After waiting WAY too long to visit AJ Bombers, I promised myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistake with Smoke Shack, which is owner Joe Sorge’s newest restaurant endeavor. As luck would have it I didn’t have to wait long at all before Joe invited me in to sample the menu.

Since I wanted to get a little (or actually not so little in this case) taste of everything I ordered the four meat combo, which consists of homemade sausage, pulled pork, pulled chicken and sliced brisket. I chose the mac & cheese as my side and the combo also included a pretty decent sized piece of cornbread.

I normally don’t even like cornbread, but I could easily sit there all day long eating the stuff from Smoke Shack. I actually have a friend who works for a similar type of restaurant and I’ve heard him mention no less than five times how much he loves the Smoke Shack’s cornbread. If even your rivals are raving about you you’re clearly doing something right….

The problem I have with most barbeque, and I’ll admit that my barbeque eating experience is pretty limited, is that I feel like I always end up with fatty chunks of meat that are drenched in sauce. What was perfect about Smoke Shack for me is that all the meat comes unsauced and then you yourself (using one of their five housemade sauces) can decide exactly which and just how much (or how little) sauce you want.

Barbeque is sort of like sushi to me in the sense that when it’s served to you with no sauce on it is when you can really tell whether or not the restaurant serving it actually uses quality ingredients. It’s easy to cover up subpar meat with a ton of sauce, but when that same meat tastes just as amazing sans the sauce is when you know it’s good. Again, I’m FAR from an expert when it comes to barbeque, but I can tell you what’s good and what isn’t, and Smoke Shack is good.

I’d actually be really curious to see what the restaurant could do brunch-wise if they decided to start opening up a little earlier on Saturdays and Sundays. I can definitely see myself sitting out on their patio enjoying a couple drinks and a late southern-inspired breakfast. In the meantime though I’ll definitely be back to try Smoke Shack’s Bacon Bourbon Brownie and maybe some of their Whiskey Ice Cream that I was way too full to try at the end of my first visit.

I’ve been getting a ton of food sent to me lately, and one of the better things I’ve gotten recently has been this oven baked popcorn courtesy of Aunt Marie’s Gourmet.

It’s funny, even after reading the “About Us” section of their website three or four times now I still can’t really follow it.  Apparently the company was started by a computer industry guy who lost his job in the late 90′s when the dot-com bubble burst. He then started selling baked goods to various office workers around the Colorado Springs area and eventually met a four-fingered man from Montana who passed along his grandmother’s oven-baked popcorn recipe. Weird right?

All you really need to know though is that this popcorn is really good. I mean really REALLY good. You know how every time you eat caramel corn it tastes sort of chewy and stale regardless of how old it actually is? This popcorn is similar to caramel corn except that it’s as fresh tasting as popcorn that was just popped five minutes ago.

As of right now they offer two different varieties, chocolate and praline, both of which are delicious. According to their website they plan on adding a couple more flavors soon, and if those additional flavors are half as good as the two they offer now I have no doubt that they’ll be great as well.

Wanna try it for yourself? Just head over to the Aunt Marie’s Gourmet website. A half gallon canister that weighs in at 13 ounces will set you back $15.

After opening 500 locations across 34 different states and parts of Mexico since 1994 Wingstop recently opened a location in Milwaukee and invited me in for a visit. Since I’ve never been one to pass up a free meal (especially one involving a pile of free chicken wings) I happily obliged.

One of the best things about Wingstop is that your chicken wings are always cooked to order so you won’t find any heat lamps or microwaves in their kitchen. Each location also cuts their own fries every single day from real Idaho potatoes.

You’ll find nine different flavors of wings at Wingstop (available in both regular and boneless varieties) and on my visit I sampled four of them – Garlic Parmesan, Lemon Pepper, Hawaiian and their Original Hot wings.

I only tried the boneless wings so I can’t comment on the regular wings, but the ones I tried were definitely decent-sized and flavorful. Out of the four flavors I sampled the Garlic Parmesan and Hawaiian were probably my two favorites.

Since there are so many bars serving wings around Milwaukee, with all of those wings varying in both size and price, comparing them on anything but taste to Wingstop is a little tough, but taste-wise the wings from Wingstop definitely held their own. Are they the best wings that I’ve had in Milwaukee? Absolutely not, but they’re also far from the worst.

If you’re looking for a price and size comparison then comparing Wingstop to popular wing chain Buffalo Wild Wings is probably the safest bet. Size-wise the wings from both chains are pretty similar, but the wings at Wingstop are cheaper. As far as taste goes if I had to choose between the two I’d pick Wingstop in a second.

Another really cool thing about Wingstop is that they’re the first place in Milwaukee with a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine, which is basically a giant fountain soda vending machine that offers 135 different Coca-Cola brand drink choices. Are you a fan of Diet Coke? They’re got seven different varieties, as well as eight additional Coca-Cola Zero choices. Is Powerade your preferred drink? Between regular Powerade and Powerade Zero they’ve got 16 different flavors for you to choose from.

Feeling creative? Try using the Coca-Freestyle machine to come up with your own drink concoctions! According to my calculations, based on the 135 beverages offered you can actually make a total of 1,474,892 different drinks! Actually I just made that number up. I’m terrible at math. What I do know though is that my half Powerade Lime half Mello Yellow Cherry drink tasted pretty good. My Pibb Xtra Cherry Vanilla / Orange Coke / Minute Maid Strawberry Lemonade / Hi-C Grape mix on the other hand? Not so much… If only there were a “vodka” button on this machine I could really put my mixology skills to the test!