Story Hill BKC
$$-$$$ | 5100 W. BLUEMOUND RD. | 414-539-4424
Last year, Story Hill’s owners closed Buttermint, their only restaurant not on the West Side. It was a blow to lose the Shorewood spot, but I understand why – some concepts, as good as they are, just don’t click, don’t find their people. Story Hill BKC hasn’t had that problem. It is the gem of this little neighborhood near American Family Field: busy but laid-back, friendly, slightly offbeat, approachable. On the lunch menu, shakshouka has my heart, while the mushroom gyro is chasing after it. The dinner menu is designed to be shareable, with more great choices than I have room to mention here: rosemary brie pull-apart bread, butternut squash and wild rice salad, butter chicken thighs, roasted pumpkin agnolotti and so on.
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Harbor House
$$$$ | 550 N. HARBOR DR. | 414-395-4900
In 2024, the kitchen of this Nantucket-inspired fish house found its groove, serving the best meals I’ve eaten here in a long time. Originally conceived to enhance and preserve the lakefront (the space, for many years, was the well-known though uninspired Pieces of Eight), Harbor House is performing more like the showpiece it was intended to be. The best bites include the seared Hudson Canyon scallops, whole grilled branzino and pan-seared skate wing. And if you’ve never had a warm, buttery, Connecticut-style lobster roll, this is where to deliciously rectify that.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Sanford Restaurant
$$$$ | 1547 N. JACKSON ST. | 414-276-9608
There is no other restaurant in the 414 where someone is at the entrance, opening the door for you, taking your coat and leading you to your table in a dining room that projects this level of refined equilibrium. The servers’ unobtrusive style of service and the room’s quietude are intentional: Nothing should distract from your meal – a creation from Justin Aprahamian’s “modern ethnic” menu. While the presentations are always changing, dishes like pear-roquefort tart and fennel-dusted tenderloin stand the test of time. Two other things I rarely pass up here: swordfish and duck breast.
Birch
$$-$$$ | 459 E. PLEASANT ST. | 414-323-7372
Birch co-owner Kyle Knall is that chef who brings farm-fresh color and balanced acidity to every plate. That style threads through Birch’s regular menu, brought to life by the hands of his talented cooking staff and the kitchen’s wood-fired hearth. The brick chicken, fresh fish and pastas are what I tend to order but not always. Lately I’ve been buzzing about Birch’s casual side – the burger served (only) in the Bar Room. Legit top tier.
La Dama
$$-$$$ | 839 S. SECOND ST. | 414-645-2606
Chef/owner Emmanuel Corona challenges the popular notion of Mexican cuisine as simple. In his hands, it’s complex, inventive and quite elegant, from grilled shrimp in tomatillo and brown butter to chilitos rellenos stuffed with duck carnitas to beef cheek barbacoa enchiladas to lamb shank birria. And even with its concept change in 2020, La Dama still reflects the spirit of predecessor Crazy Water and its founder Peggy Magister, who passed away last year.
Sorella
$$-$$$ | 2535 S. KINNICKINNIC AVE. | 414-301-6255
Five years is like 20 in restaurant years. This casual, cacophonous dining spot inside Kinnickinnic’s Kinn Guesthouse opened during one of the worst years in recent history (2020) and yet here it is, one of Bay View’s finest. Owners Kyle Toner and Paul Damora are a noodle and sauce combination – chef Toner’s the back of the house, Damora is the front, with lots of restaurant experience between them. They’re also both Italian, and originally from New Jersey; nevertheless, their food speaks to Milwaukee. The last time I dined here, I could not stop eating the crazy-good roasted broccoli and the lamb osso buco over polenta. The ziti with short rib ragu was also great – thick, hearty and deep. I took a pizza to go because Toner (former chef at the old Wolf Peach) has perfected his wood oven-fired pies. Wrap up the night with a cannoli, New Jersey’s favorite dessert.
Goodkind
$$-$$$ | 2457 S. WENTWORTH AVE. | 414-763-4706
This story you’re reading is really a giant award to restaurants for mastering the art of doing it right, day after day after day. Restaurants can’t stop pushing to keep themselves relevant, to stay part of the conversation. Goodkind wasn’t predicated on a trend. A bunch of very talented local industry folks built a restaurant and stayed true to their values. Now it’s 11 years and counting of champagne-battered mushrooms, spicy crab pasta, rotisserie chicken, Tuesday night burgers. Forever relevant.
Morel
$$$$ | 430 S. SECOND ST. | 414-897-0747
Eleven years ago, the farm-to-table movement had been ramping up for a good long while, and then-new Morel seemed like it was just jumping on the bandwagon of highly seasonal, know-your-producer, Midwestern-hearty cuisine. But this small, comfortable foodie sanctuary, led by owner Jon Manyo, found its way. Manyo and his staff, servers included, keep the fire stoked. They’ve turned their charcuterie board, beef short ribs, lamb carpaccio, and “farrotto” (risotto with farro, a forest of veggies and a poached egg) into house standouts.
Braise
$$-$$$ | 1101 S. SECOND ST. | 414-212-8843
The main dining room of this rustic space, with its shared tables and heat-spewing open kitchen, evokes the close-to-the-source aura of a farm dinner. This makes sense, because in its infancy, the Braise concept was mobile, serving meals in barns and farm fields across the area. Grounded in freshness and simplicity, Braise takes a nimble approach to its menu. But it’s playful and inspired. I also love a small, rotating menu – a crispy pork belly okonomiyaki pancake with gochujang aioli, spiced lamb biryani, and goat cheese-kale bread pudding were easy choices, all beautifully hitting home.
EsterEv
$$$$ | 2165 S. KINNICKINNIC AVE. | 414-312-8606
In mid-April, it’ll be one year since this fine dining concept expanded and relocated from inside DanDan to Bay View, where it bears the quirky stamp of its two owners, chefs Dan Van Rite and “Top Chef” alum Dan Jacobs. With a prix fixe, four-course tasting menu (with optional enhancements), EsterEv 2.0 reflects a pulling away from the perception of fine dining as “exclusive” or elitist. This is accessible, nostalgic, aspirational, offbeat and delicious. The winter menu – executed by chefs Syd Zweig and Val Bartram – was the best I’ve ever eaten here. The chicken liver mousse and Wagyu coulotte steak were frankly two of the most outstanding things I’ve eaten in recent memory.
Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro
$$$$ | 3133 E. NEWBERRY BLVD. | 414-962-6300
While Tosa’s Ristorante was the Bartolotta brothers’ first restaurant, at Lake Park they made the philosophy – of hospitality, community, memories, food – come to life. As the story goes, Joe had balked at Paul’s suggestion of making this a French restaurant. They’re Italian, after all. They ended up creating the French restaurant for everyone. Now, 30 years have flown by. “You want to go to the Bistro for dinner?” It needs no name clarification. And the answer should always be yes.
Ca’Lucchenzo
$$$ | 6030 W. NORTH AVE., WAUWATOSA | 414-312-8968
This home for the devoted pasta-lover is close to the top of my list of super favorites. Many people have complicated relationships with carbohydrates, and if that’s you, chef/co-owner Zak Baker and his staff will break you down. The pastas here are to die for. They change, they reflect different regions in Italy, and they suggest meticulous study. This winter was a banner season at Ca’Lucchenzo, featuring robust pappardelle in lamb ragu, delicate orecchiette with broccolini, and hen-of-the-wood mushrooms in brown butter-sage sauce over gnocchi, beautifully satisfying on a night that feels more like winter than going-on-spring.
Mason Street Grill
$$$-$$$$ | 425 E. MASON ST. | 414-298-3131
Last year, I revisited the self-styled “classic American grill” inside the Pfister Hotel. This place has never been better, adding class to classic. Mason Street harkens of an earlier time, when dressing up and going out for lobster Thermidor and tournedos Rossini was what you did. I hear white tablecloths are back in style – but here, they never went out of style. Menu favorites – from the crab cakes (a 1950s recipe) and chopped salad to the herb-crusted sea bass, beef filet medallions and chef Mark Weber’s carrot cake with caramel sauce – keep bringing me back to a kind of home I didn’t expect I’d grow so attached to.
Ristorante Bartolotta dal 1993
$$$$ | 7616 W. STATE ST., WAUWATOSA | 414-771-7910
If I were stranded on a boat in Lake Michigan, I’d want some chefs with me and a galley packed with food. It would be tough narrowing down who would join me, but Ristorante’s Juan Urbieta would be on the short list. Making prix fixe menus fresh, interesting and worth coming back for is a challenge. Few chefs have worked at the same restaurant for longer than Urbieta (since 1998!), but I haven’t seen signs of his imagination running dry. Or his wanderlust for Italy slowing down. Un Viaggio in Italia – four courses that move through the country’s valleys and plains, coastline and mountain ranges – is never predictable. In 1993 when Ristorante opened, it was a red sauce, chianti and red-checkered tablecloth world here. Ristorante didn’t single-handedly change that, but our Italian dining scene is – and continues to be – better because of it.
Le Rêve Café & Patisserie
$$-$$$ | 7610 HARWOOD AVE., WAUWATOSA | 414-778-3333
Tucked inside a storefront in Tosa’s charming downtown, Le Rêve climbed onto this list through across-the-board excellence. There isn’t much this place doesn’t do well. Lunches are lovely – the croque monsieur and crepe creations (rich confited duck) – and dinner at the bar is always a pleasure. An unbeatable combo is an appetizer of confited duck gougères (choux pastry puffs – crusty, hollow and light) with steak au poivre and frites or loup de mer, which is pan-seared branzino in butter-caper sauce with rich, nutty French green lentils. The pastry and dessert program here is also in a category of its own.
The Diplomat
$$$ | 815 E. BRADY ST. | 414-800-5816
A common thread to this list of otherwise very different restaurants is power couples – owner duos whose expertise makes them, together, the ideal restaurateur. That describes Dane and Anna Baldwin. They make The Diplomat feel like you’re in their home but also inside a restaurant, an interesting dichotomy. The menu is populated by dishes that can stand alone or be grouped together, some of them homages to Dane’s journey to opening a restaurant and winning (in 2022) a James Beard Award. I could marvel over how he makes his plates – the Diplomac burger, grits with smoked pork belly, lamb cheeks, duck breast with two-bean ragu – work as a team but I’d rather just eat them all, again and again.
Odd Duck
$$ | 939 S. SECOND ST. | 414-763-5881
If, in its original location in Bay View, Odd Duck was a formative youth, it’s now, in Walker’s Point, a fully realized adult. The front-of-house staff is the heart and soul of this place – warm, professional, imperturbable, nonconformist. They’re the reason that, around all the chaos that can come with clusters of high-pitched, high-energy diners, there is latent control. The small plates menu – pork cheek goulash, wood-fired lamb rendang, ash-roasted sweet potato Turkish flatbread, duck confit and ricotta agnolotti, all of which I’ve enjoyed – is unapologetically flamboyant, sometimes even odd. But anywhere these chefs want to take me, I’m always up for the ride.
Lebnani House
$$ | 5051 S. 27TH ST. | 414-488-8033
A lot of people think eating is simply filling a human need. It certainly can feel like that. Restaurants, the good ones anyway, are trying to be something more, to capture us with their “zingity zing.” When I eat at Lebnani, I’m glued to my seat, afraid I might miss something. Their menu focuses on the Arabic cuisines of the Levant region (Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan). While it has dishes that we recognize from the Middle East, like hummus and shawarma, many of the hot and cold mezzes, stews and layered dishes weren’t found in our dining scene pre-2022, when it opened. The deeper I dig into the menu, the more I’m going back for the rich layered fried flatbread dishes (fattehs) and the stews served in clay pots (fukharas). I also love the kafta (a Lebanese ground meat patty seasoned with nutmeg, coriander and cumin) that’s offered as part of the mixed grill or the star of its own show, blanketed in tahini sauce.
Lupi & Iris
$$$$ | 777 N. VAN BUREN ST. | 414-293-9090
Steering the ship is what Adam Siegel, owner and James Beard Award-winning chef, was born to do. This is one big ship. Lupi & Iris is the kind of restaurant you remember because it’s, A, one of the sharpest-dressed in town; B, serves almost flawless dishes (inspired by the French and Italian rivieras) that are about quality and simplicity, not how much stuff you can pile on them; and C, a prime example of the direction our city’s dining scene is going. That is, up. This place is big-city cool with a down-to-earth core. I’ve lost my heart to several things here, including the chevre tart, ravioli with sage and brown butter, loup de mer, oven-roasted veal chop and chef Adam’s grandma’s cookies served at the end of every meal.
Bavette La Boucherie
$$$ | 217 N. BROADWAY | 414-273-3375
Whole animal butchery and the politics surrounding food (where it comes from, etc.) had a hand in bringing Bavette into being. The plates that come out of this kitchen are what keeps it here. The restaurant has it all – a cool, modern Third Ward space; dialed-in waitstaff; and a menu with so many good choices, for lunch and dinner. If it’s lunch, I need chef/owner Karen Bell’s pork pozole and roasted carrot salad. Dinner might be the burger with raclette cheese (with beef fat fries, always) or a butcher’s cut steak. And the only thing better than getting a potato chip chocolate chip cookie (trust me) for dessert is to add on an order of luscious butterscotch pudding with caramel.
