Dining Out

Slice open a ripe avocado and scoop out the smooth, thick, green flesh. Rich with a whisper of nuttiness, this fruit needs no embellishment. Jake Replogle Jr. has already done high-end dining – running, for the last seven years, Jake’s, the Waukesha white-tablecloth restaurant his father opened in 1967. The younger Replogle spent part of his childhood in Mexico, immersed in the culture of cooking and eating so integral to daily life there. At 30, he can step back and, with wife and business partner Karen, create a place with the simplicity of the perfect avocado. The place is Brookfield’s…

The soup, ladled into a vintage glass bowl, is deep orange, with a green swirl on top. Each spoonful is silky smooth; the flavor, like a garden of spring carrots sprinkled with coriander. Hold on a sec – am I really inside a bar? The soup is merely one of Stonefly Brewing Company’s interpretations of bar food. For those batter-is-better fanatics, there are fried chicken wings with barbecue or hot sauce, deep-fried bacon with stout mustard and crisp steak fries with cheese sauce. And because a bar without a burger is like a tap without beer, there are four ways…

Walker’s Point, Sixth and National. Storefront homes of the defunct Acapulco Mexican Restaurant and Lopez Bakery are shuttered and dark. The street looks in need of some sun, and I don’t just mean in the sky. But there’s one place on the south side of National Avenue that, once night falls, glows – a brick façade with a pretty name written in cursive letters above the entrance. Quimera. There’s a poem about a Puerto Rican family that leaves their homeland for the United States and a chance to live the American Dream. But they yearn to return to their island…

I smell chile powder. Faint at first, then so strong I can taste it in the air. This appears to be the day – this crisp, icy day – where it seems everyone at Triskele’swants a burger and fries. The warm strips of fried potato are dusted with the potent dark-red seasoning that casts a pepper spell on diners and warms up the room. Behind the bar at this mellow Walker’s Point restaurant, burgers find their muse. Other dishes do, too: mac and cheese, grilled salmon, cider-roasted chicken, braised short ribs. Triskele’s (pronounced “tris-kelly’s”) is JoLinda Klopp’s place, Klopp being…

Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted it better: the second floor of Brocach Irish Pub on a snowy December night. A pair of diners communes at a nearby table over plates of sandwiches and pints of ale. Two comfortable reading chairs are pulled up close to the roaring fire in the hearth. The Guinness taps behind the dark-wood bar catch my eye, but I turn to the window next to my table and watch thick snowflakes slowly cascade down. Who wouldn’t fall into a reverie? It’s a prime piece of real estate I’m talking about here – an 1880 Cream City…

Early this past summer, the fertile Third Ward welcomed a Turkish restaurant where, from the shape of the water glasses to the contents of the vases on the tables, diners are constantly reminded of its name: Tulip,a flower that bloomed in Turkey before Holland. Turkish is a new cuisine for Milwaukee, but a very old one in the history of the world. Food historians consider Turkish one of the three major recognized world cuisines, along with Chinese and French. During the Ottoman Empire (1300s to early 20th century), when Turkish rule spread from parts of Europe and Asia to North…

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…

My dining companion thinks I’m looking at him, but I’m really looking past him, at the washboard, the upright bass, banjo and steel guitar. Yes, and the fella playing harmonica. Along with white marble floors, red-leather half-circle booths and symmetrical deco touches inside Grafton’s Paramount Restaurant,this traditional blues band fits in perfectly. The evening is winding down. Other diners – their chairs turned so they’ve got a view of the band – are nibbling on cheesecake and sipping coffee. It’s that time of night, after a good meal, when nobody notices the crumbs and spilled salad dressing on the tablecloth.…

Through the two-story patio windows, the Milwaukee River looks like black velvet streaked with undulating light. On either side of me, groups of twos and threes are draped around the bar, sipping wine and checking each other out. Every table in this double-level restaurant/bar is occupied. Nothing will open up for at least an hour, the hostess tells us. And then she’s lost in the sea of new faces funneling through the front door. It’s Saturday night at Water Buffalo, a hip new destination at the corner of Water and Buffalo streets opened by some local folk whose portfolio precedes…