Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [175]
Benji’s Deli
4156 N. Oakland Ave.
414–332–7777
Milwaukee, WI (in Shorewood)
BLD | $$
Benji’s is an old-fashioned Jewish-style deli in a modern shopping area. It is an authentic taste of Milwaukee, by which we mean it offers a reassuring menu of old country ethnic dishes (chicken-in-the-pot, cabbage rolls, fried matzoh) along with plenty of Midwestern Americana, such as a Friday night fish fry, a deluxe hamburger plate with French fries, a French dip sandwich on a poppy-seed roll, and that mysteriously named heartland meal-in-a-skillet, Hoppel Poppel, for which no ethnic group we know has ever taken credit. Hoppel Poppel is a griddle-cooked breakfast mélange of chewy salami chunks, scrambled eggs, tender potato chunks, and (optional) onions. Benji’s offers it also in a “super” version that adds peppers, mushrooms, and melted cheese to the formula. Either way, it’s delicious.
The other specialties of the house are deli food: piled-high corned beef sandwiches on rugged-crusted sour rye bread, lox-and-bagel platters, sweet-and-sour cabbage borscht, buttery warm blintzes (available filled with cheese, cherries, or blueberries), and crisp potato pancakes, served with applesauce. For dessert, we recommend noodle kugel (a cheesecake-rich block of cooked egg noodles and sweetened cheese), served hot with sour cream. And for a beverage to drink with your meal, Benji’s offers true melting pot variety: domestic or imported beer, kosher wine, Dr. Brown’s in cans, Sprecher’s soda in bottles, and chocolate phosphates (seltzer water and chocolate syrup).
Chili John’s
519 S. Military Ave.
920–494–4624
Green Bay, WI
LD | $
In 1916, “Chili John” Isaac devised a recipe for ground beef cooked with a rainbow of spice. The way he served it at his little eat-place, in concert with spaghetti noodles, beans, and cheese, the heat became part of a well-balanced plate of food. Today, it is served with spoon-size oyster crackers, which were invented at Chili John’s request. The story is that sometime in the 1920s, he came to believe that the old-fashioned store cracker, at least an inch in diameter, was too unwieldy to garnish his chili, so he convinced cracker manufacturers to downsize.
Although some locals still call the multilayered configuration Texas-style chili (an appellation Texas chiliheads no doubt would abhor), variations of the formula are now known throughout the state as Green Bay–style chili, and the legendary chili parlor Chili John created has become a culinary beacon.
Jack Pandl’s Whitefish Bay Inn
1319 Henry Clay St.
414–964–3800
Whitefish Bay, WI
LD | $$
Jack Pandl’s (since 1915) serves German-flavored Dairyland cuisine in a friendly, wood-paneled dining room with a wall of windows that look out over elegant Lake Drive. Waitresses wear dirndl skirts and there is lots of old-world memorabilia for décor (including one of the planet’s biggest collections of beer steins), but the menu is at least as Midwestern as it is middle European. At lunch, when the steel-banded tables are set with functional paper place mats, you can eat a julienne salad or a Reuben sandwich made with Wisconsin cheese, or pork chops, or a Denver omelet. In addition to superlative broiled whitefish (“always purchased fresh,” the menu guarantees), there is that lean but luscious local specialty, walleyed pike, filleted and broiled to perfection. This being Milwaukee, Friday is fish fry night, of course. Pandl’s perch is lovely—whole fish filleted so their two halves hold together, encased in a golden crust and accompanied by first-class potato pancakes.
We love schaum torte for dessert. That’s a crisp