Dining Out

Michele Green opened her color-dipped bistro — Bosley on Brady — in early May. Within two weeks, the head chef had been replaced and the menu nipped and tucked to reflect the sudden turnover in the But this was all good. The initial head chef wasn’t working out. At the same time, a chef Green knew from her years working for the Leipold Restaurant Corporation in Racine was suddenly free to take on a new gig. The world turns in the dining biz, sometimes abruptly. Hiring Peter Carew, fresh from a pastry chef position at Gilbert’s in Lake Geneva, was…

THIS IS WHAT THEY CALL THE VOLCANO — a glistening cylinder with a craterous pink topping. The noncombustible edible — a rolled creation of dried seaweed, sushi rice, raw fish, condiments and sauce — is one of the specialty maki at über-hip Sake Tumi. In the Milwaukee Street restaurant’s early weeks, co-owner Omar Shaikh was giving away these unconventional rolls (the staff jokingly call them their “crack”) because diners were playing it safe with more orthodox variations. Since the maki exposure, Shaikh says, “It’s been insane.” The rolls — in varieties like “Viva La Mexico” (yellowtail fish, tuna, avocado, jalapeño…

LEANING FORWARD TO TALK to the diner seated opposite me, I repeat the sentence I’ve already said a few times, only loudly and hoarsely. Tables in every direction are occupied; drinkers have taken the bar by storm. Servers are weaving between chairs with trays of cocktails and the fruits of the kitchen’s labor. I could climb over just a few tables and be on stage with a cooking jazz band — bass, piano, sax, two sets of stirring vocals. Yow! Who needs conversation? If Piano Blu were a food, it’d be a hot cross bun. If it were a temperature,…

Darkness falls on Greenfield Avenue . In the West 7300 block, aside from traffic-generated clatter, most storefronts have turned in for a quiet night. Then there’s a place with tall white lettering above the windows. Doyle’s , reads the sign’s uppermost line. You can see a bar through the front windows, with some well-hydrated-looking people scattered around it. Further inside, though not quite visible from the sidewalk, is an unassumingly laid-out dining room. It took more than a year, but Tom Doyle left his undersized digs just west of Miller Park to take on West Allis ‘ main drag. The…

Inside the heavy glass doors of Mayfair Mall’s super-chain The Cheesecake Factory, diners awaiting seats form a long, tangled thread. They shush children and clutch buzzers that vibrate when their table is ready. New arrivals hack through the muddled line to reach the hostess station. The wait feels interminable — in reality, it could be an hour or more. And the reward for one’s patience is a meatloaf sandwich, chicken tacos, four-cheese pasta or a slice of cheesecake. It’s hard to understand the wonder of this close-to-30-state empire if you’ve never experienced it (neighboring Maggiano’s and P.F. Chang’s — chain…

The trouble with restaurants in Milwaukee, a West Coast transplant says to me, is that they’re too bright. Literally. Dim the lights and you’re on your way to ambiance. The transplant isn’t saying anything new. Three of the partners behind the shadowy Balzac, the Brady Street area’s new production — a wine bar with a “minimalist” restaurant (“small plates” rather than full meals) — has been down on that idea for years. By now, Mike Eitel, Leslie Montemurro and Scott Johnson should be used to seeing their names together. In the last decade, Hi Hat Lounge, Trocadero and Eitel’s Nomad…

Beefy Conversation So I’m talking to a buddy of mine about steak sandwiches. The thing he doesn’t like about steak on a bun is the gristle, he tells me. “Gristle?” I say disbelievingly, because my brain can’t lose the image of the tender, 100 percent well-trimmed meat topped with melted provolone and served on a French roll at forty8. Now you know what I’m having for dinner. Comes with zesty seasoned fries. $9.99. 4823 W. National Ave., 389-9350. Green With Envy I’m going to say something that might be hard to hear. If you have to, close your ears. All-veggie…

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.…

The silly gold-colored cow is gone. Car seat-size patrons are still welcome, but they’re not running around the dining room anymore. North Star American Bistro’s takeover of a briefly animate restaurant space — St. Bessie’s Bistro — happened six months ago already. And the arrival of the above has brought a charge to Shorewood’s main drag, which, like a lot of suburban areas, is starved for homegrown restaurants. North Star is comfortable, a bit stark -visually, but inviting. Owners Mike Stoner and Duffy O’Neil, pals from their stints at Water Street Brewery’s Delafield location, are keeping the flow simple, casual,…