Dining Out

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…

A single peony –a rich, sensual, vased still life – graces each table at the Ambassador Hotel’s Envoy. In early June, a bit of summer seeps into this elegant art deco space. Since most of the $13 million renovation of this 1920s hotel was completed last year, there’s been a push to attract people to the western edge of Downtown, whose past decades of crime and architectural decay concealed the rich history of the area. With that kind of investment, hotel owner Rick Wiegand is obviously pushing hard. Besides the full-service restaurant, open breakfast through dinner, the Ambassador has a…

Many nights after the sun had set this winter, I’d walk from my office to a parking lot near the Italian Community ­Center. Strings of white lights draped around the windows inside the Third Ward’s ­Holiday House sent out a flare to the convoy of hungry people heading to their cars and home to their dinners. A holiday from any vantage point sounds awfully appealing, and in a lot of ways, I find Holiday House awfully appealing. Owner Joe Volpe, the 36-year-old owner, drew inspiration for his 7-month-old restaurant from another Holiday House – the same-name supper club his grandfather…

A few weeks prior to writing this, I’m seated inside Lagniappe Brasserie,the successor to the old New Berlin home of Steven Wade’s Café. The evening is drawing to a close, and I have a sampler of homemade sorbets before me — four frozen melon-ball scoops: lemon, Persian lime, blood orange and apple parsley. The lemon makes me purse my lips. The orange is bright red and syrupy sweet. The apple parsley has the grassy flavor of a fresh herb — more palate cleanser than dessert, I conclude. But what I like about this quartet is its unexpected union. Owners Andy…

We’ve been tag-teamed and Sinatra-ed to death. The novelty of the raw meat cart — displaying the restaurant’s featured “cuts” — has worn off. With slabs of seared beef in close proximity to Milwaukee Street’s Restaurant Row, carnevor had to do something different — because, you know, not much seems unique anymore among the Downtown steakhouses. It’s time for something new. Carnevor’s “something” is a tony interior conceived by the aptly named Chicago firm Slick Design, along with a multiperson style of waiting tables called “swarm service,” music culled from varied pop/rock eras (I recall hearing Journey and George Michael)…

If you’d asked me six months ago what I thought of the new Social, I’d have said: needs time to get settled. Four months ago: still stumbling. And last December: improvement in the right areas but could still use steadier feet. Honestly, I mulled over the social for months, so ambivalent was I about the new location. A half-mile from its old address, the restaurant/bar is a new deal, despite some reminders of the past. Exposed brick and beams are marks of the First and Pittsburgh warehouse neighborhood. Retro-shaped hanging ovals — a physical replication of the Social’s old logo…

When in doubt, reach for the cow. You know the story of how Mr. B’s in Brookfield came to be? It was first an Italian place that didn’t do gunsmoke business, so owner Joe Bartolotta changed the focus to steaks and — ba-da-boom. For some types of food, I think there’s a saturation level. Maybe not with red meat. Mason Street’s yanni’s is the newest steakhouse Downtown, a half-mile from Mo’s and Butch’s. In another half-mile, there’s Milwaukee Chop House. Due east a few blocks, inside Cudahy Towers, Bacchus is sporting a beefier menu, thanks to steak additions made last…

In just a few sentences, I’ll be writing in the strictest detail about a restaurant called Zin, as in “Zinfindel.” Its Web site is www.zincredible.com, which got me thinking in pun terms: That’s zin-credible. Or maybe it zinconceivable or zinfluential. Zinfamous? The word play makes me wonder how serious we can take this restaurant. Oh, but Delafield’s Zin -Uncommon California Italian is zerious — I mean serious. And it has had the second half of 2005 to prove it. Not quite “there” when I visited last summer (it opened in May ’05), Zin has since grown in proportionately positive ways.…

ONE NIGHT, A FRIEND and I leave Taqueria Azteca with leftovers and a curious clay candleholder: five primitive-looking male figures joined in a circle. This is a restaurant where every wall, windowsill and table holds some kind of tchotchke, be it a votive, hanging doodad or Day of the Dead memento, and on that night, this trinket in the front window calls out to my friend. She pays the asking price (around $10) and takes it home. Five fellows linked for eternity. Their obstinate faces suggest men with a purpose, a drive. Nine summers ago, the family-owned restaurant opened inside…

THE GUY WITH THE CAMERA TURNS, makes eye contact and looks away as though I’m any Joe, so to speak, off the street. This is a first: The magazine’s photographer and I are on duty in a restaurant at the same time but not by design. I’m working undercover. Call it one of those odd, urban coincidences. But no matter. As much as our shooter can’t hide from curious eyes in the room, he’s not disrupting the flow. And this room has flow. Ristorante Bartolotta’s Downer Avenue location (many moons ago, it was Henry’s Pub & Grille), open since late…