Home Brew

You know how film directors often have a signature? You might watch a film and say, “That was very Spielberg-esque” or “It had Scorsese written all over it.” Ditto for some restaurateurs. Few in town have what you’d call an empire. R.C. Schmidt has a considerable one – Louise’s Trattoria, Historic Turner Restaurant, Water Street Brewery, Rudy’s, Oakland Trattoria. For the last three years, he’s also been the proprietor of Brew City, which last spring discarded the “Bar-B-Q” that completed the name and moved to a new address just blocks away on Juneau.
Schmidt bought and renovated an existing building for Brew City. Its everyman menu, surfeit of youthful waitstaff and casual interior (pleasant, lively, not striving to be hip) smacks of the reliable Water Street Brewery just around the block. The reason for the move is simple: The former location was a lease; the new one – sporting exposed brick, vintage-like tile flooring, decorative shades of Milwaukee’s beer-brewing past and a patio with umbrella-topped furniture – is Schmidt’s own.
What’s hip and happening – for diners and imbibers – is most likely on Brady or Milwaukee streets, near Cathedral Square or in the Third Ward. Water Street’s hook – north of the Marcus Center, that is – is harder to define. Lots of bars, a younger demographic. Brew City, like its siblings, draws a heterogeneous crowd. While suits conduct a business lunch at a shiny red-covered booth, moms try to keep their preschoolers diverted with chicken fingers and mozzarella marinara. College-age kids shovel fries into their mouths and stare at flat-screen projected sports. The menu is as general as the clientele – wings ($8.95), nachos ($8.95, $11.95), Cobb salad ($9.95), baby-back ribs ($14.95), sausage sampler ($9.95), grilled meatloaf ($9.95), mac and cheese ($6.95), pork shoulder sandwich ($7.95) – unless it’s that lone polka dot in a sea of stripes. That would be pecan-crusted chicken breast with butternut squash purée and Door County cherry relish ($9.95) or oven-roasted salmon topped with marinated peppers, tomato and arugula salad ($14.95). At best, Brew City’s fare is pretty good American-style food; at worst, it’s little more than average (i.e., soggy crabcakes with roasted red pepper coulis, $8.95).
Several things I wouldn’t hesitate to order again. The roasted chicken quesadilla with cilantro-lime sour cream ($7.95), for example. And ahi tuna, which pops up four times on the menu – as appetizer ($9.95), salad ($12.95), sandwich ($9.95) and entrée (with ginger-mango sauce over coconut rice, $18.95). The Asian-inspired salad drove home the crunchy theme – shredded carrots, snow peas, Napa cabbage and fried wontons tossed in ginger vinaigrette with slices of sesame seed-crusted tuna. There’s something incongruous about dipping pecan-coated chicken in cherry relish, inwardly debating the merits of fruit and vinegar, while my dining partner dips fries in ketchup. But so it is at Brew City.
The fries, incidentally, are medium-thick strings at their best when they’re not too dark and they straddle the line between crisp and fluffy. They go well with the Pig sandwich ($7.95), a welcome holdover from the Tom Shepherd-owned days back in the 1990s. A saucy knife-and-fork production, the Pig is a sourdough roll under a mountain of shredded pork shoulder in thick, sweet barbecue sauce – worth four oinks out of five. The blackened chicken sandwich was potently flavored (cayenne, paprika, plus the key cast-iron pan searing) and didn’t need any accompaniment on the bun ($7.25). Red velvet cake comes on subtly with the lightly cocoa-flavored cake and ends strong with a sweet buttercream frosting ($5.95).
I can imagine myself coming back, a parent or child in tow. What is it? Comfort level, surely. An R.C. Schmidt place doesn’t throw curves. Keep it basic, with some exceptions. That’s the signature.
Brew City,125 E. Juneau Ave., 278-7033.
Hours: Daily 11-12 a.m.
Prices: appetizers $5.95-$11.95; salads and sandwiches $4.95-$12.95; pastas/specialties $6.95-$29.95; desserts $4.95-$5.95.
Service: young, friendly.
Dress: preferably casual.
Nonsmoking section: yes.
Handicap access: yes.
Credit cards: M V A D DS.
Reservations: accepted.