Hmong homestyle
Jackie’s Cafe serves traditional dishes and other Asian plates.
The first time I stopped in at Jackie’s Cafe on the northwest side, back in winter, all the customers in the Hmong restaurant were helping themselves to the buffet. OK, count me in.
The server asked whether we’d like bowls of pho. “No, thank you,” I said. “We’re having the buffet.”
“Oh, pho comes with the buffet,” he said.
What? A bowl of pho is a meal in itself. That and a buffet with a changing lineup, maybe with citrusy Hmong sausage and pork belly and slender, expertly made eggrolls and nava, the tapiocacoconut milk dessert? Oh, and madeto-order spring rolls also are included, and the weekend lineup offers more traditional Hmong dishes, too.
I was beginning to understand why everyone was heading for the line.
But I’m more of an order-from-themenu person, myself. A buffet does have variety, but because everyone at my table has to surrender some of their food to me, every meal already is a buffet.
So, I returned to try the menu at Jackie’s, a small restaurant that shares a little shopping strip with a laundromat and payday loan store on busy N. 76th St. Pieces of traditional Hmong dress and jewelry are framed and hang on the wall like the artworks they are; posters for Hmong events at places like Phongsavan, the large Asian market farther north on 76th, are taped to the wall.
I’d already had the crunchy eggrolls (six for $5.99, pork, chicken or vegetable), so we ordered the steamrolls (six for $5.99) to start a meal, the complete opposite in texture.
Made of rice flour batter, given a filling of ground pork, green onions and cilantro and rolled like crepes, the steamrolls were silky and gelatinous, and they readily took on the flavors of the sweet chile sauce served with them.
Ask for Jackie’s hot sauce ($1) with the excellent fried chicken wings (eight for $6.99), in the lightest and crispest of breadings. There are fried chicken feet, too (six for $6.99), their breading highly and compellingly seasoned.
Cucumber and papaya salads (each $5.99), garnished with peanuts and tossed with tomato, can be as spicy as you want them to be. They were especially refreshing on a drainingly hot day, the cucumber salad aromatic with fermented shrimp and crab pastes.
The menu’s noodle dishes include some Thai standards like pad thai and drunken noodles but also the Laotian khao poon ($8.99), a generous bowl of thin rice noodles in red curry and coconut milk broth, with chicken, cabbage and bamboo shoots. Garnished with lime, cilantro and green onion, it’s spicy (if you say so) and delicious.
Diners not only choose how spicy they want various dishes, mild to hot, but in the case of beef laab ($11.99), they also choose how much they want it cooked — from not at all to cooked completely. The laab is another satisfying plate, beef mixed with tripe and red onion, and shot through with the bright herbal notes of mint and cilantro.
Jackie’s also makes a memorable version of the Thai beef salad nam tok ($11.99), tender beef that’s marinated, grilled and seasoned with lemongrass and lime leaf; it’s given a little crunch with rice powder.
The pho when I had it with the buffet months ago was quite sweet, but more recently I ordered the oxtail pho ($11.99) and the broth was light and savory. That pho held much more than oxtail — bits of meatball, small shrimp, brisket, pork belly and tripe, along with abundant rice noodles.
One of the most popular dishes at the restaurant is fresh pork belly and rice ($9.99) with hot sauce on the side. The belly’s exterior is browned and crisp; the ribbons of fat, tender. Another pork dish was one of my favorites at the cafe: boiled pork with zingy mustard greens in a delicate broth, served with rice ($8.99). Savory and comforting, it felt like good, homestyle cooking.
Cafe owner Jackie Xiong said by phone that the boiled pork is a dish that’s always on the buffet, by popular demand. Its homey quality is its draw, for people who don’t have time to cook. The pork and other traditional dishes also appeal to students from out of town who “don’t have mama’s cooking,” she said.
Xiong, who opened her restaurant with family in June 2017, also caters. On a recent weekend, she had seven orders for whole roasted pigs. She recalled another weekend, her busiest ever, when she had four weddings of 400 people each, a party and a funeral to feed; with so much to cook, she wondered if she should close the restaurant for the
weekend. She didn’t.
She’s busy with catering in Milwaukee but also Green Bay, the Fox Cities, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, La Crosse, Stevens Point and wherever else Hmong have settled in Wisconsin, and even as far as Minneapolis. So busy, that she wonders if hers is the only Hmong restaurant hereabouts that caters.
At least those of us without parties to go to can count on Jackie’s being open, no matter how booked her catering schedule.
Carol Deptolla has been reviewing restaurants in Milwaukee and Wisconsin since 2008. She investigates the dining scene anonymously, to make sure she’s getting the same experience that the rest of us receive. When she reviews a restaurant, she visits at least three times to better evaluate food and service. In her visits, she usually brings along other diners to sample as many flavors as possible. Like all Journal Sentinel reporters, she buys all meals, accepts no gifts and is independent of all establishments she covers, working only for our readers.
Contact her at carol.deptolla@ jrn.com or (414) 224-2841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.