Courtesy of Eldr+Rime
Chef Gary Baca of Eldr+Rime
Wauwatosa is welcoming a new culinary addition to its existing offerings, as the Scandinavian-inspired restaurant Eldr+Rime is set to open at 2300 N. Mayfair Road in August 2020. Chef Gary Baca, who hails from Chicago, answered a few questions about this new restaurant.
Can you talk about your experience as a chef?
I’ve been doing this a little while—over 30 years. I have a lot of experience in wood fire cooking and wood ovens. I did a lot of Italian early on in my career, then, for 20 years, I was a chef and partner of a high-end steak and seafood restaurant in Chicago called Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab.
What is Eldr+Rime?
The name is a loose translation of Old Norse for fire and ice. The restaurant is a modern American restaurant with Scandinavian influence. The Scandinavian influence will show in the design—it's a very sleek and cozy, beautiful design—and in the menu and the food. Really takes inspiration and flavors techniques and even some fun twists on some classic Scandinavian dishes. The styles of cooking we have are like the name, fire and ice. We have a wood burning oven that will be utilized for a number of things, like flatbreads, and a beautiful wood burning grill. Both pieces are really the central show pieces of our open kitchen, where people will be able to view the cooking. Also front and center will be our raw bar, that will serve things like oysters on the half-shell. We will have beautiful bar with great cocktails that match and support some of the food and concepts.
Courtesy of Eldr+Rime
We have outdoor dining space and private dining rooms in the restaurant. We also have a gorgeous, beautiful event space upstairs that will be able to see up to 300 to 350 people with gorgeous, really beautifully designed 20-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s a really a spectacular event space, so we foresee a great location for weddings, as well as all sorts of business and social meetings. We happen to have a beautiful hotel attached to us as well, which is a 196-room Renaissance hotel, which is part of the Marriott portfolio, which we felt was a great fit for the concept to support the restaurant.
The project was initially developed by HKS Holdings, which is a Milwaukee-based development company, and it was designed with a consulting group out of Chicago, the Fifty/50 Restaurant Group, and Concord Hospitality. I was brought in by the Fifty/50 Group because they were familiar with my background in steaks, especially seafood and the wood fire aspect. In our years of experience and expertise with premium seafood, we have established a great relationship with purveyors of vendors and suppliers like Alaskan King Crab.
Can you give us a better idea of the dishes you’ll be offering?
A lot of the items we will serve will be seafood, for instance instead of a regular shrimp cocktail, we’ll serve cooked chilled shrimp. King Crab legs are cooked and chilled, and we’ll be doing the table-side presentation where we cut, break down and open the legs so they're super easy to eat. There will be different seasonal items in the summertime, like Pacific stone crab. We will feature a number of fresh fish, and some dishes are still being developed, but I will do something with either a Norwegian salmon or Faroe Islands salmon.
We’ll also have a section of steaks, for example a Filet Oscar classic, which is actually of Swedish origin, grilled filet served with asparagus and typically béarnaise—we’re doing a fun twist on the béarnaise. Another that we're thinking of is a big Tomahawk ribeye grilled on the wood grill, which is going to be a shared item. We've developed a really fantastic rye flatbread that'll be served with a local honey. We will have another number of other fun items to support the menu, like a great half chicken with Icelandic sea salt infused with wild Arctic thyme, which I get shipped directly from Iceland, and seasonal vegetable, farmers’ market vegetables. A typical appetizer in Sweden and Norway is a potato dumpling that can be breaded and sautéed and is typically filled with savory a filling, like mushrooms—being in Milwaukee, our stuffing will be cheese curds and served with chives and crême fraiche made in house.
With the grill and the oven, the flavor profile is unique. While we’re taking inspiration and cues from favorites and Scandinavian traditions and flavors, we’re twisting them up. Part of the goal is that the food is unique and flavorful but also approachable. I think that’s really important. We really want this restaurant to be a gathering place for the community.
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