If you’re looking for a café with integrity where the food is good, the price reasonable and the atmosphere simple, relaxed and relaxing, the Beerline Café is entirely worth the hunt. This all-vegetarian restaurant, open mornings through evenings seven days a week, is named for its neighborhood where a railroad spur called the Beerline B once carried supplies along the Milwaukee River to the city’s historic breweries. You’ll find its welcoming patio at the western end of a condo building on Humboldt Avenue and Commerce Street. Or you could get there by walking eastward down the peaceful Riverwalk from Lakefront Brewery or the Marsupial Bridge, or westward through the extraordinary river restoration from the pedestrian bridge at Caesar’s Park.
Crepes, savory or sweet, are the specialty, as well as the café’s unique crepe variant, the cromelette, an omelet made on the crepe maker with a variety of carefully prepared and creative fillings. Toasted paninis, luscious seasonal salads and soups and heavenly house dishes such as the pesto mac ’n’ cheese or the mushroom barley burger (both entirely vegan and entirely delicious) make up much of the rest of the menu. Most dishes, including every crepe and cromelette, can be ordered vegan and/or gluten free. Seductive smoothies made with whole, skim, soy, almond or rice milk and unusual combinations of fruits and seasonings are meals in themselves.
There are drinks for each day, hour and mood. Stone Creek coffee and Rishi Tea concoctions come in every popular coffee house variety. Enjoy red or white wines on tap or bottled, local craft beers, mimosas made with Zardetto Cuvee and fresh squeezed orange juice or beermosas made with Milwaukee Brewing Company’s Booyah Apricot Saison. There are fresh juices and juice blends, astonishments like coconut water, tapuat with bee pollen, honey and ginger, and boxed fresh water to go.
Owner Michael Allen opened the cafe in September 2015. “I was in non-profit work with Milwaukee’s Public Allies leadership development program,” he explains. “I traveled a lot for that job and because I like crepes, I’d go to creperies in other cities. There was nothing like that here. I’ve been a vegetarian all my adult life and Milwaukee has very few completely vegetarian restaurants. It’s a meat-and-potatoes town so this was kind of a risk.”
Allen also designed the interior of the airy, sun-filled, glass-walled room. The handsome tables, chairs, window seats and serving area were made from reclaimed barn wood by an Amish carpenter in northern Wisconsin. The piece de resistance is a living wall of local plants with its own irrigation system. In addition to the healthy food (which doesn’t taste like health food), less visible efforts like low-flow faucets, waste-reduction practices, compostable carryout containers and LED lighting won the café the only three-star rating in Milwaukee from the national Green Restaurant Association for sustainable practices. Four stars is tops and Allen is headed there.
Gentleness, care and something like a laid-back attentiveness characterize the place. Together, separately and with other friends including a discriminating 40-year vegetarian who adored it, we’ve sampled a broad range of the menu items and liked them all a lot.
Beerline Café
2076 N. Commerce St.
414-265-5644
$-$$
OD. GF. Vegan.
