Restaurant – Birch

In a few weeks from the writing of this post, James Beard Foundation will announce it's winners for Best Chef for 2024. The Great Lakes region in the awards includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, which puts Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all in the same category. Tough sledding for the Great Lakes cities. Milwaukee (thankfully!) [...]

Autobahn Mi – German Pork Sandwich

Inspiration can come from anywhere, including a recent trip to the Vietnamese sandwich shop near by to have a fairly lackluster Special Banh Mi. Banh Mi simply translates as "bread", but has come to mean the sandwich served on a specific type of crispy, French-inspired, demi-baguette. The classic is known as the "special" and comes [...]

In Praise of Rhubarb

Rhubarb means summer. Summer in the 12 year-old, off-of-school, complete freedom sense. Summer in the sleep-in, wake-to-warm-sunshine, go-play-in-the-field sort of way. When I was 12, we lived on forty acres of prairie grasses and wild flowers, bordered on two sides by a slow flowing river, which would sparkle like gold in the setting sun. We [...]

Schnitzel, Spaetzle, and Gingersnap Gravy

Using crushed pretzels as the coating for a pork schnitzel adds a nice texture to the coating. The flour, egg, pretzel sequence of coating, as well as allowing the coating to rest for five minutes before frying, ensures better adherence. The spaetzle gets an addition of New Glarus Totally Naked in place of milk or [...]