This Bites

In this episode's serving of the latest Milwaukee food news and festival highlights: We spill the details on Café Colada, an exciting new spot in Cathedral Square Park created through a partnership between Café Bustelo and Discourse Coffee. Look forward to traditional Cuban coladas topped with sweet espumita, delicious bites like empanadas and churros, and an evening cocktail menu featuring mojitos. We break down the Freshwater Food & Wine Festival happening on the Summerfest grounds, including the "Midwest Heats" live cooking battle between chefs Joe Sasto and Dan Jacobs, tunes from DJ Shawna, and a stacked lineup of local food vendors. We bid a bittersweet farewell to Café Corazón in Bay View, which is throwing a farewell party and silent auction on Oct. 3 to support the Bay View Neighborhood Association before closing its doors (don't worry, their Riverwest and Brown Deer locations remain open). We also venture into the woods for some wild-turkey talk about the bold flavor profile of wild game.

After their summer break, Tarik and Ann are back just in time for September — and our favorite Milwaukee Magazine writer’s "Frugal Foodie" roundup, which proves you don't need to break the bank to eat like royalty.We start the penny-pintching at the time-warm experience of Ted’s Ice Cream & Restaurant in Wauwatosa, where ordering a morning milkshake is a local tradition. With dessert already out of the way, we look for incredible family feasts under $25, including a whole citrus-marinated grilled chicken from El Tsunami, savory filled bread rolls at Bread House and some of the biggest egg rolls you’ve ever seen at Hong Anh Palace.Next, the duo previews two major September restaurant openings: High Stakes (opening Sept. 17) and its gorgeous Peacock Lounge, where the very handsome caricature of a certain This Bites host graces the walls. They also spotlight Il Ponte (opening Sept. 15), a New York-style Italian spot serving elevated, comforting red-sauce dishes and handmade pastas inspired by family recipes.So we’ve done dessert. We’ve done the main course. Let’s wrap things up with a cocktail and the highly anticipated seasonal return of one of the city's best savory offerings: the addictive tomato martini.

We find ourselves in the midst of navigating the highs and lows of Milwaukee’s food scene, and unfortunately this episode starts down a valley with the recent announcement that Mother’s has permanently closed.The Bay View spot hadn’t even been open for a full year, but it was quite an almost-12-months considering owner Vanessa Rose was named a James Beard Award semifinalist in the category of Emerging Chef. Mother’s also landed a spot on the Journal Sentinel’s 2025 list of best new restaurants.But Rose told Journal Sentinel dining critic Rachel Bernhard that economic realities and a customer flow that “sputtered out” led her to make the difficult decision. As usual, however, it wasn’t all bad news around the area’s culinary scene: The first brick-and-mortar location for much-loved Italian food truck Nadi Plates will now open in the former Pomona Cider Co. space on Farwell. Two ambitious Shorewood pre-teen siblings have launched Ube MKE, a cottage bakery featuring the Filipino purple yam treats. The South Side is getting a food-truck park on Greenfield Avenue, courtesy of Taqueria El Toro owner Toribio Perez Martinez. KISS Korean BBQ made a USA Today list of the best food trucks in the U.S. We also take a quick detour to Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, where Black-owned restaurant Soul Ramen is blending Japanese and African flavors to deliver “culture in a bowl.” 

This episode starts at the tail end of Halal Restaurant Week, which runs for a couple more days as it helps bring awareness to the options around Milwaukee that meet Islamic dietary guidelines while also inviting non-Muslim customers to try halal dining and encouraging restaurants to have halal choices on their menus year-round.What makes this a unique cultural food event is how it cuts across cuisine. Restaurants like Mr. B’s Steakhouse, Smoke Shack and Allende Cocina Mexicana are all participating this year, along with eight others that represent a nice cross-section of Milwaukee dining. You can get more info over at Eat Halal Milwaukee while you listen to the other tidbits that snuck into this episode: Dumpling Fest will once again crown the best dough-wrapped goodness when it returns June 28. Riverwest urban farm Crops On Top will welcome guests all summer long to their beer-pairing dinners, garden parties and Detroit-style pizza nights. Lupi & Iris will host their fourth annual Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Dinner that pairs high-end wine with a nine-course tasting menu. Tree-Ripe Fruit will bring farm-fresh peaches and blueberries to their hundreds of fruit stops, including a couple dozen here in southeastern Wisconsin.

A little char on certain foods can add some nice flavor complexity to a dish. On this episode, we’ve got the podcast version of that, with two char-related news items right at the top.Because we like to start with the positive, our first chat is about Uncle Wolfie’s next pop-up dining event happening this Saturday: Chard Soul, a Southern soul food and barbecue experience from the mind of chef Travis Anderson. The former executive chef of West Bend supper club Timmer’s Resort, Anderson isn’t messing around with a menu as loaded as your plate should be if you manage to score a seat.In more mixed news, Milwaukee diners found out that their last chance to dine at Char’d has come and gone, as the modern Korean restaurant in the Third Ward shut down last Saturday. Not all is lost, however, because the owners are pivoting to a new concept: the curiously punctuated bb.q Chicken, a worldwide chain that will open its first Wisconsin location in July.Moving on to non-flame-related items, there’s a new takeout-focused buffet coming to 76th Street near Capitol Drive that will put Hmong dishes front and center, with Thai and Lao cuisine mixed in as well. Asian H Express will take over the former Jackie’s Cafe space at 3902 N. 76th St., with co-owner Sam Vang telling Urban Milwaukee that the focus will be on variety so “people can come and pick whatever they want.”