Moxie’s owners planning Italian restaurant
Moxie Food + Drink in Whitefish Bay is getting a restaurant sibling: Trouble and Sons, described as rustic Italian, due in late August.
It will be at 133 E. Silver Spring Drive, where the Roman Candle pizzeria closed in June. Moxie opened in December 2016 at 501 E. Silver Spring Drive.
Restaurant owners Anne Marie Arroyo and Tamela Greene this week announced their plans for the new restaurant, which will focus on pizza but also serve pastas.
The restaurant will have table service and a full bar, pouring Italian wines, cocktails and draft beer, the owners said.
The chef will be Carlos Escorcia, who has worked at Moxie since its opening. The menu still is being developed.
The restaurant is projected to open Aug. 28, serving dinner Tuesday through Sunday.
Greene and Arroyo decided to open their first restaurant after their jobs at Harley-Davidson were among 500 eliminated in 2015; Arroyo had worked in restaurants before managing sales and operations teams for Harley. They live in Whitefish Bay with their two sons.
The popular Moxie serves main dishes including steak, fish and pasta, appetizers, salads and sandwiches.
Anne Marie Arroyo and Tamela Greene, shown in their restaurant Moxie Food + Drink in Whitefish Bay, plan to open a pizzeria this summer called Trouble and Sons, at 133 E. Silver Spring Drive. Moxie is at 501 E. Silver Spring. MOXIE FOOD + DRINK
Italian in West Bend
Culaccino Bar + Italian Kitchen, a second restaurant from the owner of Bibinger’s pub, is opening in late summer in West Bend.
It will be at 110 Wisconsin St. That’s the former site of Dublin’s restaurant and craft beer bar, which closed this year. Culaccino is projected to open in September.
Owner Travis Dowden is describing Culaccino as a modern Italian restaurant. With the Wisconsin St. building available, a lack of Italian restaurants in West Bend’s downtown and the chef at Bibinger’s interested in Italian cuisine, the decision to open Culaccino was “sort of a no-brainer,” Dowden said, especially combined with his longtime plan to open multiple restaurants.
The new restaurant will serve pastas and sauces made from scratch along with other Italian dishes and seasonal specials, plus pizzas made in a stone oven that the restaurant is installing. The Neapolitanstyle pizzas, at 10 inches, are sized so tables can order more than one and share, Dowden said.
Pizzas will be about $9 to $16; main dishes, about $14 to $27.
Chef Kady Gibowski of Bibinger’s is the executive chef of the new restaurant, as well.
The restaurant’s name (pronounced coo-la-chino) refers to the water ring left by a glass on a table, Dowden said in announcing the restaurant Tuesday.
Speaking of drinks: The bar will have 12 taps for wine and for several variations on Italian cocktails, among other drinks.
The restaurant will be open Tuesdays through Sundays for lunch and dinner.
Bibinger’s, Dowden’s first restaurant, opened in 2016 in Cedar Creek in the Town of Polk. The building, at 3747 Cedar Creek Road, is a renovated tavern and hall dating to the community’s beginnings. “One thing I like about our current building is the history behind it,” Dowden said of Bibinger’s. The Wisconsin St. building has an interesting history, too, having been moved twice, he said.
The former Dublin’s was renovated about four years ago, so many of the changes will be cosmetic. Dowden described its new look as cozy, darker and contemporary. But he noted the bar area was reconfigured and the kitchen is being completely redone.
The new restaurant will make use of the site’s newer, large patio. The location is just off the Eisenbahn state bike trail.
It’s also not far from the Museum of Wisconsin Art, where Gibowski will present some Italian dishes at a food and wine event that’s a fundraiser for the museum on Saturday.
Voyager wine bar
Bay View is getting a wine bar that also will serve seasonal cocktails, plus wine-friendly food, called Voyager.
Jordan Burich, a bartender at Strange Town who organized Italianstyle happy-hour events at Phoenix Cocktail Club downtown, and Micah Buck, who previously worked in the kitchen at Hinterland and Dandan, are opening the bar at 422 E. Lincoln Ave.
They’re hoping it will be ready in mid-September.
Burich described Voyager as a “relaxed, casual place where people can enjoy themselves and enjoy wine.”
Burich and Buck met while each worked at Hinterland, where Burich oversaw cocktails and Buck was the garde manger, and they worked together again at Dandan, where Burich was the restaurant’s first beverage director and Buck was the saucier. A third business partner is Buck’s wife, Kathryn Lochmann.
“We’re approaching this bar with the same high level of service” as the men have in their backgrounds, Burich said.
The site is the former Refuge Smoothie Cafe.
Voyager’s focus will be on European wines and foods tied to the regions where wine is grown. The food will come from Fauntleroy, the modernFrench restaurant the owners of Dandan and EsterEv are opening in the Third Ward.
Wines at a range of prices will be available.
“We really just want a place for people who feel they aren’t being judged or intimidated by a wine list,” Burich said. He wants to demystify perhaps-unfamiliar wines with lively descriptions.
Buck, in an announcement for the new bar, said, “Voyager is a workshop for us. It’s a chance for us to continue growing creatively — by making seasonal and culinary-inspired cocktails and approaching wine culture in new and exciting ways.”
The bar eventually will have around 90 minimal intervention, or natural, wines, with a number available by the glass or 2-ounce pours.
Weekly themed wine tastings on Mondays and Fridays will be another chance to explore the bar’s stock of wines.
With Burich’s background in cocktails, mixed drinks are an inevitable part of the bar. He said Voyager would have a “super-curated cocktail list that’s seasonal and culinary-inspired, which is the way I like to work.”
One such drink is a version of the Last Word that Burich mixed at the Phoenix pop-ups called Necessary Evil, made with Italian ingredients plus locally made gentian syrup.
A bar is being built for the space that would seat around a dozen. The compact space also will have some tables and a counter to rest a drink while mingling; in all, it might have 30 to 40 seats, plus another 10 or so on the sidewalk in good weather.
Voyager also will have a retail component: It will sell wine accessories and magazines, plus foodstuffs such as imported olive oil and coffee from Isely Coffee Roasters in Door County.
Burich said he and Buck hope to open the bar as soon as September. Hours would be from 3 to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 3 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday.
The Euro-style happy hour will offer wine and small plates for two for $25.
And because the bar doesn’t want to exclude anyone, it also will have a brief list of beer and cider.
The bar’s name, Burich said, comes from the owners; collective love for the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan, but it also relates to their approach “to looking for cool wines around the world, kind of a globe-trotting exercise.”
You can follow the bar’s progress on Instagram. It’s also online at
Changes and a deal at Meraki
The Walker’s Point restaurant Meraki, which reopens this week after its summer break, is changing over to new dinner and bar menus and enticing customers to try new dinner dishes with a half-price night on Friday.
Meraki, 939 S. 2nd St., reopened Thursday for its service-industry night with specials at the bar and the regular menu in the dining room.
Chef-owner Chad Meier said the break gave him time to develop new dishes and get some new purveyors, such as Kettle Range for some of the restaurant’s meat. Meraki continues to get whole lamb and goat from Farm 45 in the Town of Polk.
Meier said having the right staff in place in the kitchen means he’ll be able to change the menu more often and continue to seek out better and interesting ingredients.
Some of the new dishes include seared duck breast with Georgia peaches, and Chinesestyle pan-fried dumplings filled with braised goat, served in broth with sauteed bok choy.
All entrées now will be available in full or halfsize portions.
Joshua Wolter, previously of c.1880, is changing up the cocktail list, as well.
A couple of summer refreshers are on the list. One is the Herbaceous Longshoreman ($14), with spirits that include navy-strength gin and green chartreuse, plus citrus and egg whites with hibiscus-blueberry tea garnish. Another, the Parisian ($13), is assembled like a brandy Old Fashioned sweet, but made with cognac and elderflower liqueur, along with citrus and cherry.
At the bar, the menu of small bites keeps favorites like the cheesy puffs and adds pasties; the savory hand pies will be stuffed with changing seasonal fillings, plus rillettes (pork or duck or another meat to make the spread), frog legs and other plates.
Meier said he expects to change the bar menu more frequently as it becomes a place for the kitchen staff to try out their ideas.
Bar bites are mostly $5 a plate, some less and some (like frog legs) more. They’re half-price with the purchase of a drink during happy hour from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Other happy hour discounts are $5 off house cocktails and $2 off wine, beer and call drinks.
To reserve seats for Friday night, call the restaurant at (414) 897-7230 or go to OpenTable.com.
More time for ramen
Red Light Ramen, 1749 N. Farwell Ave., is extending its hours.
Starting July 22, it will be open six days a week: 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. Wednesday to Saturday and 5 to 10 p.m. on Sundays and Tuesdays.
Look for Carol’s restaurant reviews in the Wednesday Food & Dining section.
Contact her at carol .deptolla@jrn.com, (414) 224-2841 or on Twitter, @mkediner.