This Bites

Because we like to keep things fresh around here, let’s flip the usual approach and start with the roundup so we can close with the centerpiece of this episode:

All caught up? Great. We’ve got special guests to introduce.

Chris Corkery established Hundred Acre during what can be generously called tumultuous times. It was 2020, and just about everyone had suddenly gotten to know the term “supply chain” and how disrupting it can change pretty much everyone’s lives.

One of the areas most affected in those circumstances is the food system, especially when it comes to underserved areas in cities like outs. Corkery decided to address the situation by establishing Hundred Acre — an urban farm “providing a rapid response solution to food insecurity in the heart of Milwaukee.”

It’s an ambitious project that’s still going strong five years later, and yet somehow we’ve never had Corkery on the podcast to talk about it. So we made up for lost time by covering the farm’s origin story, why he chose Milwaukee over other cities, “pesto with purpose” and growing even more in the years ahead.

On this episode, Ann and Tarik interview Chef Alex Hanesakda of Sapsap about his upcoming event, "Rivers Run Deep," happening at Cactus Club at 3 p.m. this Saturday, April 12. The event commemorates five decades since Oceanian refugees arrived in the United States after the Vietnam War, focusing on the often-overlooked history of the war in Laos and the genocide in Cambodia.

Chef Alex discusses the symbolism of the Mekong River in his family's escape from Laos, and highlights how breakdancing connected Southeast Asian immigrants with Black and Brown communities in Milwaukee. The conversation also touches on the hypocrisy of anti-immigrant sentiments alongside the popularity of immigrant food.

Alex explains that Lao Oceanian cuisine at events like "Rivers Run Deep" aims to share the stories and struggles behind the food and preserve cultural memory. He also shares a few of the meaningful ingredients from the culture, like lemongrass and fish sauce.

In addition to the chat with Chef Alex, Ann and Tarik also touch on budget-friendly Monday night bites in Milwaukee from Paloma Taco & Tequila, Lucky Joe's and The Vanguard.

For almost exactly one year, Discourse Coffee Workshop has been a roommate of sorts, serving out of the southwest corner of Radio Milwaukee HQ. It’s been a pleasure watching them get comfortable in the space and expanding their presence in the city through other ventures like Agency, the hybrid cocktail bar they operate inside the Dubbel Dutch Hotel.

Making it even more fun was the news that Discourse partners Ryan Castelaz and Sean Liu received earlier this week: that Agency is the lone Wisconsin finalist in this year’s James Beard Foundation Awards.

We start this episode talking about the honor, which keeps Agency in the running for Best New Bar along with Bar Colette (Dallas), Indentidad Cocktail Bar (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Merai (Brookline, Mass.) and ViceVersa (Miami). The category is making its debut this year, meaning the winner will be the first-ever recognized by the James Beard Foundation.

We’ll find out if the hometown boys take home one of those fancy medals June 16, when the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards are handed out at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Fortunately, we have a few more items to tide us over as we wait for the ceremony:

From baseball legends to fast-food tributes, we're serving up another helping from Milwaukee's vibrant food scene. On this episode, Ann and Tarik sample Kopp's new custard flavor inspired by the late legend Bob Uecker (called, what else, "Mr. Baseball"). The hosts also preview the Milwaukee Wine Weekend and get real about restaurant service, sharing tips on how diners can be better customers. Plus, Big Daddy's Barbecue gets a new name (Big Boss BBQ), and Crafty Cow celebrates April Fool's Day with a menu that puts a gourmet spin on fast-food classics.

We always try to give you a meal, metaphorically speaking, on every episode of This Bites. But there are some weeks when we live up to our name and deliver more of a mouthful than a bellyful — a small-plate version of the podcast, if you will. So let's skip the longer run-up and jump straight into what you'll hear on this episode:

There are times when the calendar decides it wants to be your friend — like your birthday falling on a Saturday or St. Patrick’s Day coinciding with the first day of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament (that one really only applies to bar owners and Notre Dame fans).

Today, the calendar has smiled on your humble This Bites hosts, because our regularly scheduled episode release day just so happens to be Pi Day. And we get a layup of a lead item.

While acknowledging that math is important, we can all agree that the superior homonym for this particular date is Pie Day. Ah, pie. It’s a versatile concoction that covers pretty much every phase of the dining experience, from appetizer to dessert. Obviously, the latter is its idealized form, and we start the podcast by giving you a few of our favorite places in Milwaukee to pick one up.

We don’t want to steal Ann’s thunder since she put some real sweat equity into her full list at Milwaukee Magazine, so let’s just do the top three here:

Honeypie — Home of some of the more inventive varieties you’ll find in the area, past examples of which include whiskey walnut pecan and bourbon fudge.

The Bake Sale — A pie gathering place, if you will, featuring baked goods made in-house and others from local vendors.

Elegant Farmer — You’ll have to haul yourself to Mukwonago for this one, but their apple pie baked in a paper bag is reportedly worth the drive.

That should get you started, but feel free to bounce over to Milwaukee Magazine for the other half of the list and lots of helpful info from Ann. The magazine is also where we start our weekly roundup, although it’s a print-only situation, so make sure you track down a copy of the March 2025 issue:

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:

Fuel Cafe officially hit empty after aprubtly announcing its permanent closing Sunday.

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.

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:

Two special dinners at Lupi & Iris will focus on winter cocktails (Feb. 7) and petite black truffles (Feb. 11).

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.