Milwaukee Food Tours

[Blue Baboon]

Milwaukee is offering 2 different food and culture tours. One is for the Italian and German neighborhoods on Brady St. and Old World Third St. The other tour is for Historic Third Ward. These are guided and narrated tours. You get a little bit of history and some great food and beverage sampling.

I'm not sure if these tours are all year long, but I do see dates up until Oct. on their website.

Tour 1:
An Italian bakery and specialty store
An Italian pizzeria
A spice specialty shop
A nationally renowned German eatery
America's oldest sausage maker
A Wisconsin cheese shop
German beer & Italian wines

Tour 2:
An American restaurant
An Italian pizzeria
An Irish pub featuring Milwaukee brewed beer
A Turkish establishment
French cuisine
A chocolate maker and confectionery

Milwaukee Food Tasting and Cultural Walking Tours; Guided Sightseeing Tour in Wisconsin (WI)

[Latina]

Originally Posted by Blue Baboon

Tour 1:
An Italian bakery and specialty store
An Italian pizzeria
A spice specialty shop
A nationally renowned German eatery
America's oldest sausage maker
A Wisconsin cheese shop
German beer & Italian wines

This one sounds good, minus the Italian wines.

Italian food is the best & of all the beer i've tried (ick), German is the best i've had.

[Blue Baboon]

I'd try the wine, but I have a feeling it would dry wine and I'm a sweet wine kind of person. Dry wine always makes me want to throw sugar in.

I'm guessing that the sausage maker is Usinger's and the German restaurant is Mader's. There is a spice shop around there also.

The other tour with the Turkish restaurant has me curious. I'm not sure where that would be. From what I've heard, Turkish food is like Greek food. Someone told me that Turkey created baklava and gyros. A popular food item over there is kabap, not sure of spelling, what we call a kabob. I've seen that in Greek cooking also.

Google came up with Tulip Restaurant which looks like it's in the Third Ward on Jefferson St. and has Mediterranean style cooking.

[Latina]

Originally Posted by Blue Baboon

I'd try the wine, but I have a feeling it would dry wine and I'm a sweet wine kind of person. Dry wine always makes me want to throw sugar in it

I am not one to drink wine.

I tried several back in the day & they were all gross to me, once that happens i find it hard to try again.

[Blue Baboon]

I tried wine when I was younger, probably as a teen when my parents had it. They usually got it as gift and it was never the sweet kind. I didn't like wine until I tried the sweeter stuff (such as Cella) and that makes a big difference. The taste can vary quite a bit from wine to wine. Worst stuff I ever had was Mogan David. That's the crap they give you in church.

[pk]

Sounds interesting. I'll have to mark this. If anyone remembers closer to Oct please bring this post back up as a reminder.

[pk]

Tour 1:
An Italian bakery and specialty store
An Italian pizzeria
A spice specialty shop
A nationally renowned German eatery
America's oldest sausage maker
A Wisconsin cheese shop
German beer & Italian wines

Looking this one over I realized that we have been to most of them and talked with the owners at a few and learned some of the history in our 'own' tours. lol

If I'm thinking of the right Italian bakery, we stopped in there for breakfast one time and purchased bakery items. Great stuff there.

Love going to the Usinger's, always check out the back table for bargains.

The Cheese shop I think would be the one on the corner. They were doing some renavations last time we were there. They have chocolate cheese! Hard to find and it's sooo good.

German place my guess also would be Maders. I have yet to go in there but would love to hear the history and see the inside. Looks very interesting.

The Spice Shop is directly across from the sausage store. Love, love, love to go there. They are very friendly and will help you decide what you want to buy and give you all kinds of hints on how to use the spices and on what foods. They have a very nice catalog you can bring home to make sure you check that out if going there.

The wines? I don't drink so that would bore me but maybe hearing the history would be interesting.

Now that I have thought about it, Maders would be the only one that I need to go on a tour of it. lol

[Blue Baboon]

I don't remember a bakery by that area. I do remember the Little Italy restaurant.

Also it does say on the website that places can change without notice. I would imagine they try to stick to the places on the list as much as possible, but in case something comes up, then they find another to take its place.

I think this food/history tour is a great idea and other towns should consider doing such a thing. It's good for business and good way to learn about the history of an area. Imagine the possibilities if every town or city had such a tour. I think I'd be doing a tour every weekend at that rate.