barbecue chicken on a stick. Larb can be had alongside beef in an oyster sauce.
Try anything with a meatball, or, better yet, a pork ball. And certainly get something “marinated and grilled to perfection”—not an empty promise. Chase the heat with a soothing tea, or sugary iced coffee. It’s a daunting food list, begging of repeat visits, adventurous orders and offers a sensory gamut for the nose as much as the mouth. By fortune cookie time, it feels like an experience on par with a friend’s tip for an in-the-know spot in Astoria. More nuts-and-bolts though, with all the heartening, brothy heat and zing, it’s at least the best winter restaurant in town.
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Quiote
5814 W. Bluemound Road, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53213It’s not a Southside hidden gem, it’s far from the seediness of taqueria row whose presence would make it feel a diamond in the rough. But from an unassuming corner of Bluemound, Quiote yields unparalleled fish tacos. Whitefish, liberally smacked with ancho chile, grilled into soft, saucy nuggets, is housed in a double tortilla home - one corn, one flour, durability and flavor, authenticity and a touch all their own. Chipotle aioli, pico de gallo, crumbled queso fresco and lettuce round out the flavor packages, lending depth, sauciness, and a resounding gardeny pop. There are also deep, dark moles, reeking of smoke and so many spices and all the kitchen work nobody wants or can do at home. The place is really a tiny flavor slice of Oaxaca, a state known as the richest of Mexican cooking culture. One could even make a case for the fish entree dishes—whitefish or shrimp in a Veracruz tomato sauce or a garlic butter concoction. But it’s the fish tacos that continually drag us west. I’ve never been to San Diego, but I’ve been to Jacobus Park.
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Don Lucho Carnitas
565 W Lincoln Ave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53207Of all the life lessons Mexican cuisine has in store, maybe the most important, the most ephemeral, resides in carnitas. The slow-cooked pork dish is traditionally served on weekends as a reward for the week’s work. Could there be a better reward than pork bits, slicked in a fatty sheen, soaked in the residue of a long hot bath in lard, being hacked fresh from a pig heap by a little guy with a big knife?
For in-the-moment tacos we might actually prefer the Don’s pastor—big, saucy chunks of seasoned pork, with hefty onion and cilantro essence. Yet it’s really about what happens later. There are two thick, beautiful salsas - one red, deeply smoky and piquant and a verde that bursts with jalapeno freshness. Get one of each to go, along with a half pound of carnitas. The key to happiness is something to look forward to. Especially if you can look forward to later on in the night, the moment of standing at the refrigerator, dunking lard-fried pork into awesome sauce, forgetting Monday will ever come again.
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Taco Los Gemelos
1116 W Historic Mitchell St, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204Trompos are painfully hard to come by—expensive to keep heated, a pain by which to placate the health department, underappreciated by the masses, there are but a few in town. Of these Lebanese-inspired Mexican spits, Gemelos is the best. And even they only fire it up once a week. It’s worth it to find that day at this unassuming strip on 11th and Mitchell, for the fleshy, pink, lightly crisped, salty, and vaguely Middle Eastern-spiced meat. It’s an intriguing slab—a porky canvas for maybe the ultimate tag team of salsas in town—there’s a red hot habenero emulsification, full of bite and a little smoke, along a chilled out, creamy jalapeno number. It’d be hard to have a bad meal with such good sauces. But we’ve cycled the menu to make sure. Highlights include a comparatively light, still flavorful chorizo, and moist, tender arrachera. On non-trompo days, they do a different pastor—a marinated, slow-roasted pork. It’s a morsel mouthful of a reminder that seasoned pork is still seasoned pork. And that the cooking of Oaxaca—where the owner hails from—is the best in the world.
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Alexis Amenson
Glorioso’s Italian Market
1011 E. Brady St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202The hardware store is a brunch destination, Mimma’s is sleeps with the fishes and Glorioso’s maybe lost their heart by crossing Brady Street into bigger, brighter, cleaner Whole Foods-ified digs. But when the prosciutto hits the bread, nothing else on Brady Street matters. The “Human Torch”—with calabrese, capocollo, provolone, hot pepper spread and hot muffalata mix, is a big, spicy burner, a next-day-regret-bringer in the best sense. It’s a personal favorite, but near anything else is equal as an exemplary butcher paper-wrapped, oil-dripping, sheeny, cured meat lunch slayer.
From the chicken parm to the meatball to the sausage to the muffalatta, these are the kind of simple, soulful, spicy sandwiches fit for a guy in a hard hat sitting on a beam, for a road trip, to pick up and stick in the fridge as long as you’re stopping to pick up some guanciale from the meat department. Despite the aesthetic upgrade, Glorioso’s does harken a simpler time, like the days when the likes of Paulie Walnuts could sit out front with his tanning mirror and not wonder if the East Side was losing it’s soul.
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Crazy Water
Before Walker’s Point was everything, and probably after it’s had its moment too, there was and will be Crazy Water. Equal parts class and friendliness, small plate and entree, oysters or grilled octopus, hanger steak or short ribs. It seems to nail farm-to-table buzziness and comforting classics, in a vintage tavern with a laughably petite corner kitchen, and a vibe that makes you feel like you should drink wine and make friends with your neighboring table. While it is essentially a seafood restaurant, a land-focused eater could make a feast of just the starters: Berkshire pork belly, Sichuan pork dumplings, peach glazed baby back ribs, a burrata grilled cheese. Just make sure to at some point sample the Crazy Shrimp - shrimp, chorizo sausage, tomatoes, cilantro, asian bbq sauce, and jalapeno cornbread muffins. It’s a new genre of dish that somehow feels like it’s always been there. Much like the restaurant itself.
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Chef Paz Restaurant
9039 W National Ave, City of West Allis, Wisconsin 53227Peru-its cultural heart a melange of Inca, Africa, Spain, China, Japan, Italy, its topographical makeup a hybrid of coast, highlands and jungle—is home of the most diverse cuisine on the planet. So a spot with a French sounding name in the heart of West Allis seems apt to hint at the spectrum. On the simple side are traditional empanadas, kicked up by a creamy, garlicky green hot sauce, or a trio of limey ceviches. Things start to get interesting around the yuccas though—you can have them boiled, topped with an Andean cream cheese sauce, or fried and stuffed with cheese and sirloin. Entrees bound between the “jungle” - the smoked pork cecina; to the Latin likes of paella; to the “Chef Paz”—a bean pancake with strips of juicy tenderloin, sautéed on “high flames” with onion, tomatoes, and wine, topped with a fried egg; to a Peru-Chinese fusion form of fried rice with shellfish and a creole sauce. The latter is described as “aphrodisiacal,” which instantly makes this the most swaggering menu in town. Wash anything down with a pisco sour or a chicah morada —a purple corn, cinnamon, clove glass of alchemy—and sit back, giving wonder to how such sexy fare can feel so homey.
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Merriment Social
They have beer cheese soup dumplings, al pastor and pork belly on top of garlic fries, cheese curds with herbed breadcrumbs and fontina, a chicken and waffle dish sided with sriracha-beer gastrique—just to name a few of the elevated-leaning bar fare dishes that read like a menu designed by Guy Fieri fresh off a semester studying in France. With that the spot that’s never been able to sustain a business seems like it’s finally found a groove, as a cool garage-door-open summer patio, fit for Third Ward happy hour-ing or a quick pregame beer outside before Summerfest.
Still, the most merriment really stems from the burger. Thin double patties are constructed with cheek, chuck, short rib, and brisket, topped with house-churned American cheese, applewood bacon, house sauce that swirls mayo, mustard and bbq sauce. If Kopp’s is rock, this is Bach. Note the half-melted cheese, reaching just the perfect goo point as you smush down on the buns—it’s indicative of a mindful flavor meld, like everything was carefully calculated, ratios balanced with a bubble level, the package as close to the meat-cheese-sauce-bun apotheosis as possible. There’s no better “craft” burger in Milwaukee.
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27
Amilinda
315 E Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202Chef Gregory Leon combines the many roots of his existence—Oklahoma, Venezuela, San Francisco, a deep love of the food of Spain and Portugal—into a singular, precise, limited-menu vision in his first full restaurant. There are really only a few things to eat on any given night, so it is with a certain amount of trust that a diner must embark upon the hip Wisconsin Ave eatery. Yet just one meal can teach you to believe in his artistic yet comforting flair. There are the simple fall time pleasures of a smoked trout salad; a skirt steak, plopped in romesco sauce, pepped by shishitos; a pork chop, the tender hunk bathing in adobo sauce, sided with broccoli raab, and, because Leon clearly wants us to be happy, linguica. It’s a buzzy, sceney spot to spend a night downtown, and Amilinda reminds that that can sometimes still be a soulful thing.
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Anmol
An underrated cuisine, on an overlooked strip, a prodigious menu, and very few Caucasians—Anmol checks all the boxes for ethnic food greatness potential. Pakistani fare doesn’t have the same sticker appeal as neighboring Indian, but this unassuming spot on Mitchell can open eyes and appetite horizons. There are standard makhanis, curries and samosas. But consider there’s an entire section devoted to mutton. And there are deep cut offerings like qeema naan stuffed with ground beef, buttery, tomatoey chicken sixty-five, goat brain curry. We often find our way back to the rolls—the seekh kabob roll, specifically, with minced beef, onions, chutney—and to the fact you can judge any restaurant by how they fry chicken. Here the chicken pakora are delectable, marinated nuggets of fryer heaven - crisped, juicy, salty, they are dangerously addictive, even without the zesty chutney.
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29
Benji's Deli & Restaurant (Shorewood)
4156 N. Oakland Ave, Village of Shorewood, Wisconsin 53211If Kopp’s is Petty, Benji’s might be Springsteen. It’s a beloved joint of a very specific time and place, of a very certain type of everyday, everyman heroism. And people that love it really love it. In fact all Shorewood-ers seem to be regulars, either favoring the benedict-type breakfasts, or the definitive Milwaukee corned beef, best sampled in Reuben form. If it’s not an every week type of stop, it’s best to combine both pre-night meals: try a corned beef hash and cheddar omelet, or the Hoppel Poppel—scrambled eggs blended with crisped potatoes and fried salami. It’s a cool old school diner from before old school diners were cool, and it’s the saltiest, cure-iest corner of comfort—the kind that piques neighborhood jealousy.
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Jake's Delicatessen
1634 W. North Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53205Instead, you may, understandably, prefer Milwaukee’s best pastrami: salty, consummating tender pink and charry black, dominated by salt, stacked in a thin-sliced tower, topped by swiss, housed in rye—the way it’s been done on North and 17th since 1955. Side it with a matzo ball soup, fatty and grandmotherish, and appreciate that you’re going beyond the common big deal food tropes, the so-called destination fare, sharing in history, while also supporting a largely forgotten neighborhood. Not that food should be about anything other than taste, but a little feel can go a long way.
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