Milwaukee’s frozen custard hot spots
Where to find Cream City’s signature treat
KATHERINE RODEGHIER CHICAGO TRIBUNE Don’t call it ice cream. Not if you’re in Milwaukee. Folks in Wisconsin’s largest city take their signature dish seriously — no offence, cheese curds — and consider it an insult to confuse their rich dairy dessert with ordinary supermarket ice cream.
You’ll find frozen custard stands scattered across the Milwaukee metro area. So many that tourism bureau Visit Milwaukee claims it’s home to the world’s largest concentration, making Milwaukee the unofficial “Frozen Custard Capital of the World.”
But ask 10 natives to name the best spots and you can expect to get 10 different answers.
To find your own favourite, you could set out with a short list from Visit Milwaukee or book a tour with Milwaukee Food & City Tours and get a sprinkling of frozen custard history and anecdotes as you ride a bus between tastings on a Sunday afternoon.
Tour guide Caitlin Weitzel gave us the scoop on frozen custard versus ice cream. Both are made with milk, cream and sugar, but frozen custard adds egg yolk. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration weighs in with a regulation: frozen custard must contain 1.4 per cent egg yolk solids and at least 10 per cent butterfat.
After a stop for a burger at the ’50s-themed Miss Katie’s Diner, Milwaukee Food & City Tours’ custard crawl begins at the city’s oldest surviving frozen custard establishment.
Paul Gilles opened Gilles Frozen Custard in1938 on Milwaukee’s west side. Weitzel said at least 50 romances between Gilles car hops and customers resulted in marriages. Sadly for Cupid, Gilles no longer has car hops. The restaurant, remodelled in 2017 by owner Tom Linscott, has inside seating and a pickup window. Along with cones and dishes, it serves shakes, malts, floats, a mindboggling variety of sundaes and novelties including pies, cookie sandwiches and a log roll. On the tour, you usually get a sundae, often served by the new owner, Linscott’s son, Willy. In suburban Greendale, Ferch’s Malt Shoppe and Grille claims more than a million flavours of frozen custard thanks to the magic of mix-ins. Shelves hold an array of brightly coloured bottles of extracts in 44 flavours. Add one to your frozen custard and watch a muscled worker hunker over a marble counter to mix it with your choice of candies, nuts, fruits, cookies and other goodies. Ferch’s opened in1987 but has a ’50s feel with booths, a jukebox and party room.
You’ll stand outside or sit in the tour bus to stuff your face at walkup-only Leon’s Frozen Custard. It serves four flavours — vanilla, chocolate, butter pecan and a flavour of the day — in cups, cones and fountain creations. Leon Schneider, a cookie salesman who went on to run a frozen custard trailer at carnivals, opened this old-school stand in 1942.
Milwaukee’s frozen custard stands enjoy a friendly rivalry, Weitzel said. Leon Schneider, for example, schooled Elsa Kopp in frozen custard-making before Kopp’s Frozen Custard opened in1950. Although it’s not on the tour, Kopp’s is worth a stop. It’s become one of the “trifecta” of major Milwaukee-area frozen custard shops along with Leon’s and Gilles, Weitzel said.