Gargantuan appeal
Lost Whale in Bay View mixes smart drinks, and Iron Grate BBQ on the patio is smokin'.
It’s that time.
The time when we realize more of summer is behind us than ahead of us, if we’re glass-half-empty people. Or that we’re smack-dab in the middle, if we’re glass-half-full types, seeing September’s equinox as the finish line.
No matter how you pour it, though, summer is waning, and it’s time to make the most of it. Here’s my idea: a full glass in one hand, on the secluded patio at Lost Whale in Bay View, and food on a stick from Iron Grate BBQ Co. in the other.
Yes, all right, many of you will get your foods-on-sticks kicks at State Fair in the coming days. But State Fair, like summer, will come to an end, and the Iron Grate truck, the second in chef Aaron Patin’s fleet, still will be smokin’ in Bay View, at least through fall.
Lost Whale, of course, will be open all year. It debuted in late June on KK, in a building vacated by the craft cocktail bar Boone & Crockett and its resident food truck, Taco Moto, which moved to the Harbor District.
Boone’s hunting-lodge-meets1970s-rec-room look was vacated, too. The bar now looks modern and airy, with cushy chairs and glossy white coffee tables for resting drinks. It feels like the living room of a friend’s cool loft.
Head to the bar to look over the drink list when you get there. Lost Whale proprietors Tripper Duval and Daniel Beres, known around town for their bartending skills, will start having limited-edition drinks. They’ll turn what might have been wasted food into various tinctures and such. (Lost Whale tries all around to minimize waste and use of plastics; straws here are paper.)
“Salvaged” drinks start next week (like watermelon cordial and croissant orgeat, for starters); too late for me, but the list of house drinks kept me entertained.
It’s hard not to be entertained when a drink called Dem Boyz is topped with a small (edible!) image of the boyz in question: John Revord and Mitchell Ciohon of Boone & Crockett and Taco Moto, respectively, in fur coats. It’s an ode and thank you from the Lost Whale guys, who use rice paper and the same sort of printer that cake decorators use to make the image.
The drink ($11) is a little smoky, a little spicy and entirely delicious; it’s tequila and mezcal enhanced with hot sauce (“Danger Sauce” by Taco Moto) and the flavors of watermelon, lime, grapefruit and bitters. It’s under a foamy cap that’s vegan, thanks to aquafaba (derived from chickpeas) instead of egg whites.
Jungle Birdish ($10), a variation on the classic tiki drink of rum, pineapple, Campari and lime, gets its own edible image, too, a cartoonish toucan tripping over a dog.
Another attention-grabber is Oops Not Berry’s ($10), served in a Jolly Good soda can with the top cut off. The name is a play on Cap’n Crunch’s Oops All Berries cereal: Coconut milk that’s been infused with Crunch Berries cereal is mixed with Buffalo Trace bourbon and 6-year Sazerac rye, plus Jolly Good fruit punch, lemon and Lazzaroni amaretto. It sounds like it could be too sweet, but it’s not (in spite of the garnish of a candy blue whale). An over-the-top presentation, but the drink itself is admirably restrained.
Likewise, Lost Whale’s version of the ’70s orange-and-vodka standard Harvey Wallbanger ($9) is elegant and understated. I’ve never used or heard “elegant” and “Harvey Wallbanger” in the same breath before, but there it is. This is a drink worth reviving.
The bar’s version of the classic Stinger ($8) was anything but understated. Instead of the usual demure white creme de menthe shaken with brandy, Lost Whale’s Stinger is made with green creme de menthe, for an outrageously neon drink. The bar elaborates on the classic by infusing Korbel with peaches and adding cucumber water and orange bitters. The finer points were lost, though, overwhelmed by mint.
But the bar does improve on the state’s favorite brandy Old Fashioned sweet with its Wisco Old Fashioned ($9). It’s built on a Spanish brandy, Torres 10-year, and uses Door County cherry for garnish and juice for cocktail syrup, as well as Brew City lemon-lime soda and Lost Whale’s own bitters blend.
The companion who ordered that drink never orders Old Fashioneds (shockingly, he’s a Wisconsinite, born and bred). “Are all Old Fashioneds this good?” he asked. “If only,” I replied.
That Old Fashioned, Stinger, Harvey Wallbanger and a Negroni spritz are all kegged cocktails on draft at the bar. The bartenders follow a painstaking process to make intensely flavored natural fruit syrups to replace perishable juices in the kegged cocktails, but it minimizes customers’ wait times.
If you just want to order your usual, I suspect Lost Whale will treat it right. A regular ol’ gin and tonic was made with local Top Note Indian tonic, a drink as fresh as the night air. None of the mixers at Lost Whale is made with highfructose corn syrup, Beres pointed out. Cane sugar or bust.
It’s worth pausing with whichever drink you choose before heading to the patio. Sink into a chair and admire the subtly glittering design on the wall — the intricate pattern is paint, not wallpaper, and it glitters because ... actual glitter is in the paint. The glitter does rub off if you touch it; consider yourself warned.
You might not want to leave those comfy armchairs, but the patio is worth it. Boone’s stage for live music was turned into another seating area, this one with cushy furniture. A rainbow of metal chairs stand at the other tables; at night, string lights come on overhead. Thursday through Sunday, the scent of wood smoke from Iron Grate’s grill lingers.
That former stage and the tables nearby have a behind-the-curtain view of the food truck parked on the patio. Every now and again, you might see the Grate worker throw a log on the fire in the yakitori-style grill or, more often, take a blowtorch to a skewer to finish crisping the meat without overcooking it. Smart.
Iron Grate’s “menu du skewer” is written on a length of brown butcher paper, plastered to the side of the truck — eight items, meat and vegetable ($4 to $6).
All but one is threaded onto a skewer, including the corn-on-the-cob, dressed up with cotija cheese and jalapeño cream, and the mushrooms and green onions in sambal dressing and sriracha mayonnaise.
The meats were not dry in the least, the bane of skewers cooked on grills. They were juicy and charred just right here and there, the very picture and sense memory of summer: chicken in barbecue glaze and snappy skewered sausage, both served with a drizzle of mustard remoulade and in pairs; chunks of pork loin with barbecue sauce and green onion; chunks of pork belly and its luscious fat, under a drizzle of sriracha mayo and a glaze of soy sauce and rice vinegar; a pair of heads-on shrimp, glazed in a sambal sauce.
The lone stickless item was Milwaukee Sausage Co.’s excellent jalapeño cheese sausage, served on a sturdy bun with pickled red onion and jalapeño crema. (Sausage varieties will come and go, and so will seasonal specials like new ham and peach kebabs, but the menu largely will stay the same as long as the truck stays, at least through October.)
The snap of the sausage, the smoke on a breeze, the beads of water forming on the glass. It’s enough to make you want summer to never end.
Lost Whale, 2151 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. (414) 249-3188. lostwhalemke.com and facebook.com/lostwhalemke. Hours: Open at 4 p.m. Monday to Friday, noon Saturday and Sunday. Closes at 2 a.m. Sunday to Thursday, 2:30 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Happy hour 4 to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday; half off all tap beers and half off seasonal cocktails. Latenight specials Sunday to Thursday starting in August, and reserve bottle service on the patio with a cocktailmaking lesson coming soon.
Iron Grate food truck’s hours at Lost Whale: 6 p.m. to midnight Thursday to Saturday, 3 to 8 p.m. Sunday, except on days when it has catering events.
Read dining news in Friday’s Tap Weekend section and the daily Business section. Contact Carol at carol.deptolla@jrn.com, (414) 224-2841 or on Twitter, @mkediner.