This episode finds us hitting the home stretch of Black History Month, which means it's time to get moving and support Milwaukee's Black-owned restaurants (something we should do year-round). Ann gave us all a helping hand by putting together a sizable list for Milwaukee Magazine that includes everything from soul food to barbecue and Ethiopian to Jamaican.

Toward the end of the podcast, we also highlight a pair of cookbooks from Black women that literally span more than a century: a new edition of Malinda Russell's A Domestic Cookbook (first published in 1866) and a compilation of Gullah Geechee recipes collected by Emily Meggett, who was 89 when the book came out in 2022.

In other culinary news from around Milwaukee:

• The mad scientists at Discourse are serving up real ants on a log right downstairs from where I'm writing this at Radio Milwaukee.
• Milwaukee Public Market will hold a very rhyme-y Soup, Stew & Brew Fest on March 5.
• Dan Jacobs and Dan Van Rite will again welcome a bunch of their famous chef buddies for a collaborative dinner series at Dandan and EsterEv.
• Fuel Cafe officially hit empty after aprubtly announcing its permanent closing Sunday.
• Milwaukee's oldest Black biker bar has shifted gears and will soon become Cajun Soul MKE.

Sometimes, the universe just doesn’t want you to make a dish. You hand-pick all your ingredients, do your chopping and dicing and mixing, pull out your go-to cookware and … the stove won’t light.

This food metaphor is meant to soften the blow of there not being a full podcast this week. Ann and Tarik were in the studio with their rundown of food news all set to go, and then our fancy audio equipment did the equivalent of the stove not lighting. So we did what any great chef does in this situation: Scrap the five-course meal you had planned and make a decent salad.

Most of what you’ll hear in this salad-ified episode comes from HYFIN's Megan Matthews — one of the DJs providing the “sound” half of our upcoming SoundBites event Feb. 27. She has the good fortune to be paired with Centraal Grand Café & Tappery’s Rebecca Berkshire, who welcomed Megan into the kitchen for a chat about what they both have cooking for the big night (tickets for which are on sale now).

Tarik also didn’t want to miss an opportunity to talk about another cookbook that caught his eye recently: Black Power Kitchen from Ghetto Gastro. The Bronx-based culinary collective put together 75 recipes — mostly plant-based — that blend cultural heritage with innovative cooking techniques. 

Strong Back Stew, Triboro Tres Leches and their version of a classic bodega chopped cheese are just a few examples of what you’ll find in these pages, which include way more than just recipes. The photography is incredible (there’s nothing like a great good photo), plus they fold in original artwork and essays that draw the connections among food, community and Black excellence.

We love “the new.” Especially when it comes to the restaurant scene, we get excited about the spot that just opened its doors or discovering a place the rest of the community hasn’t caught on to yet.

While the rookies get everyone worked up, it’s the veterans who create the foundation of a city’s food identity. And we’ve got two of them leading the lineup for this episode of the podcast.

First up is Bacchus, the venerable Bartolotta-owned restaurant that announced a couple different developments around its 20th anniversary. For starters, executive chef Nick Wirth and chef de cuisine Brent Davis have come up with a new a la carte dinner menu, which will debut along with a new bar menu Feb. 20. Among the items you’ll find are charred Spanish octopus, smoked wagyu pastrami, Seremoni black cod with burnt honey celeriac and couscous pilaf, and Wagyu skirt steak with miso-glazed ube and grilled kimchi bok choy.

The restaurant will also take a night to properly celebrate the 20th anniversary as it hosts a champagne dinner March 6. The aforementioned chef duo have put together a five-course menu for the occasion, which will also include pairings of bubbly from the likes of Dom Pérignon and Laurent Perrier.

Another longstanding Milwaukee eatery got the Ann Christenson treatment recently, as our favorite food writer took a peek inside Pizza Man’s comeback. Once the king of our city’s pie scene (arguably), Pizza Man experienced some slippage as it suffered through fire, a couple location changes and attempted expansion.

It’s now back at the Downer location and trying to recapture its former glory under new owners Thomas Schafer and Krys Zielinski. Ann stopped by a couple times to get a feel for how things are coming along and found mixed results, as well as steady improvement. As she put it in her Milwaukee Magazine story, “This reboot needs to succeed. Downer Avenue needs it to.”

Here’s what else found its way into this episode:

• A juicy piece about Prime Rib you’ll only find in the pages of Milwaukee Magazine.
• A new concept called Outlaw Oyster that’ll pop-up inside Crafty Cow’s Wauwatosa location.
• A chat about What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, the first African-American cookbook from 1881.

Finally, we have another in our series of interviews with some of Milwaukee’s very best chefs — who just so happen to be whipping up an original dish you can try at Radio Milwaukee’s SoundBites. Egg & Flour’s Adam Pawlak gets the microphone on this episode and talks with Kenny Perez about the tostada he’s working on for Feb. 27.

Adam is one of 12 different chefs lending their considerable talents to SoundBites, a group that includes Dane Baldwin from The Diplomat, Kristen Schwab from The Wolf and Gregory León from Amilinda. To make your reservation at this very exclusive table, head over to the event page.

We’re a day away from February, which is not important. We’re also a day away from Phobruary, which is very important — so important, in fact, that we slapped it at the top of this episode.

If you’ve somehow not partaken of Phobruary in its previous 11 years of existence, the gist is that it’s an annual celebration of the Vietnamese noodle soup at a handful of restaurants in Milwaukee’s Silver City neighborhood. The 12th installment includes the following three eateries and their respective specials:

• Vientiane Noodle Shop — $7 small beef/meatball pho bowl
• Thai-Barbq Restaurant — $7 small steak pho bowl, $5 for three egg rolls, #3 BBQ meat skewer, $5 shrimp skewer
• PK Palace — $7 small beef/meatball pho bowl, 10% off total purchase (not valid for pho promotional price)

All three of the restaurants are on National Avenue between 34th and 38th streets, so if you really like your pho, you could easily eat your way from one to the next to the next and then probably feel uncomfortably full for the rest of the day. But satisfied.

Speaking of which, here’s what else we discuss to satisfy your weekly need for Milwaukee culinary news:

• Momo Mee has whipped up a very special menu to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
• Two special dinners at Lupi & Iris will focus on winter cocktails (Feb. 7) and petite black truffles (Feb. 11).
• Marcus Hotel restaurants have Valentine’s Day events galore at Mason Street Grill, The Pfister and The Dark Room.
• Venturing outside Milwaukee, we talk about Our South, a cookbook focused on Black Southern cuisine.

Back inside Milwaukee, we’ve got something special baked into this episode, Radio Milwaukee's Dori Zori. She and Kristen Schwab from The Wolf on Broadway talk about their food-and-music pairing at the upcoming SoundBites event happening at the Harley-Davidson Museum on Feb. 27. You can learn all about it here or just skip right to buying tickets.

The James Beard Awards are kind of like the NBA season: They crown the champs, and it seems like training camps start two days later.

Making the cyclical process all the more tolerable is how well Milwaukee does — a trend that continued when the James Beard Foundation named its semifinalists earlier this week. Since we’re in the back-patting business, that’s where we start this episode of the podcast.The nominees fell into two camps, the first of which is the expected announcements. The “Best Chef: Midwest” category is a prime example, with plenty of familiar names on the list:

• Dan Jacobs and Dan Van Rite of EsterEv
• Kyle Knall of Birch
• Ross Bachhuber and Sam Ek of Odd Duck
• Jamie Brown-Soukaseume and Chuckie Brown-Soukaseume of Ahan in Madison

The other individual from our area to earn a nomination is Gregory León of Amilinda, who landed in the category “Outstanding Chef presented by Hilton.” But Milwaukee didn’t stop there. We also scored a couple non-restaurant nods, as Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge is up for “Outstanding Bar” and the forward-thinking hybrid cocktail lounge Agency (in the Dubbel Dutch Hotel) is in the category “Best New Bar.”

We’ll wait patiently for the finalists to be announced April 2, and then again for the winners at the annual awards ceremony June 16. In the meantime, here’s what else you’ll hear about in this episode:

• Now that the Cheel is no more, you might be looking for other places to get Himalayan cuisine in Milwaukee. Ann’s got you covered.
• Maider Kitchen Restaurant will bring a Hmong-focused menu to Phongsavan Asian Market on North 76th Street.
• If you’re in the mood for a traditional five-course Lao dinner, book a spot at Lucky Ginger’s event Feb. 20.
• The Pfister will throw a 90th birthday gala for legendary chef and author Jacques Pépin, featuring more than 20 chefs from throughout Wisconsin.

For the first episode of 2025 — our 11th(!) year bringing This Bites to your ears — we started in a very familiar (and familial) place: the recently closed Ardent, which is welcoming the first of hopefully many more things to come from its former chef, Vanessa Rose.

Rose will bring some playful flavors to the space when she hosts an extended pop-up called Mother’s that hosts its first diners today. You can expect small plates from an a la carte menu that gets a little out there. One example she provided to the Journal Sentinel’s Rachel Bernhard is “a scallion crepe cake with crab Rangoon, grilled pineapple and ssamjang.”

The pop-up will serve 5 to 9 p.m. Fridays to Mondays between now and Jan. 25. Rose said they’ll welcome walk-ins but prefer reservations you can make via Instagram direct message (@mothers.mke or @86d.heard).

Before we give you the rest of this week’s food news, one more note about Rose’s aspirations. She’s pushing to give Mother’s a permanent home as part of a space dedicated to Milwaukee’s LGBTQ+ community while also developing another concept called House of Bridges. According to the GoFundMe she set up to make those dreams a reality, “Both of these projects seek to make restaurants a more fair and less exploitative industry.” The goal is to implement:

• Cooperative ownership
• Royalties on dishes created by staff
• Annual cookbooks and cooking tutorials, with profits going back to the restaurants to supplement wages and benefits
• Employer-paid insurance
• Reasonable work weeks
• Support of local farmers over corporate food providers
• Profit sharing
• Mutual aid across all demographics
• Weekly pay-what-you-can meals for people struggling to keep food on their tables

It’s clear Rose has a vision, and you can support it by contributing to her GoFundMe. As for the rest of our episode, you’ll hear a little bit about:

• Ann’s story about Flourchild that you can find in the pages of Milwaukee Magazine.
• Private chef Michaela Ericson’s plans to open a public-facing restaurant and retail store.
• A new Mexican restaurant called El Caporal coming to Clark Square.
• A review of Margaux Brasserie that Ann put together for Milwaukee Magazine.
• Milwaukee Flavor Live, a four-course culinary event tied into a city-centric cookbook.
• The return of SoundBites, a much-loved Radio Milwaukee event that pairs food and music.

Just a few days before Christmas, Chef Ray and his business partner Cherry Phetleung gave our city a gift by welcoming their first guests to 1033 Omakase as part of its soft opening. The non-numerical part of the restaurant’s name means “I leave it up to you,” reflecting the control that diners turn over to the chef as part of their experience.

For this initial phase, 1033 Omakase will offer just three seatings per night Wednesday through Saturday, with a maximum of six guests per seating. The experience is $119 per person, and you can book your spot via Resy.

Moving from a new spot to an old favorite, Azhar Shah and his family reached out to the community this week with a plea to help Pakistani restaurant Shah Jee stay on its feet. Their goal is to raise $180,000 for operating costs and maintenance needs, so if you have the means to help a longstanding member of Milwaukee’s restaurant community, please head over to the fundraising page and give what you can.

We’ll wrap up this final installment before the holiday with a trio of dispatches from Ann’s desk at Milwaukee Magazine. First up is her glowing review of The Commodore, the newest jewel in The Bartolotta Restaurants’ culinary crown. The adjectives describing her experience should give you a sense of the place — “elegant,” “delectable” and  “revelational” among them.

We also have quick chats about two items you’ll only find in the pages of Milwaukee Magazine’s desserts issue: her interview with the pastry chefs from Ester Ev, and an instructional on how to poach a pear and make Creme an Glaise.

This episode has a seasonal feel, with Agency cooking up a menu inspired by holiday movies and an ode to a classic cold-weather beverage. But we lead things off with big news about James Beard-recognized chef Kyle Knall's plans for a new French bistro in Milwaukee's Third Ward, then dip into the sweet with desserts around the world and pie charts (not the boring kind).

Milwaukee food lovers and restaurant-goers got a big helping of tough news over Thanksgiving weekend, as Justin Carlisle announced that Ardent will close at the end of December. As our hosts are both lovers of food and goers of restaurants, they couldn’t really start this episode anywhere else.

Ann connected with Carlisle for a Milwaukee Magazine article that sounded a few somewhat-hopeful notes. For one, Ardent’s chef/owner exceeded his own expectations for the business, saying that it was “never expected to last that long” but also that “[it] doesn’t mean it’s over. This chapter’s over.”

It turns out that’s true on a couple fronts. Carlisle’s personal next chapter will involve consulting and enjoying some time off. As for the space at 1751 N. Farwell Ave., we have one of those rare “breaking news” moments on this episode, which includes some information you won’t find in Ann’s article. On top of that, we have these bits and pieces from around the area:

• Three Black-owned food businesses in Wisconsin were awarded grants from the Heinz Black Kitchen Initiative.
• Food critic Keith Lee named Milwaukee as one of the most underrated food cities in the country.
• Just in time for the holidays, Ann has brought back her list of the best new books for foodies.
• Ann also made a recent trip to Brisa Do Mar and shared her thoughts about the Mediterranean menu.
• Milwaukee’s far northwest side will get a taste of Hmong cuisine from a new restaurant slated to open late this year or early next.

Everyone loves dumplings. So everyone should also love the first news item in this episode: dumpling-making classes at The Wolf. These opportunities for delicious instruction are no joke. Chef Kristin Schwab set up a couple for December, and both of them sold out so fast that the restaurant decided to make them a monthly affair all throughout 2025. We break down this very cool experience, which you can register for right now (even the one next December if you’re the type who likes to plan ahead) on The Wolf website.

There’s another website you can visit for more details on a couple other things we discuss on this episode. Milwaukee Magazine just posted Ann's great interview with Wild Bearies founder Elena Terry, a member of the Ho-Chunk nation and expert on indigenous cuisine, Terry landed a well-earned spot on the Wisconsin-centric season of Top Chef and told Ann in the full Q&A, “I know for myself, to be considered on that level, an expert – it’s been a long time coming.” 

Milwaukee Magazine also has Ann's latest Dish of the Month: katsudon from Todd I Believe I Can Fry (2159 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.). The Japanese staple is built around a panko-breaded pork cutlet, and Ann’s affection for it is very obvious — both in her vivid description on the podcast and her story at Milwaukee Magazine.

Believe it or not, we also have something NOT from the magazine to wrap up this episode. It’s the very good news that the much-loved Chucho’s Red Tacos will join the Diverse Dining Market (250 W. Wisconsin Ave.) every Tuesday. We're big supporters of birria tacos, and it’s great to have places like Chucho’s serving them up around Milwaukee.