Milwaukeeeeeeeee

On Saturday, I headed to Milwaukee to see the Bulls take on the Bucks. And since we were making the trip, we decided to tack on a full day of eating.

I’ve been to Milwaukee about a dozen times and I’m pretty sure that every time but once I’ve stopped at Kopp’s at some point. This trip was no exception.

Kopp’s always offers four flavors: chocolate, vanilla and two flavors of the day. The three of us split a vanilla, a grasshopper fudge and a heath bar. All were delicious. The difference between custard and ice cream is pretty simple: custard is ice cream that is made with at least 10% milkfat and 1.4% egg yolk. What that basically means is that custard is necessarily creamier like gelato. Also like gelato, there is far less air in custard than in traditional ice cream. The result is a particularly rich and creamy treat. Want to see a close up?

And because we were there and we were hungry and Kopp’s butter burgers are awesome, we went ahead and split one of those too.

Because I’m so devoted to Kopp’s, I’d never once tried out another custard shop in Milwaukee even though there are a number of local favorites. I decided to take advantage of the day of eating and directed us over to Leon’s to see how it stacked up. There are plenty of Milwaukeeans who think Leon’s is better than Kopp’s. I’m here to tell you that every last one of those people are idiots. We tried the vanilla, butter pecan and raspberry.

The vanilla and butter pecan were fine, though neither was as creamy or as flavorful as Kopp’s. The raspberry was simply atrocious; it tasted like cold wax. Leon’s has no room inside and since it was cold out we ate in the car. If I had been outside, I would have spat out the raspberry. I am officially a permanent devotee of Kopp’s.

After the custard, we moved along to an old school sausage shop: Eastern European Sausage. This place, which was open for decades, closed up shop a couple of years ago, and reopened a few months later after customers kept nagging. I learned about the place on LTH and it was a cool little shop, but there’s better stuff to be had at Gene’s and Paulina right here in Chicago.

Here’s a few sausages I picked up:

The shop did have a cold cut that might not exist in Chicago:

That there is “Blood ‘n Tongue,” part blood sausage and part tongue. This one did nothing for me; I ate one slice and tossed the rest. Fortunately, like all of the food at this place, the prices were low.

It was a snowy day in Milwaukee but kitty-corner from the sausage shop was a little taco stand. We asked the people in the sausage shop and they said they’d never tried it but there was a line at the stand every day. That was all we need to hear; it was time for an unscheduled stop on our eating tour.

The taco didn’t rock my world, but it was damn good. The lady running the stand made the tortillas to order. I don’t mean she took tortillas out of a package and tossed them on the griddle. I mean she took some dough out of a bowl, pressed it, and then cooked it. It was 20 degrees out and snowing and I got a homemade tortilla cooked to order. I opted for the barbacoa and the dude there helping out had to go inside to get the meat. It was tender and flavorful, but there was no question it could have been fresher. Still, at $1.50, I was very happy I made the stop.

From there it was on to the stop I was most looking forward to: Jake’s Deli. Jake’s is a Milwaukee institution but the two times I’ve been to Milwaukee since I heard of it were both on Sunday and this Jewish deli closes on the Lord’s son’s day.

Let me cut to the chase here: This was the best corned beef I’ve ever had. This thick hand-cut mouth-watering, jaw-droppingly tender meat was just extraordinary. There’s a lean version available, but there is simply no good reason to pass on any chance to get this perfect meat.

I split the corned beef and a pastrami sandwich so I could try both. The pastrami was awesome and every bit as tender as the corned beef. I would have liked more seasoning on it, but that’s not a major complaint.

I also got to try the medium salami and was very impressed. It paled in comparison to the corned beef and pastrami because, well, it’s salami. But on the salami sandwich scale, this one knows few peers.

From Jake’s it was on to the part of the trip I played no role in planning: the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was a museum and it had art. Want to see some pictures?

That’s right boys and girls, finger paint!

This piece was dedicated to the person who thought it belonged in an art museum. Soon to be displayed is my upcoming masterpiece, which will spell out DUMBASS in a counterclockwise circle.

Okay, this one I liked. There was also a Frank Lloyd Wright special exhibit that was good. I learned that as cool as his buildings are, the ones he designed that never got built were even better.

The real highlight of the museum is the new building itself, designed by Santiago Calatrava, the man behind the never-to-be-built Spire in Chicago. You can see the exterior above. And here ‘s a picture of the inside ceiling featuring my traveling companions the Hip Hipster and Zeus.

We weren’t hungry but we had a couple of hours to kill before the game so we headed over to the Milwaukee Public Market. After some coffee and browsing, we settled in at the St. Paul Fish Company.

I had a grouper sandwich that I was very happy with. Nice crisp batter around a well cooked fresh slab of flaky fish.

We also snuck in some cheese curds from the cheese shop. Like all fried cheese, these were excellent. And after dinner, it was time for the main event of the evening.

We bought our seats a few weeks ago and got three of the cheapest in the house – $10 without Ticketmaster fees, $17 or so with them. At the time we bought them, there were a ton of empty seats and our plan was to find some unsold seats when we got there to move into. Unfortunately, a shit ton of Bulls fans decided to follow us to Milwaukee and the game was pretty much sold out. We spent the first quarter in our seats.

Thanks to my trusty binoculars, we found a sweet set of five seats to move into for the second quarter. About halfway through the quarter, some douchebag and his four kids from Chicago showed up. We were ready for that and moved into the three seats one row up. With about three minutes to go in the quarter, three more Chicago douchebags strolled into the stadium and we had to move.

We moved over a couple of sections for the rest of the half and I spotted some seats across the way pretty much at center court that were open. A lot of seats actually – pretty much two empty rows. At halftime we went over there to discover a bunch of coats on the seats – apparently some high school cross country team was sitting there so we headed back to our lovely corner for the third quarter.

Found some sweet seats on the other side of the stadium for the fourth quarter. So at the end of the night, we saw a Bulls win and got to enjoy a variety of views from the upper deck. All in all, an excellent time at the Bradley Center. The only way it could have been better is if Brian Scalabrine had gotten into the game, something that seemed likely until that midget Earl Boykins had the quarter of his life and brought the Bucks a bit too close for Scalabrine time.

And so a completely fulfilling trip to Milwaukee came to a close. Good times.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 at 12:55 am and is filed under Food, Sports, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.