Milwaukee has so many great burger places — places like Oscar’s Pub & Grill, Kopp’s, Stack’d, Sobelman’s and AJ Bombers — that I feel like the decent hot dog spots around town sort of get overshadowed a bit.
I’ve already written about The Dogg Haus, which I’ve been back to a few times since my initial visit, but my go-to spot for hot dogs lately has been Wow Dog. Maybe the fact that it’s in pretty close proximity to where I work that plays a part in my frequent lunch visits, but I think the more likely reason is that they serve hot dogs like the ones you see pictured here.
Over on the left in the first image is their 1000 Island Dog, which is topped with tomatoes, minced onion and as you can probably guess, Thousand Island dressing. The second hot dog in the picture is their Chili and Cheese Dog, which is also covered in onions, along with a hearty helping of chili and nacho cheese. I’ve pretty much been hooked on these two dogs all summer long.
Also on their menu is a Milwaukee-themed dog that’s topped with sauerkraut, onion and brown mustard. If I actually liked mustard I’d be all over it, but for now I’m happy sticking to the previous two hot dogs that I mentioned. Oh yeah, and their homemade mozzarella sticks too, because those are amazing!
I went on a tour of Sprecher Brewery with some friends recently, and after it was over we sat down and drank the four beers each that are included in the $5 tour cost and then made our way into the gift shop. The gift shop at the brewery has pretty much anything Sprecher related that you could ever want from beer soap to Sprecher flavored BBQ sauce and everything in between. My three purchases that day (along with some beer of course) were beer bread mix, beer flavored kettle chips and a package of beer brittle.
The beer bread is so simple to make that even I couldn’t manage to screw it up. All do is combine the mix with 12 oz. of your favorite Sprecher beer, toss it in the oven and and hour later you’ll have yourself a delicious loaf of bread! The taste of the beer bread will obviously vary depending on what type of beer you add to the mix. When I made mine I decided to go with Sprecher’s Abbey Triple Belgian style ale, which gave my bread a nice fruity taste.
The Sprecher Beer Flavored Kettle Chips were pretty good, but if you buy them expecting a strong beer taste you might be a little disappointed since you can’t taste much beer in them at all. The chips are actually pretty similar to Krunchers when it comes to texture and taste. Don’t get me wrong though, they’re still pretty tasty.
The beer brittle was probably my favorite thing that I brought home from the brewery that day. It’s basically peanut brittle made with Sprecher’s Oktoberfest beer. Similar to the chips, the beer taste isn’t super strong, but you can definitely taste it.
The best thing about this blog post doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface as to just how many beer flavored items that Sprecher sells, so I’d say that there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll see a followup post in the future after I try out their beer popcorn, beer chocolates and the Sprecher flavored BBQ sauce that I mentioned earlier. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got quite a few bottle of Sprecher beer to drink!
I’ve been a loyal Classic Slice customer ever since they opened the doors of their first location almost five and a half years ago. In that span I’ve tried every single type of pizza that they offer, but my go-to slice when I eat there continues to be their Popeye pizza, which consists of bacon, spinach, white sauce and ricotta cheese. Honestly though, every other slice I’ve ever had there has been great as well.
I’m not really sure why I’ve never written about Classic Slice until now, but the main reason probably has something to do with the fact that anytime I’m there I devour my gigantic slice of pizza in about two minutes, and until now I’ve never even paused long enough to snap a few pictures of my food.
A couple of my other Classic Slice favorites include the Meatalliza pizza (meatballs, sausage, pepperoni and bacon) and I’m Feta Up!!! (spinach, black olives, artichokes and feta cheese.) Not a meat eater? Classic Slice has you covered with one of their three vegan pizzas like their Anne Curry pizza (curry sauce, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, tofu and tomatoes.)
If you like pizza and live in Milwaukee I’m sure you’ve already eaten at Classic Slice, but on the off chance that you haven’t you owe it to yourself to stop in to either their original Bay View location or their new location on the east side that opened in January of 2011.
Normally when a bar or restaurant claims that they have the “best burger in town” or ” world famous sandwiches” their food never actually lives up to the hype. Best in town according to who? The Owner? The guy that cooks it?
I can sit here and tell you how I make the best French toast in the entire country, but if you actually tried it I’m sure that you could at least think of at least a couple instances where you’ve had better. For the record though I do make some pretty stellar French toast….
The one claim that I can definitely agree with however is that when The Irish Pub refers to the grilled cheese on their menu as “Milwaukee’s Largest Grilled Cheese Sandwich” they’re dead on.
A giant grilled cheese is completely pointless if the sandwich itself isn’t actually good though, and luckily The Irish Pub delivers. The humongous sandwich consists of American and Cheddar cheese, crunchy fried onions, tomatoes and bacon between grilled flatbread.
I always sort of forget how much I enjoy flatbread until I end up ordering the occasional sandwich that happens to be served on it. Then again, the flatbread is probably a necessity in this instance because I doubt that The Irish Pub would be able to find any other type of bread that would actually be large enough for this sandwich.
This was also the only time in recent memory that I’ve finished a grilled cheese and I’ve actually been full afterwards. The pile of delicious thick cut fries that were included with my meal might have played a small part in that though….
A few weeks ago I wrote about a burger I created called the Cinnaburger, where I combined a half pound burger patty, a Cinnabon and some bacon into a delicious artery-clogging, heart attack-inducing treat. I expected it to be a popular post, but I certainly didn’t expect it to get quite the amount of press that it did.
About a week after I originally posted it my burger was written about on the Huffington Post, mentioned on CNBC and I was asked to appear on a radio morning show in North Carolina. One writer even likened it to Paula Deen’s infamous doughnut burger. Yep, after doing this blog for a year and a half I’ve finally been compared to Paula Deen. I’m honestly surprised that it even took that long….
With Hollywood movies when there’s a film that does exceedingly well they always release a sequel right? Well, here’s the follow up to my Cinnaburger! I call them Cinnasliders! I think that part of me just wanted another excuse to combine Cinnabons and burgers, but who cares because these things are delicious!
This time my buns consisted of Minibons, which are about a third of the size of regular Cinnabons, and once again I topped them with fresh home-ground beef burger patties and bacon. I did make one small addition however — I picked up an extra cup of frosting for dipping purposes!
Do you know what the best part about the Cinnasliders was though? Unlike the Cinnaburger you can actually pick them up with your hands and eat them! Granted, they’re still pretty messy, but at least with these I was able to ditch the knife and fork. I did have to use five napkins though….
Milwaukee has so many great burger places — places like Oscar’s Pub & Grill, Kopp’s, Stack’d, Sobelman’s and AJ Bombers — that I feel like the decent hot dog spots around town sort of get overshadowed a bit.
