Eat, Sip, and Spin in...Milwaukee

Making some of the best music players on earth isn’t the only thing we do at Victrola. Our staff loves to travel, loves record stores, loves to eat, loves a fine cocktail, and loves to hunt for the best places to do all those things in every metropolis in the United States. We want to share our favorite places with you, so we invented Eat, Sip, and Spin in…to tell you about our favorite places to do those things.

If you had just one word to describe the city of Milwaukee—the biggest in Wisconsin—unpretentious would do. It’s a city that is unhurried, that loves a good time, and one that lives for entertainment, whether that be the hometown Bucks or Brewers, or the biggest annual music festival on earth (it’s true) Summerfest. It’s the kind of place where a breakfast restaurant feels like home after 10 minutes, where you and a stranger become Pull Tab Legends for one night only, where a local performance venue is rumored to be haunted, and where Jeffrey Dahmer and Bob Uecker both lived in the ‘90s.

If you find yourself with a few days—or even one, really—in Milwaukee, here’s where we recommend you spend your time.  

Eat:

The city dish of Milwaukee is the Friday Night Fish Fry, a staple from the Catholics who settled the place, and who gave up red meat during Lent. It’s such a staple that a local arts publication, The Milwaukee Record, has a guy who’s been reviewing a different fish fry in town every week for something like 12.5 years. Start on his list, and he won’t set you wrong.

Another local staple is the custard/burger joint Kopp’s, which is what fast food burger joints were like in the ‘50s, down to the paper hats and the almost exclusively teen workforce. Their custard rocks, and the fries will blow your hair back. You might want to go to Zaffiro’s to try “Milwaukee style” pizza, which is super thin pizza that pairs well with a Schlitz, Miller, Pabst, or other Milwaukee-made draft.

If you want something at least slightly more upscale, head to Odd Duck, a small plates restaurant that has a rotating menu, and is a mainstay of the Bay View neighborhood. Just close your eyes and point your finger at the menu; everything is that good.

Sip:

Being that Milwaukee is famous for beer—even Jerry Lee Lewis knows it—you basically can’t go 10 feet in any part of Milwaukee without running into a drinking establishment. Trying to recommend one over the other here is like trying to recommend a grain of sand on the beach over another one: the criterion for differentiating is minute and impossible to parse.

That said, any drinking night in Milwaukee needs to include a stop on Brady Street—long the city’s main place to tie one on—and Nomad World Pub, a soccer bar in a city that prefers their football oblong and played 2.5 hours north. Milwaukee is a beer-and-a-shot kind of town, not a cocktail town, and the Nomad used to have—before better interests prevailed—the funniest special: A shot, a beer, and a Marlboro Red cigarette as a “garnish” for $5. You’ll find similar shot-and-a-beer deals all over town, with some offering the lottery of choice, pull tabs as the chaser to the shots.

If you fancy something more laid back and likely featuring live music, head to Cactus Club, which is maybe the best place to catch a show in the state; they book everyone from local cover bands to touring indie rock acts, book clubs and film screenings, and every good sightline in the place is a few steps from a bar, as God intended.   

Spin:

Every music-loving Wisconsin resident over 25 who grew up east of Wausau and north of Racine can repeat the famous slogan of the independent record chain The Exclusive Company (“Say it with me!”), the last chain standing in the state, outlasting even Sam Goody. When the chain’s eccentric owner—Mr. Giombetti, who voiced all the commercials and was a fixture at the Oshkosh store, where he was rumored to live—passed away at 91 in 2021, his family decided to liquidate the store’s assets, including the Milwaukee location, an institution. Milwaukee record lovers and the store’s staff stepped in and saved the location, changing the name to Lilliput Records. It’s been updated from the Exclusive Company days, but if you want a hit of the feel of the house Mr. G. built and some nostalgia, head here.      

The other two record stores we recommend in Milwaukee are nearly neighbors on Kinnickinnic Ave.: Rushmor (the longest operation Milwaukee record store) and Acme. Make an afternoon of perusing the stacks at both places, which have varied, deep selections.