Aging like fine wine
A 50-year-old Wisconsin home winemaking club is one of America’s oldest and largest.
If breakfast at home is usually something quick and workmanlike — maybe just coffee, or a bowl of cereal, or yogurt straight from the container — then getting breakfast out is a treat.
I was pretty happy to begin with to be getting breakfast sandwiches from Foxfire, the food truck operating out of Hawthorne Coffee Roasters on the south side. But then I started eating the green-chile breakfast burrito ($9) and actually … giggled? … at the fantastic crunch here and there. Funny what biting into Fritos at breakfast will do to a person.
Foxfire, which I’ve admired before for its spicy chicken sandwiches and burgers, is doing good things with its breakfast sandwiches, too.
Operators Bryan Phillips and Maggie Reid launched breakfast recently, after taking a winter break from Zócalo Food Park to focus on operating at the Hawthorne cafe. Selling breakfast at a spot that specializes in coffee just made sense, Reid said.
Phillips and Reid make much from scratch, grinding pork and seasoning it with sage and garlic for their breakfast sausage. One way to enjoy that tasty sausage is on a biscuit with scrambled egg and cheese ($6). Oh, and they make the biscuit, too — oblong and more sandwich-like, crisped and flaky. (Yes, biscuits and sausage gravy are on the menu, too.)
The pork for the breakfast burrito is slow-cooked with green chiles and beer for a savory sauce that coats the shreds of meat. Foxfire previously sold a green-chile and pork soup, which they garnished with Fritos and cilantro on the suggestion of a friend from New Mexico, a state that goes gaga for Frito Pie. So, of course, Reid said, the breakfast burrito had to include a smattering of Fritos, along with scrambled egg, cheddar cheese and cilantro.
During Foxfire’s warm-weather stay at Zócalo, Reid and Phillips became familiar with fellow food park
resident Ruby’s Bagels. Those bagels appear on the Foxfire breakfast menu, from simply toasted with a schmear of cream cheese to the delectable tomato, pesto and brie bagel ($7). It’s served warm, the brie melting and the flavors in perfect sync with the bagel’s rosemary and sea salt.
Bear in mind that menu items can be customized — like adding an egg to bagel sandwiches, calling for mornay sauce over a sandwich or on the side, substituting a flavored schmear for plain. One customized combination that Reid suggests is kimchi cream cheese instead of plain on a bagel with bacon, and adding an egg to that.
I put that on my list of New Year’s resolutions as soon as I heard about it. Ditto the menu’s ham and cheese biscuit topped with mornay sauce and the made-from-scratch cinnamon roll with almond paste in the filling. I have to say, 2021 is looking up already.
Two ways to order: To go, with curbside service at Hawthorne Coffee Roasters, 4177 S. Howell Ave. (park around the corner on Plainfield Avenue, and food is delivered to the car). Order online through cashdrop .biz/foxfire. Hawthorne also has curbside service for coffee. Or customers can dine at distanced tables in the cafe by contactless ordering and payment via QR codes at tables. Customers dining in also can order cocktails from Hawthorne Coffee.
Hours: Breakfast, 8 to 11 a.m. Tuesday to Saturday; lunch and dinner, 2 to 7 p.m. Thursday to Saturday. (Closed New Year’s Day. From Jan. 19 to 30, open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. only.)
Carol Deptolla has been reviewing restaurants in Milwaukee and Wisconsin since 2008. 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) 2242841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.