Beer Tour de Milwaukee

At the Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, they take a certain pride in their hedonistic and comical approach to beer. "The Miller Tour was described as the Harvard of beer tours" says the tour guide, quoting an article by an east coast newspaper writer sent out to review the breweries in Wisconsin. "We were called the 'Animal House' of tours" quips the guide as he finishes the quote, which draws applause and calls of "cheers" from the audience. As he continues to low-brough his way through the brewing process, most notably calling attention to the purpose of the yeast to "eat, have sex, and fart all day", you can't help but wonder how these surly jokers actually manage to turn out the quality beer they do.

The brewery, started during the microbrewery revolution of the 80s, has grown steadily over the past 2+ decades, recently being upgraded to "craft brewery" status after meeting the 15,000 barrels in sales threshold. But despite their success in the world of artesianal beer they maintain an everyman attitude about their business. The tour guides, usually several beers deep themselves, pepper their narratives with crude jokes, stories of run-away beer kegs, and a lengthy explanation of the use of bungs and bung holes in older style kegs. The tour finishes with the bottling process, which is performed to the theme song of "Laverne and Shirley".

On the Lakefront Brewery tour you may learn something about brewing beer, you may not, but you will have a good time and you will drink plenty of beer. Its this attitude which made me realize how great of a representation the Lakefront Brewery tour was of Milwaukee itself. The obsession with beer, the happy-go-lucky attitude towards drinking, it really reflects the city where brewing beer has been an important way of life for generations.

But that's only part of it, because at Lakefront they also have a damn good fish fry to go along with their tours. Yes, after you've stumbled your way through the tour, you'd be missing out if you didn't head upstairs for some battered, fried fish that is a staple to Milwaukee's large Catholic population. While Friday fish frys occur all over the country, usually sponsored by churches, in Milwaukee they are a mainstay of the restaurant industry. The Catholic population in Milwaukee comes from a diverse background (German, Polish, Irish, Italian), but at Lakefront their fry has a decidedly German flair. With the sounds of the polka in your ear, a large glass of dark beer before your eyes, and a plate full of battered fish and potato pancakes, you may or may not be in Heaven, but you will definitely be in Milwaukee. Myself, never a fan of heavily battered and fried dishes, went with the lightly battered fried perch, and found the balance of flavors to be almost perfect.

If I sound particularly giddy and excited over my experience at Lakefront, it's because after 5 months of living in Milwaukee, I now have something to put on my "must do" list for visitors, and that something happens to involve copious amounts of drinking. My goal is to develop a list of "must do" items for any friends, family, or couchsurfers that may come to visit me in the future, and now I have the first item. Visiting Milwaukee for the weekend? You need to get your reservation for a tour at Lakefront and then stick around for a fish fry dinner afterwards.

Don't even think about eating at Culver's.

What no gravy?

Ah Thanksgiving. America's finest secular holiday, where we give thanks to the Indians for helping our ancestors survive that first harsh winter and honor them by recreating the splendid feast they created (and possibly by making a quick trip to the local casino as well...). If you're family is anything like my family, it means a meal with enough food to feed 50 that is then served to a gathering of 15 is the centerpiece of the holiday.

Really, Thanksgiving is the one true holiday we have in America where food takes centerstage in every home across the country. And not only that, but the ubiquitous array of dishes is amazing given the vast cultural differences that encompass our country. My family, most likely similar to yours, does it pretty traditional. There's the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the green bean casserole, the sweet potato casserole, the mashed potatoes, the pies (and a ham just for the hell of it), a true feast of feasts. And all across the country, at least as much as I can tell from friends and television, everyone else is enjoying almost identical dishes.

I would love to be there with someone from a distant country whose first visit to America just happened to fall on Thanksgiving day, and who was lucky enough to be able to join a family for his or her first meal in the states.

"So is this a traditional American meal?"

"Well sort of, its kind of been adapted for modern times, but the basic concepts are there"

"So it is more similar to how you eat now?"

"....yeah....well we don't actually eat any of this stuff at any other time of the year"

"so it's neither traditional nor contemporary?"

"actually I would call it a half-assed combination of the two. Which is what makes it all the more American in the first place"

So yeah, it amazes me how ingrained these dishes are in our culture....for one day a year. How do the turkey, green bean, and yam manufacturers cope with such a spike in demand? And even beyond that, the dishes are not exactly representative of what the pilgrims ate at the original thanksgiving either. There are inspirations there no doubt, but I highly doubt that Squanto brought along a of Cream of Mushroom soup for the green bean casserole, and Pocahontas probably didn't pull a bag of marshmallows out of her purse for the yams (I know she wasn't there, but you try naming another Indian).

What we have today is some crazy concoction that mixes 17th century ingredients available at the time and mid 20th century Betty Crocker culture into a tasty, but curious feast. The turkey is perhaps the one true, unchanged element throughout the years, but even so, back then he wasn't the busty, roided-up specimen he is today.

In my family we've experimented with some deviations in the past, but this year the meal stayed pretty true to form. I had intentions of trying to do a take on these, something you should really try if you're in Milwaukee, but laziness got the best of me and I ended up contributing a 12 pack of Wisconsin's own Spotted Cow to our family meal.

I'm guessing everyone else had a similar meal last Thursday, and a toast to those who prepared the food and put in the time. Its a meal with lots of prep to make dishes that we wouldn't actually ever request to have made in the first place at any other point in the year, but yet somebody's got to do it. And hopefully they did the dishes justice, as my family did.

"This time we DIDN"T forget the gravy" is the
traditional family blessing at our house


Some traditional asian slaw and my Grandma's world famous
butterhorn rolls finished off the plate.