Photo Via Daddy's Soul Food & Grille - daddyssoulfoodandgrille.com
Daddy's Soul Food & Grille sign
Daddy's Soul Food & Grille (754 N. 27th St.) has endured since 2014 at a prominent location with a family-intensive menu (specials and product categories are named for Daddy Bennie Smith's wife and six children) and quality food. The catfish I had at Daddy's a while back was sweetly buttery, just crunchy with its cornmeal coating to provide delicious contrast to the flaky flesh within.
Daddy's also features, rare as it is among Milwaukee soul food eateries, breakfast. The morning meal is currently offered on Fridays and Saturdays until 1 p.m. And breakfast was the motivation for my latest visit. Though no breakfast menu is listed on Daddy's website, its Friday lunch and dinner special offers a clue as to one of its breakfast entrees: salmon croquettes.
Though those fish patties are presently elusive at many Milwaukee restaurants, their intermittent availability in the city’s soul food joints goes back at least into the mid-1980s. The late Sportsman's Lounge proffered them back in the day. And in the '90s, Sir Desmond's was a reliable destination for what are, essentially, seafood meatloaf.
My first experience with Daddy's take on salmon croquettes wasn’t disappointing. Grill marks covered each side of the freshly prepared morsels, even if one of the two was misshapen in such a way as to appear t was birthing another croquette. If that's part of Daddy's familial charm, I'll take it.
What the mixtures of fish, breadcrumbs and what looked like red bell pepper lacked in visual uniformity, they mare than made up for in their taste, not at all “fishy,” but fulsome and hearty in its mouthfeel. The croquettes' tandem textures of crispy outsides and softness beneath brought back fond memories of Milwaukee soul food salmon breakfasts past and anticipation of returning to Daddy's for more of the same.
Another reason for returning for Daddy's croquettes is to give its friendly staff the opportunity to offer its full complement of condiments and side order substitutes. They presented me with two kinds of hot sauce—a bottled Mexican variety and a Cajun type in packets—but tartar sauce would have also accentuated the meal's featured course.
Hashbrowns, a biscuit made from scratch and grits come with the croquettes. For the latter, a sugar dispenser was placed on my table; that was a new way for me to consume corn hominy, but one I would revisit. And sugar mixed with one or both of those hot sauces? It's like sweet-and-spicy Latin American candy in porridge form. Who knew?
The hashbrowns maintained a balance of crunchiness and tenderness without being greasy. That may be the ideal way to prepare that kind of potato side dish, but in order to mitigate the carbohydrate load, I'd have substituted a fruit cup, sold at the same price as the 'browns when purchased ala carte. There was no fruit this time, but I was assured next time will be different; and I'll call before stopping by to make doubly sure.
Those are relatively minor quibbles, though, compared to the joy of knowing one of my favorite breakfasts maybe had in so tasty an iteration at such an easily accessible location—if only for two days a week. Were Daddy Smith to offer his morning offerings more often, he could spread that much more nourishing happiness.
