New Somali restaurant serving on south side
Milwaukee has a second Somali restaurant: African Garden, at 1428 W. Lincoln Ave.
The restaurant, which opened in January, serves traditional breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes.
For instance, breakfast menu items include beef suqaar, a saute served with the Somali flatbread injera, smaller than the Ethiopian injera ($8); fuul, the fava bean dip ($7); and malawah, sweet pancakes ($9) served with strawberries, cream and powdered sugar.
Lunch is when entrees are served. Plates include the polenta-like cornmeal dish soor ($10), served with vegetables and chicken or beef; the flatbread chapatti, served with beef or chicken ($10); and goat or lamb platter with rice or pasta ($11).
Sandwiches are served at dinner: fish, chicken or beef ($5 and $6), on chapatti or sub rolls. A vegetarian option is available at night: cambuulo ($7), a blackeye pea and corn dish drizzled with sesame or olive oil.
African Garden serves sambusas for appetizers, the tricorner pastries filled with chicken, beef or vegetables ($1.75 apiece), and it has soups ($2 to $3), including goat and vegetable.
And the restaurant has combination platters with rice or pasta that feed three people ($33 and $36), such as beef and chicken suqaar or chicken suqaar and salmon.
Drinks include sweetened black tea with milk, lattes and smoothies.
Hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Breakfast is served until 11:30 a.m. and lunch until 5 p.m. To contact: (414) 988-2994.
The city’s other Somali restaurant, Blue Star Cafe, is at 1619 N. Farwell Ave.
Iron Grate’s offerings grow
At Iron Grate BBQ Co., chef-owner Aaron Patin has been expanding the business’ scope since moving to 4125 S. Howell Ave. last year.
This week, that means a Lenten special of crawfish on Fridays. (Flown in live on Thursdays, they’re sautéed in a spicy wet rub and served with Texas toast for $21 a pound.)
This year, Patin started butchering whole animals at the restaurant instead of relying on suppliers to do it for him, cutting pork shoulders and the restaurant’s pork Milwaukee ribs, with belly meat attached, for instance.
“That was just a natural progression in our operation,” Patin said.
Butchering allows Iron Grate to work directly with a farm instead of a middle man. Now, Patin gets heritage breeds of pigs including Red Wattle, Berkshire, Hereford and Tamworth from Avrom Farm in Green Lake.
Patin likes that the farmer, after delivering animals to Iron Grate, picks up spent grain from local brewers to include in feed that supplements the pigs’ pasture time.
Hayden Holbert, the owner of Avrom Farm, said feeding the pigs byproduct from brewing and other items like overripe produce and whey keeps what is suitable food for pigs out of landfills and, he said, results in tastier meat, as well.
A butcher on staff at Iron Grate breaks down four to six hogs a week at 200 pounds each. Getting the whole animal from the same source means consistent quality, Patin said.
It also means Iron Grate can start a retail operation, selling products such as summer sausage, cured lardo and smoked broth, since the kitchen has the entire animal to work with.
The retail operation is expect to start in mid- to late spring, Patin said.
He’s also added a wood-fired smoker he designed on a custom trailer that he calls his dream smoker. Named Hank, it’s 21 feet long, has a 1,000-gallon tank and can smoke 1,400 pounds of meat at a time.
The original smoker, Edna, is 500 gallons; it’s now used for smoking ham that’s sold by the pound on Sunday mornings and for other items like the house-made sausages.
The new smoker also is dual purpose — part of it can be converted to a direct-heat grill.
The in-house butchering and increased capacity has Patin planning a series of specials called World BBQ for spring and summer, meats prepared in the style of global cuisines.
Coming up: lamb asado, piri piri turkey, barbacoa, pollo a la brasa, yakitori, jerk chicken, beef pastrami and whole-animal barbecues. Details will be announced on the website, irongratebbq.com.
Things to do (and eat)
Saturday: The Warm Your Heart Chili and Vintage Jewelry sale, an annual fundraiser, returns from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the St. Ann Center’s Stein Campus, 2801 E. Morgan Ave.
Chili from 20 restaurants including Amaranth Bakery, Cafe Corazon, Lulu Cafe and the Tandem will be available in flights so visitors can sample several.
The atrium at the center will hold about 30 vendors selling produce, handmade soaps and home-decor items and other goods.
Besides vintage jewelry, jewelry made by the center’s founder and president, Sister Edna Lonergan, will be for sale.
Proceeds support the care of children and adults at St. Ann’s intergenerational center.
More information is at stanncenter.org.
March 16: Lake Park Bistro is holding a Bordeaux wine dinner with Philippe Dambrine, the managing director of Château Cantemerle in France’s Haut-Médoc appellation.
Five courses by chef de cuisine John Raymond will be paired with the estate’s wines, such as rabbit pot pie with foie gras-infused crust, served with the 2012 Les Allées de Cantemerle, and Camembert cheese with grapes, honey and cherry preserves, with a 2006 magnum of Château Cantemerle.
Dinner is $95 before tax and tip; tickets are available at bartolottas.com under the Events tab.
The wine dinner will be at 6:30 p.m.; Lake Park Bistro is at 3133 E. Newberry Blvd.
March 21: Executive chef Karl Keiserman and his team at Artisan 179 in Pewaukee will prepare a fivecourse dinner featuring wines by the Prisoner winery in California’s Napa County.
Peter Donahue, a representative of Prisoner wines, will be on hand to discuss the wines.
Some of the courses planned that night are tea smoked grilled sturgeon with potatoes, watercress and raifort sauce, the whipped horseradish cream sauce, served with the Blindfold white blend, and porcelet rack, porchetta and cider-braised fennel, served with Cuttings Cabernet Sauvignon.
The dinner is $125 before tax and tip.
To reserve a seat, call the restaurant at (262) 6910200. It’s at 179 W. Wisconsin Ave. in Pewaukee.