Other than the music that draws crowds to Summerfest in Milwaukee each year, a lot of people go for the food. And, boy, do they have the food. Nearly anything you want, they have it at Summerfest. I like to go for the music, but the food is definitely high on the list to try.
Unlike most fairs, a lot of the food at Summerfest borders on the eclectic. You'll find such items as grilled chicken on foccacia bread, deep fried eggplant strips, and spinach cheese pies. Oh, they have hot dogs and hamburgers, but the food at Summerfest is much more than that.
Each year we'd go to Summerfest, our traditional first stop was to Crawdaddy's to have a "Gator on a Stick". Basically, it's a sausage link made out of spicy pork and alligator meat with a kabob stick in the middle, then slathered with a tangy barbecue sauce. We like to put some hot sauce on top of it and make it even more spicy.
Keeping up with tradition, I did the same thing this year. Here's a picture of what it looks like. Paired with a cold beer, it's actually pretty damn good.
After our initial foray into the food fare at Summerfest, it's whatever we feel like after that. Like I say, take your pick. There's traditional German food, Greek food, or Italian food. If you want Thai or Chinese, they've got it at Summerfest. Healthy food? They have salads and chicken wraps available.
One of my favorite stops is the Ethnic Village area on the north side of the grounds. There, you'll find Mader's - the venerable old world German restaurant from downtown Milwaukee. I always have to have a brat with sauerkraut from Mader's booth. They use Usinger's brats (Usinger's is located just across the street from Mader's in downtown Milwaukee) and they boil 'em up and then grill 'em to give them that distinctive taste. Served on a nice, chewy bun that isn't too big, you add a little German mustard on top. Grab a beer to wash it down, and it's heaven.
La Perla is one of our favorite Mexican restaurants in Milwaukee and they have a booth at Summerfest, as well. I went there to get a steak taco - very basic, steak in a tortilla. The steak was overcooked and the tortilla was pretty limp. I sort of remember the same thing happening the last time I tried one of their steak tortillas the last time we went up. Note to self - skip La Perla's steak tacos next time.
Cindy always liked the food at the Water Street Brewery at Summerfest. It's more health food with chicken sandwiches and salads on the menu. They used to have a fabulous muffaletta sandwich a number of years ago which they'd serve on the west side of the building. It was very tasty. But they discontinued selling it and it hasn't been back on the menu since. Considering I had a muffaletta at Central Grocery, the original home of the sandwich in New Orleans, it was nearly on par with that.
On the east side of the Water Street Brewery building at Summerfest, Louise's Trattoria - a local Italian bistro in Milwaukee - serves great sandwiches like a smoked turkey with gouda cheese on foccacia, and offers their signature cheese raviolis. I've always wanted to go to Louise's restaurant downtown and I understand they now also have one out in the far west suburbs.
Since Cindy wasn't with me during Summerfest this year, I stayed away from the healthy stuff. Instead, I had a Greek Village gyro for lunch. Actually, I was sort of upset at first - where the original Greek Village was near the Harley Davidson Roadhouse stage, there was now a place called Angelo's. I thought, "Wow! No more gyros at Summerfest!"
But when I went for my Sky Glider ride when I first got there after the grounds opened for the day, I looked down and saw the Greek Village tucked back in a sort of an out of the way area. I got off the Sky Glider and went right there to get a gyro. I asked the girl at the counter if they were the same people over by the Harley stage and she said they were. She said this space had become available and they wanted to have a little more room, so they moved over to this location.
And the gyro wasn't bad - it wasn't great. I will tell you that we've had better gyros from the Greek Village in the past. It was sort of like I had a gyro that was made the night before and then served at 12:30 in the afternoon the next day.
But the traditional late night, last food of the day - usually when we were either leaving the Summerfest grounds, or getting ready to leave the place - is a fresh, hot burger from Major Goolsby's. I like Major Goolsby's burgers at their downtown Milwaukee location, but for some reason the charcoal grilled burgers at Summerfest always taste a little better. And the smell of the cooking burgers just permeates the south side of the Summerfest grounds. It's all one can do to walk by the place without having a Goolsby cheeseburger.
And as I was leaving that afternoon, I decided to uphold tradition and have a Goolsby burger. It was raining lightly, so I got a cheeseburger and stood under the awning at the Major Goolsby beer stand right next to the building. I ordered an ice cold Miller Genuine Draft and devoured that cheeseburger. It was so damn tasty. It's especially great at 11:45 in the evening after drinking beer all night. But at 3:15 in the afternoon, it was still excellent.
As I said in my previous post regarding Summerfest, a lot of changes have taken place in regard to the music acts over the past few years. But the food at Summerfest is still one of the strong attractions that keeps bringing hundreds of thousands of people back to the lake front each year. A lot of the bands may be lame, but the food is still pretty damn good for an event of this caliber.
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