Since 1950 Elsa Kopp’s frozen custard has been a local staple for creamy comfort. But it’s not simple sundaes that inspire treks to the three suburban locations. Their jumbo burgers have the charry-edged, beefy, buttery finish that all nouveau diner flattops yearn for. They are housed in starchy soft buns and draped in melty processed yellow cheese, but from there personalizations hold a mirror up to the eater. Do you like it simple with ketchup? Or do you need a thrill with hot sauce and jalapenos? Why not make it a double with bacon and bracingly stinky fried onions? However you order yours, eat it in the car with the radio turned to Bob Uecker covering a Brewers game. That is living your best Milwaukee life.

Part social movement, part cultural hub, the Phoenix remains the beating heart of the Sherman Park neighborhood. After the civil unrest following a fatal police shooting in 2016, community leaders transformed a damaged BMO Harris Bank building into this sprawling collective of small businesses, most of them owned by people of color. Since then, it’s been host to a presidential campaign rally and nominated for a State Farm Building Blocks Award. On a quotidian level, it soothes with balms like gourmet popcorn, barbecue, and chicken wings from Brooklyn-based Buffalo Boss, and a smattering of culture, wellness, and fashion tenants whose offerings range from massage therapy to lash extensions.

Lakefront started in 1987, but it somehow feels older, like it’s just always existed in Milwaukee. After the big boys that made Milwaukee famous, and before the boom of third-wave craft brewers sprouting up in the past decade, Lakefront was the most ubiquitous local beer of area bars and liquor stores. Nowadays you’re not really a Milwaukeean until you’ve taken one of the brewery’s famous tours or stopped by the live polka-fueled Friday fish fry. Lakefront keeps things fresh with stunts like a rotating weekly “curd of the day” and romantic private chalet dinners overlooking the fermentation cellar.

Since 1975, this nondescript, low-slung, windowless Walnut Street spot has blown plumes of porky smoke over the near North Side, eliciting a Pavlovian response from anyone within nose-shot. The kitchen utilizes the recipes of Betty Gillespie, the originator of the restaurant’s name and meat matriarch who first started serving food at an old hay market in the mid-’50s. Today her son, Giovanni, oversees the sprawling open fire charcoal pit. The style is a marriage between Kansas City and Memphis, and acolytes prize pieces of pork shoulder and, if available, outside shoulder. The restaurant finishes every styrofoam-boxed bounty with a liberal pour of delightfully goopy, nearly fluorescent sauce that assures the meat will stick to your ribs. Speed Queen is ideal for game time, late-night sobering up, family feasts, or any urge to pig out. If you can’t make it to Bronzeville, the restaurant’s sauces are available in bottled form throughout much of Wisconsin.

Chef and owner Dane Baldwin was named the 2022 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef in the Midwest, a loud recognition of this quietly elegant East Side nook. True to its name, the restaurant strikes a diplomatic balance between classy and comfortable. The dining room welcomes couples on date nights with Negronis, chicken leg confit, and octopus with calabrian aioli, while also catering to simpler, lizard brain appetites with the infamous Diplomac, a pristinely chef-ified recreation of a Big Mac. Baldwin’s prestige has helped restore some of the luster to Brady Street, making it once again a beacon for grown-up dining.

Birch feels fine-tuned for restaurant lists like this one, but chef Kyle Knall has come up with something singular and personal, building on his roots in Alabama, time spent cutting his teeth on the line at Gramercy Tavern in New York, and experience starting a touted spot in New Orleans. Since opening in 2021, Birch has felt rustic yet refined, focused and tight, with a menu heavy on charring, smoking, and wood-firing. Chicken under a brick, head-on shrimp, and fish served with carrot salsa and house-made tortillas are all Instagram-friendly showstoppers. But the restaurant really asserts its own story through down-home items like garlic focaccia or scorched flatbread with crispy guanciale.

Back when you had to have an actual book to know a restaurant’s Zagat score and a landline to make a dinner reservation, “san” and “ford” were the two syllables that spelled special occasion fine dining in Milwaukee. Along with his wife, Angie, Culinary Institute of America-trained Sandy D’Amato opened the restaurant tucked away in the Lower East Side in 1989, cornering the local market on white tablecloths, big city service, and finely tuned new American fare: seared foie gras, molasses-glazed quail, fennel-dusted beef tenderloin, and ultra-rare $200 bottles of Goose Island. Since 2012, it’s been run by D’Amato’s longtime chef de cuisine, Justin Aprahamian, with his wife, Sarah. The couple continues the tradition of excellence, and they keep the city’s foremost fine dining destination cool and quiet.

You can pick a Bartolotta Restaurant Group spot for any upscale craving: contemporary new American (Bacchus), high-end French (Lake Park Bistro), dinner with a view (Harbor House), supper clubbing (Joey Gerard’s), steak (Mr. B’s), a rumpus (Rumpus Room). But for white tablecloth classicism and rustic Italian soul — spaghetti with duck ragu, risotto, house-made ravioli, smoked lamb stew, pan-seared scallops, tiramisu — the family’s Wauwatosa Village flagship has remained an inviting favorite for 30 years.

Whether or not you place any stock in a VPN badge (Vera Pizza Napoletana, the official designation of “true Neapolitan pizza” by Naples-based Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana), San Giorgio produces objectively satisfying wood-fired pizza. With an airy, chewy crust, lightly charred undercarriage, proper leoparding around the edges, stretchy wet mozzarella, and bright San Marzano carnage for optimal pop on Instagram, any of the house pies might rank as the best in town. If possible, wait for your pickup at the pizza bar, where you can fall in love at first sight as your pizza emerges from the blaze of the 900-degree Stefano Ferrara oven.

Fifteen years after claiming James Beard’s Best Chef in the Midwest award for his work at Lake Park Bistro, Adam Siegel, along with co-owner Michael DeMichele, earned a James Beard nomination for Best New Restaurant in 2023 with Lupi & Iris. The duo aren’t resting on their laurels at their high-style downtown digs. The restaurant plays host to an ever-expanding roster of special events — seven-course prix fixe tasting menus, casual Sunday suppers, jazz brunch — but French and Italian Riviera dinners remain the focus. The ricotta ravioli, branzino, chargrilled octopus, and olive oil cake give Lupi & Iris a claim as the new leader of Milwaukee fine dining.

Before Milwaukee Street was a bastion of valet parking, special occasion dining, and well-heeled out-of-towners, there was Zarletti. With appetizers like crostini misti and house-made burrata, pastas including ravioli and ragu of the day, and entrees of osso buco and classic Bolognese, chef Brian Zarletti has turned family recipes into a restaurant that is both classy and warm, refined and comfortable. It’s a corner spot from a Billy Joel song, reminding everyone that top shelf service doesn’t have to be stuffy, that a neighborhood vibe can still be found in trendy downtown, and that there is no better dish than a well-made carbonara.

Alem has been serving shareable Ethiopian entrees over spongy injera in the heart of downtown for over a decade. Vegetarian and carnivorous specialties include yemisir wot (slow-cooked lentils in red pepper sauce), steamed gomen, spicy doro wot with ayib (cottage cheese), and kitfo (steak tartare). African beers and wines, as well as ouzo-spiked tea, pair well with any convivial, family-style feast.

This sprawling emporium features TVs, video games, cornhole, shuffleboard, and the vibes of an adult recess, but it’s also one of the city’s best collective of calories. Housed in part of the urban carcass once known as the Grand Avenue Mall, the assemblage is a comfortable spot to bring the kids, take in a game, or, most importantly, see how much you can put away from the array of Peruvian chicken, tortas, arepas, pho, ramen, wings, pizza, and almost too many other options. Or you could just go for the consummate crowd pleaser, Dairyland, with its curds, custard, and eternal burger.

Before you could get a solid burger everywhere, Sobelman’s set the town standard. With a buttery, glossy griddled bun, juicy patties, a blanket of three-cheese melt, fried onion, and diced jalapenos, the house burger is a consistent ideal. The Marquette campus-adjacent bar is also a fine old-school option for curds and for sampling Wisconsin’s most underrated cultural delicacy: a bombastic Bloody Mary, so chock full of garnishes it drinks like a meal, complete with a beer chaser.

When it opened in 2013, Bavette seemed unique, European, and pricey — the kind of place you’d find in Chicago, not Milwaukee. Now, on the heels of owner Karen Bell’s fifth James Beard nomination, this whole-hog butcher shop and subtly sophisticated restaurant has come to feel more like an old friend. The lunch and dinner destination is fit for all levels of craving, with pimento and toast, the city’s best muffuletta, chicken liver mousse, and a corned beef tongue Reuben. In a fresh and expanded Third Ward home, Bavette’s growth feels indicative of the maturation of the city itself.

Before you could find a small plate on every corner of Walker’s Point, La Merenda was the quiet forerunner, slinging international tapas in a reservations-required dining room. Now owner Peter Sandroni offers worldly brunch dishes at Engine Company No. 3, but his flagship will always serve Milwaukee’s quintessential shareable goods: pork and shrimp tostadas, seared trout, empanadas, duck confit poutine. Butter chicken somehow copacetically rubs shoulders with lamb bolognese, while goat cheese curds in chorizo cream sauce can go with anything or stand alone.

It isn’t often, if ever, that one of the best, most beloved restaurants in town closes, reconceptualizes, and reopens with new focus and leadership. Formerly Crazy Water, La Dama now finds owner and chef Peggy Magister collaborating alongside longtime chef Emanuel Corona, who draws on flavors and techniques from his youth and roots around Puebla, Mexico City, and Oaxaca. One stomach won’t be sufficient for this gauntlet of food, beginning with tlayudas, chilitos rellenos, and oysters a las brazas. Then there are the tacos filled with duck carnitas and orange habanero salsa, tuna and horseradish crema, huitlacoche, or pork belly with black garlic puree. Out with the old, in with the nopalito.

Harkening back to the time when Walker’s Point was largely comprised of Latino families, this restaurant wears its years and peeling paint with pride, an excellent canvas for homestyle friendliness, classic Mexican cooking, and a whole lot of spice. Steaming bowls of menudo and pozole are hearty, fiery antidotes to your hangover or cold, respectively. The mole and birria simmer all day to produce vivid, earthy flavors. Of special note is the bistec en chile de arbol, tender, scraggly scraps of steak in a scorching silken mahogany sauce, which makes for a dangerous DIY taco mix. An arbol salsa is also available upon request to pro-level spice seekers, pleasing anyone with a penchant for mouth burn.

This sliver of Silver City is rife with far-reaching international soul. Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Laotian food, along with this Thai standout, populate a single intersection of National Avenue. The menu here is similarly expansive. You can bounce from fried quail or crispy chicken skewers to hot pots, larb, curries, or bowls of pho. The Thai barbecue pork noodle soup — served with jalapenos, chili garlic paste, and crushed dried peppers — is the all-star dish of any chilly Milwaukee night, its velvety, rich broth teeming with sunken treasures of pork. It’s hard to imagine a more sinus-singeing bowl of comfort.

Chef-owner Dave Swanson’s Braise has been at the forefront of all things hip since opening in 2011. It offers cooking classes ranging from beginner to 10-week bootcamps, private rooftop dining, farm dinners, and locally and house-sourced groceries. It is also just a restaurant, where an ever-changing menu might skip through steamed pork buns, wild mushroom crostones, and beef kefta. There is such attention to detail that even the sourdough and whipped ramp butter can feel transcendent. Braise is Milwaukee’s pesky overachiever — which is what makes it so delicious.

Sichuan spice and soup dumplings. Nary a diner exiting Momo Mee won’t mention one or the other, many finding themselves transfixed, even changed by the experience. The former comes through with fierce, tongue-numbing thrills, not just tasted but felt, in dry-rubbed chicken wings or pork wontons in chile oil. The latter, xiao long bao, appear as unparalleled packages of savory comfort, handcrafted steamed dough pockets yielding slurpable porky broth. There’s also ramen and oodles of noodles, but anything else might seem benign next to the restaurant’s most spirited hits.

What began as a feel good story — a restaurant opened and operated by refugees of the Syrian civil war — has quickly morphed into the South Side’s go-to spot for basics like hummus and kebabs, everyday comforts like cheese pies and Turkish coffee, and signature Syrian dishes featuring chickpeas, bulgur, and the better part of a spice rack. Fattoush and kibbeh are must-order highlights year round, while Ramadan usually brings orders of whole lambs, stuffed with rice or freekeh, enough to feed 40 lucky friends.

You’ll be hit by the homey mood at the door of this old Schlitz tavern, which smells like grandma’s house when she’s been cooking all day. Tucked away in a still-quiet nook of Bay View, the Serbian stalwart features cash-only dinners and 45-plus-minute waits for flaky bourek, both indicative of a night out in a different time. The flavors on the dinner menu run the gamut: Serbian salad, goulash, musaka, chicken paprikash, roasted goose, chevapchichi (beef sausages). It’s meat-and-potato Eastern European fare for fighting off winter.

Palomino is back — again. After undergoing a menu overhaul and aesthetic facelift a decade ago, then shuttering more recently for almost a year so the owners could focus on sister restaurants Honey Pie and Comet Cafe, Bay View’s iconic corner bar is again slinging its famous fried fare and Southern comforts. Curds are especially soothing, featuring a sheeny, batter-fried shell, the insides piping with liquefied Clock Shadow Creamery magma. Also of note is a crackly, crispy chicken thigh sandwich with zingy house hot sauce on a brioche bun. And, of course, there’s a burger: ground brisket, American cheese, just the right amount of special sauce. It’s once again an ideal spot to watch the Packers, Brewers, or anything other than your diet.

Fatty old-world comfort meets modern technique and creativity at this sausage emporium that doubles as a laid-back watering hole. Eat like a glutton with style: jalapeno cheddar brats, Nashville hot chicken sausages, schnitzelwurst, an outrageously lavish burger made with a sausage patty and Velveeta, multiple poutines, fried curds with bacon aioli. To wash it down there are plenty of Midwestern brews and a bevy of signature house cocktails; the latter even come on draft, the embodiment of the Vanguard’s semi-serious spirit.

The standard food truck fare of Ventura’s two mobile locations likely won’t inspire thoughts of greatness, but the long-time-coming, teensy corner Bay View outpost delivers in unexpected ways. Peppery micheladas spice languorous feasts that might include chilaquiles and chuletas, guajillo-dripping pambazos and camarones a la diablo, svelte orange salsa on top of everything and house-made chorizo inside anything. Throughout, there’s a soft touch and level of care that brings this place of everyday Mexican favorites to destination status.

Anodyne continues to quietly fine-tune small batch single-source roasts in the quest to become the ideal neighborhood cafe with the perfect pour. Stockpile beans and homebrew accoutrements, catch a show at the Bruce Street roastery, sip a nitro-line cold-brew (arguably the best non-alcoholic beverage in town), or grab a wood fire-kissed Neapolitan pie out of the Stefano oven at the bustling Bay View outpost.

“Plant-based” takes on a new, fun meaning at this weed-themed vegan burger joint that sprouted in a quiet corner of Cudahy and recently opened a second location amidst the bustle of Brady Street. You don’t have to smoke anything to feel lifted by the Superbad (onions, jalapenos, chipotle ranch), Pineapple Express (chipotle mayo, grilled pineapple), or the Up in Smoke (plant-based bacon and smokehouse sauce). The restaurant treats vegetarians and pleasantly surprised carnivores to soft pretzel buns, careful topping ratios, waffle fries, and skillful imposter burger patties, along with salads, cauliflower bites, and shakes.