Occasionally a restaurant surprises the hell out of me. In a good way.
Some years it doesn’t happen at all. In 2007, it occurs one balmy night in September. Spotted animal skin rugs are amoeba-shaped outlines on the pale floor. Wooden carvings and bright orange squash are grouped on a two-tier stand, the centerpiece inside the chocolate-hued dining room. A tea light, surrounded by small stones and a carved wooden bird, faintly illuminates each dining table.
The restaurant is calledHinterland,and like the remote, unexplored land it summons, the ambiance in the main dining room is subdued. But I don’t mean that to sound unwelcoming or physically off-putting. Quite the opposite. The staff is gracious, and the modern frontier look is a curious mixture of austere and luxurious.
My meal this fall night begins with a fried cumin-crusted artichoke heart with fresh mint and cilantro drizzled with lavender honey. That’s the “amuse bouche,” a first-course nibble some restaurant kitchens prepare to stimulate the appetite. Next comes grilled calamari stuffed with chorizo and Hawaiian sweet crab served with an orange-jicama salad, pine nuts and cilantro-lime aïoli ($12). And then slices of medium-rare elk tenderloin with a black beluga lentil sauté, butternut squash puree, a pickled-cherry, pistachio and herb salad, and tart cherry reduction ($38). All of them are equally dramatic, as passionate as the décor is composed. Milwaukee’s not a place that needs to feel like a big city, but it’s nice all the same to get that perception.
Bill Tressler and his spouse Michelle started Hinterland 12 years ago in his hometown, Green Bay. The brewpub started small but eventually was serving fish flown in daily from the West and East coasts and Hawaii, as well as game and Kobe steaks. It was the antithesis of the typical brewpub menu, which is exactly what the self-described food geek wanted. Green Bay, Tressler says, has the market for this caliber of dining – raw oysters, veal sweetbreads, $38 entrées.
Opening another location was the natural next step, he says. The Tresslers also own a Door County inn whose guests often drive up from Milwaukee. He was looking at potential locations in the area when 222 E. Erie St. captured his attention. The 1891 building was “instantly like going back to San Francisco,” where Tressler lived after college. And the Third Ward, he says, “is almost like Soho.”
Kelly Qualley, who’d led the Green Bay kitchen, is manning the back of the house in Milwaukee. The menu has the same focus as Green Bay’s – emphasizing fresh ingredients from sustainable farms, edgy combinations and top-of-the-line meat and fish.
Like Hinterland’s décor (designed by Bill Tressler’s interior designer mother), every ingredient seems to have a purposeful spot on the plate. Artful presentation, of course, is what good high-end restaurants do. But it reminds us, in a culture where we’ve been trained to think about quantity and time management, that a meal is more than food. So why not slow down and savor it? I can do that with the pan-fried beef pot stickers fanned around a ramekin of sweet chile sauce and a pretty pile of spicy kimchee salad ($10). I can do it better with one of the loveliest entrées on the October menu – pink slices of seared Hawaiian bigeye tuna on bamboo rice, served with a shrimp sauté, bright-green trees of baby bok choy and dabs of carrot-ginger puree and soy syrup ($35). It’s a Polynesian island on a plate.
On a separate visit, one of the fish to be had was a stellar sea bass ($38) injected with lobster broth and served on a bed of greens with grapefruit, fennel and baby turnips. What an amazing combination of textures – the buttery, silky fish; soft, moist fruit flesh; and semi-crisp, licorice-flavored fennel. Alongside is a sweet, wantonly rich Israeli couscous-vanilla custard.
The definition of decadence is foie gras. When I think of the austerity of “hinterland,” it seems an oxymoron to have seared duck breast with duck liver emulsion (reduced to liquid), but it’s a luscious contradiction ($28). The kitchen goes rich, but not heavy, with its accompaniments – sautéed matsutake mushrooms and cipollini (small sweet onions), a carrot salad and snap peas.
Hinterland has two bars. One is just inside the front entrance, set with assorted attractive lodgy furniture. The other is hidden in the comfortable rear lounge. The lounge, incidentally, has its own menu of small plates, salads and entrées. (Try the $12 trio of onion ring-topped Kobe sliders.)
This restaurant takes on some challenges – one being the city’s focus on cost and value. Hinterland offers quality and a valuable experience. It’s one you will pay for, yes, but learn from as well. For example, a dazzling dessert can open up your palate to new combinations of flavor and texture. So every bite of, say, a warm deep-fried coconut-ginger rice pudding croquette is revealing – and satisfying ($8). It’s served with crunchy mango-papaya slaw, cool cilantro-lime sorbet and subtly spiced curry crème anglaise.
When Bill Tressler took his Green Bay brewpub into a land few brewpubs care to tread, he saw an untapped market. It’s when a place like Hinterland opens in Milwaukee that I see how much of that land we have yet to experience. It’s time.
Hinterland Erie Street Gastropub, 222 E. Erie St., Suite 100, 414-727-9300. Hours: Mon-Sat 5-10 p.m. (Lounge 4-11 p.m.) Prices: cold/hot starters $7-$14; salads $8; entrées $26-$38; desserts $8. Service: knowledgeable and enthusiastic, attentive at the table. Dress: No code, per se. Credit cards: M V A DS. Smoking allowed only in the back lounge. Handicap access: yes.
