On the Milwaukee lakefront. A couple hours of perfect bliss on a beautiful summer evening in Milwaukee. Here’s what I ate. (Photos courtesy of our cell phones, but a visual’s a visual.)
I shared this sandwich with my dad, but I got all the peppers. The picture is shitty, but you might be able to tell that the bun was really quite good.
Not a sincere smile in the group, but that’s just because the toasted ravioli was too good for us to want to be bothered for a photo break.
After that, I partook of my sister’s calzone (cheese and spinach), and then we had these parmesan potato chips:
I was very enthusiastic about the Amaretto Puffs:
That custardy cream sauce was quite tasty, but I wish the amaretto had been more apparent in these little lumps of fried dough.
For our second and final dessert (we didn’t have room for the rice balls, after all) we had these pretty sorbetti in frozen hollowed lemons and peaches.
To top it all off, we carried a bag of Koepsell’s away with us. My dad swears this is the best popcorn in the world, and he even sends me their jars of kernels and their coconut oil when I’m at school.
This is exactly the meaning of a festival. Feasting. (The words are pretty closely related, etymologically.) I love taking a day and stepping outside of all health-related dietary considerations, to celebrate. What was I celebrating to-day? Well, being Italian, of course, and being back in Milwaukee! It’s beautiful.
So last night, we were discussing what was to be done about dinner, and I felt strangely invested in the question. I wanted good food, but more than that. I wanted what I wound up terming “a food experience.” What we got, given that the pizza was no longer fresh at 8pm, was more experience than food, but certainly not a disappointment. The Pizza king moved to the corner of Jay Street right across from the courthouse a couple months ago, though I personally had never heard of it before then. Then for taste of Union two weeks ago, they offered free pizza to Union students, which, after a little bit of fretting (isn’t it always like that with me?) I enjoyed. Even when it’s not free, though, the pizza is very reasonably priced, and the guy who runs the place is very personable, though he told us last night that he “doesn’t like people, especially not humans.” We showed up just as they were closing, so he boxed up what was left over and gave it to us, dimming the lights for “atmosphere,” but mostly so that people wouldn’t wander up, thinking they were open.
My pizza had tomatoes and bacon on it, and Joey got a very intense vegetable number of which the pizza guy had said “I mean, they’re all good, but you want to get what’s really good…” I drank a cherry coke.
