Dining
Though stereotypes say the staple diet of Milwaukee is cheese, bratwurst and beer, anyone can find the complete variety of food throughout the city.
For a good overall sampler of the area’s favorite home-style cuisine, try The Milwaukee Grill on 76h St. near Forest Home Ave. However, the city’s other most interesting restaurants include County Claire’s Irish Pub on the east side, The Bamboo House Chinese on the city’s far west side, Mazo’s Hamburgers on 27th St. and Oklahoma Ave.. the Water Street Microbrewery Downtown and Mader’s German Restaurant on Old World Third Street.
The city is also blessed with outstanding Italian cuisine as immigrants brought real recipes with them from Italy. The area’s pizza is usually thin, crisp crush with excellent topping like real Ital-ian sausage and pepperoni. To sample the best examples, visit Zaphiros on the east side and Ballestreri’s on the west.
Due to the city’s large Catholic population, Fridays in Milwaukee mean fish fries. Deep fried in beer, haddock or cod are usually make up the menu, complimented with fries, cole slaw and rye bread. While Serb Hall is the most famous fish fry HQ in the area, most local churches have smaller gatherings -- and often better food.
A unique Milwaukee dessert phenomena is frozen custard. Thicker and richer than ice cream, frozen custard includes eggs in its recipe which keeps its air content lower than ice cream. While custard stands like Kopp’s and Culver’s are the city’s most popular and most prevalent with mul-tiple locations across the city, the best frozen custard in town is a small south-side stand called Leon’s. Legend has it that Arnold’s Restaurant in Happy Days was based on Leon’s.