Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire and king of foodie know-it-alls, suggests we’d do well to adopt the eating habits of our grandparents. Seeing the difficulty in maintaining social contact after so many liverwurst sandwiches and buttermilk, or the slippery slope nature of nightly Jim Beam with Virginia Slim Menthols, or the dance with the cholesterol test after adhering to daily scrambled eggs cooked with copious goops of sheeny Velveeta, sided by mounded bacon piles, rye toast with silver dollar dollops of shimmering Land o’ Lakes—all before the dessert donuts—for some of us, this advice is not so easy. Or wise.
But there are applicable, timeless, intergenerational universals: comforting coffee all day long, chicken wings and pizza with football viewing, and grandma’s answer for most of life’s calorie time quandaries: soup. Chicken noodle if you’re sick. Tomato if you’re pretending to be sick, playing hooky and eating grilled cheese. Minestrone at the Italian place. Clam chowder before a fish fry. Any or all varieties if it’s cold outside, or rainy. But mostly, if you’re sick. Or were just sick. Or for strength to prevent becoming sick.
Had grandma been viable and stirring in the age of Yelp, in the days of iPhone-emboldened food journeys, that nagging search for hearty throat assuagement may have led to a more worldly bouillon. Pho, ramen, menudo—Generation Food Channel’s options are endless for the hoary notion of getting “something warm on your stomach.” So as we enter the final throes—maybe, hopefully, probably not, but maybe—of cold weather, of flu season, of needing to bundle up, wear your hat and mittens, it may be time for a quick summary rundown of the city’s best hot bowls of slurpable, sinus-clearing comfort. These are not exactly your grandmother’s bowl of soup, but any can offer a sipping spoonful act to make her proud.
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Red Light Ramen
In the days of Trump tax cuts, it can be tough to celebrate something so blatantly too rich. But that really seems to be the main pleasure point of the Milwaukee vanguard of the quite hip ramen movement. Salty, luxuriant, egg-bobbing, noodle-swimming, with pork aplenty, ripe for both a spoon and chopstick forays, it is ancient Eastern exotic and yet as intrinsically comforting as Campbell’s. Whatever your selection of the multitude types, or whether you stand on the too much or just right camp, there’s no arguing that no bowl is a better preface for a long winter’s nap.
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Pho Viet
5475 S. 27th St., Greenfield, Wisconsin 53221Rick Bayless once suggested the best taquerias are the ones attached to Mexican grocery stores. Following that logic, the best pho in town should likely come from the little shop next to Pacific Produce, the gargantuan emporium of all foods Asian on S. 27th St. It’s hard to dispute the argument while getting a hearty tongue bath: from the dozen pho options, liquid-housing the daunting gamut between steak, flank, tripe, tendon, brisket, maybe shrimp, possibly chicken, of course meatballs; to the handful of egg noodle bowls, starring quail eggs or duck legs. It's hard to do anything but keep going, slurping greedily and noisily, splashing and basting buds with flavors fresh and deep and peculiar, rife with star anise and black cardamom, other such items you’ve likely lost to the nether regions of your spice cabinet. The proper application of Thai chili garlic sauce along the fresh, seedy jalapenos, reminds that even grandma at her most overbearing was negligent about at least one thing—a soup can, maybe should, hurt a little bit. It’s a visceral cleansing if done right. Really though, there’s no greater testament than the bahn mi here—suspiciously cheap, fresh-bunned, overstuffed, peppery and porky—being relegated to afterthought.
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Soup Bros.
209 W. Florida St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204Soup Bros. is actually much like a grandmother itself: the service has attitude, the home is filled with miscellaneous knicknacks and doodads, you call, get an automated voice telling you the mailbox hasn’t been set up, you instinctively wonder if she’s still alive. There’s no website. And there’s many soups. The cheddar and Bermuda onion seems the paradigm—extra sharp cheddar melting along fresh crushed black pepper and green onion pieces, the whole achieving that ideal creaminess to wade through toward stomach coating contentment. Similarly pleasing is the red pepper bisque—a cold antidote and elixir properly sworn by the whole town over. The key with both seems to be that salty svelteness, a certain intangible that makes for the rare occasion of going out to lunch and feeling somehow rejuvenated after. A fresh baked bread hunk, served warm and crusty and seedy, certainly helps too. Owner Richard Regner, brusque, terse, isn’t exactly the soup Nazi, but, having said that, the place does embody the somehow idiosyncratic nature that comes with precise, artistic cooking approaches to big vats of nourishing, communal stuff. And if an armoire of his ever became available, one would be smart to scoop it up, rifle through the drawers.
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Thai Bar-B-Que
3417 W. National Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53214It seems hard to go wrong with most any dish, any pho or soup, in Silver City. In fact the only fault we came away noting from an afternoon was pointed out by our waiter: “capitalism.” After hearing him bemoan the over-rushed pace of American life, we acquiesced, realized this is as good a place as any to sit and savor, soup being a dish to smell and breathe deep, as much to get down. The Thai BBQ pork noodle variety, supposedly the only such dish in town, serves as an ideal for what they do best here. ’s a dangerously velvety, rich broth, with multitude sunken pork treasures in varying shape and cooking doneness. The pork balls are the prize, sponging flavor, buoying between onion hunks, green onion chocks, cilantro, and a Medusa nest of glassy noodles. But any meat and broth would do well when supplanted by the accompanying death panel: a four jar tray of pickled jalapenos, the ubiquitous Thai chili garlic sauce, crushed dried chili peppers cooked to a deep viscous brown in oil, and the same chili peppers, simply ground and ready for battle with sinus and lips. Even in moderation, it can feel like a concoction just barely, pleasantly this side of hell. It’s okay to drip a little sweat right into the bowl—it can count as the day’s exercise. Better yet, forget such energetic American worries, sit back, and enjoy the otherworld pleasure all about National and 30th.
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Taqueria El Cabrito
1100 S. 11th St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204The “little goat” butters its bolillo by specializing in meats slow-cooked in sauces, blurring the line between stews and soft bits meant for stuffing into corn tortillas for makeshift juicy tacos. You can tell the specialty from what everybody is ordering, and from the neon sign shouting their wares rooted in the state of Jalisco—birria. It is celebratory, spicy, slow-cooked goat meat. It’s a tad gamey, and it’s game to go either way—slurp or fork. But it’s actually the heartening pozole that lands Cabrito here, as it leaves no doubt as to the spoon-forward nature. The stop sign-red broth comes with an oily sheen, equally salty and piquant, made more spicy by the dangerous ground arbol pepper canister placed on the table like a dare, one hard to turn away from. Floating below the surface are thumb-sized chunks of pork, al dente-texture hominy, both slow cooking as you focus on the broth, the meat getting speared and breaking up with each penetration, so that at the end you are left with shredded pig particles to spoon onto the accompanying tostadas, with chopped red onion and tomato for fresh bright balance, a squirt of the smoky chipotle table salsa to make sure every nook of the tongue is tended to. You’ll also likely be left fanning your mouth, dabbing sweat driblets from the forehead, and, given the bowl depth and deep provenance, wondering why you thought it was necessary to order an accompanying taco.
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Guadalajara
901 S 10th St, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204Of the many elixir qualities of a hot bowl of salty broth, hangover helper may be the most underrated. Like all chili-peppered Mexican fare, all Mexican soups do the trick—the aforementioned birria is renowned, but nothing eases day after pain like menudo. It’s a take it, leave it proposition, long bypassing ‘gamey’ labels, the beef tripe yielding an intestinal—literally—deep flavor of bloody earthiness. It’s an acquired taste, but one that can come to resemble a gastrointestinal restart button. Still, even if the palate leans understandably more gabacho, there are two types of head-clearing pozole: verde, with chicken, or the briny, salty rojo. The latter is the way to go, offering a steaming bath with tender fatty pork wedges, big soft hominy bits, ploppable diced onion, and, really, not too much else. The soothing saltiness is kept as the main star, everything satisfyingly elemental, unless you want to be heroic and scoop in some upon-request-only arbol salsa.
It’s about halfway through any bowl, pleasantly sniffling, that you might realize, like most grandmotherly caloric pushes, it’s all too much—the bowl is comically overlarge, brimming with incalculable salt, sheeny fat, too much spice—again with the ground Arbol, even sugar. Sure, yes, you will need another Jarritos to wash everything down. There’s even an undeserved, overabundant kindness about the shabby corner converted Walker’s Point abode. Maybe you can’t go home again, as they say, but from the taste of a bowl here, you can go to your, or a, Mexican grandma’s house.
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