My regular hotel that I had been staying at in Milwaukee for over the past 10 years had quit being a Hilton property, so I've been trying new Hilton family hotels in the area to see if one comes up to my liking. I was staying at a Hampton Inn on the northwest side of Milwaukee late last year and was not familiar with many of the restaurants in the area. I went to the front desk and asked one of the guys where the good restaurants were in the area. He told me of a family restaurant next door, but I said that I wanted to go to a place that served beer. Then he told me of a sports bar/gentleman's club that was across the road. I nixed that suggestion and then one of the other desk clerks came out from the office and said, "If you're looking for good food and some beer, you need to go to The Butler Inn." Asked what they served and he said, "Everything - pizza, burgers, fish, steaks. My wife and I go there all the time." He told me that it was less than a five minute drive from the hotel. I decided to set out to find The Butler Inn.
The Butler Inn is actually in a small town called Butler, but it's more known to the locals as being in the Timmerman West neighborhood of Milwaukee. In the early 1900's, the railyard in Butler was the largest north/south track facility in the area. The building where The Butler Inn stands today used to be a hotel for railroad employees who would be passing through the railyard.
When the golden age of railroads began to die in the 60's, The Butler Inn was turned into a bar/restaurant. A devastating fire in 1980 rendered the building a total loss, but the owners at the time - the Marks family - rebuilt the building using the foundation footings of the original building.
The Marks family sold The Butler Inn in 1988 to pub owner David Tomter. Tomter had run his namesake bar in Milwaukee's west side since 1974 (he closed Tomter's Inn in 1994) and after purchasing The Butler Inn he remodeled the interior, came up with an expanded menu for food and drinks, and added an outdoor beer garden.
It was a pretty cold night when I pulled into the parking lot of The Butler Inn around 7:30 p.m. after a short drive from my hotel (see map) The beer garden was definitely not open that evening. Entering The Butler Inn, you come into bar area with a three-sided rectangular bar. Sort of an eerie red glow envelopes the bar area from a number of beer signs that are hung on the wall. Looking at the fixtures, some of the decorations and the furniture in the place, I'm guessing the place hasn't been updated since Dave Tomter refurbished the place 25 years ago. It was far from dated or tired, however.
There's a dining area that's next to the bar area divided by a half-wall with wooden pillars. The Butler Inn had sort of a cross between a supper club and pub feeling to it. A banquet/reception/party room is located on the upper floor of the place.
I ended up sitting at the bar and my bartender/server, a nice lady by the name of Jill came over to greet me and handed me a menu. She asked what I would like to drink and I noticed that they had Alaskan Amber on tap. Jill poured me a pint of beer in a frosted glass which I thoroughly enjoyed while I looked through the menu.
The menu at The Butler Inn is very extensive. I was a little leery of that because of my adage that a restaurant that has a large menu probably does everything just all right, but nothing really well. The problem I was having was that there was almost too much to choose from on the menu at The Butler Inn.
The guy back at the hotel wasn't kidding - they had a lot of stuff to choose from. They have a dozen and a half appetizers on the menu, as well as over a dozen soups and salads (and any combination within) to choose from. Additionally, they have a slew of sandwiches, burgers, chicken sandwiches and brats on the menu. Seafood, steaks, ribs, rotisserie and broasted chicken, and pasta dishes populated the menu. Friday nights, The Butler Inn features a fish fry that they're locally famous for. They also had a pizza menu that featured housemade thin-crust pizzas in sizes from an 8" personal size pizza up to 32" party pizza that can feed 15 to 20 people.
I was in a quandary as what to get for dinner that evening. When Jill came back to get my food order I was still up in the air. I asked what they were famous for at The Butler Inn and she said, "Well, we do sell a lot of reubens." I had a reuben earlier in the day. "If you like burgers, ours are big and juicy," she said. I was getting burnt out on burgers. I said that I was just in a food funk from being on the road so much and I didn't quite know what I wanted. She gave me a few more minutes so I could decide what to get. I thought I'd give their pizza a try. I got a small (10") sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.
The pizza looked hand-tossed, but I guessed they probably had a machine to get the crust so thin. The pizza was cut into party squares and was topped with a plethora of mushrooms, chunk sausage and pepperoni. There was a bit of charred caramelization on the perimeter of the pizza.
The sauce they use was sweet and tangy, the mozzarella cheese was thick and stringy. The pepperoni slices were a bit spicy and salty allowing the pizza to taste good with the Alaskan Amber. The sausage chunks were good sized and had a bit of a fennel taste to it. This was a very good pizza.
I was able to finish the pizza with no problem. As I finished and contemplated getting another beer to savor the pizza, the other bartender - his name was Dave and I'm guessing he was the owner - came over to check on me. He asked how the pizza was and I told him it was damned good. "We started to do pizza about nine years ago," he told me as he poured another beer for me. "It's one of our more popular items on the menu."
The next day, I told one of my dealers that was calling on that I had gone to The Butler Inn the previous evening. "We don't live far from there," he was telling me. "My wife and I go there all the time." When I told him of my fear of a menu that had too many things on it, he said, "Actually, they do everything very well. Not excellent, but very well." And that was my feeling with the pizza I had at the Butler Inn. It was a very good pizza - not the best I've had - but it would easily hold its own against other pizza places I've eaten at in Milwaukee. And Milwaukee has a lot of good pizza places. I don't know if I cared for the Hampton Inn I stayed in all that well, but I'll probably try other places to stay on the far west side of town. And I'm sure I'll find myself at The Butler Inn again at some point.
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