Bienek was top chef in Milwaukee
Not all customers knew what to make of the finedining restaurant Claus on Juneau, which operated in downtown Milwaukee from 1985 to 1989 with crystal, Villeroy & Boch china and Italian silver settings on the tables.
The food wasn’t heaped on the plates, it was beautifully arranged — so much so that it was the subject of a cover story in the Milwaukee Sentinel’s Food section in April 1986.
“The dishes are sheer art,” wrote the Food editor, Lee Aschoff.
The chef-owner, Claus Bienek, told Aschoff, “The most important thing is the color. For example, we might have a plain white fish. So what you try to do is build it up, using the red tomato-butter sauce underneath, black mushrooms, some fresh dill and a red crayfish.
“Then you have a little picture there,” he said. “It looks nice and, if they taste it, it’s even better.”
Claus on Juneau, which was at 134 E. Juneau Ave., was awarded four stars by The Milwaukee Journal’s dining critic, Dennis Getto, who later called it “one of Milwaukee’s star restaurants in the 1980s.” As such, Bienek was at the vanguard of chefs modernizing dining in Milwaukee.
The funeral was last week for Bienek, who died June 7, the day before his 74th birthday. The Germanborn chef died in Norway, where he had lived and worked before moving to Milwaukee with his young family, and where he returned after his time here.
Before coming to Milwaukee, he led Blom in Oslo, a restaurant frequented by artists and authors since the 19th century; was a food and wine critic for Norway’s national newspaper, Aftenposten; and opened a restaurant called den Glade Laks (the Happy Salmon) on a fishing trawler that took daily trips around Oslo’s fjords.
“His guests were so lucky to see him dive into the ocean from the boat and pop out with a salmon in his hands,” Bienek’s daughter Charlotte recalled via email from Norway.
Christopher Kuranz, now a partner in Public Table restaurant in West Allis, supplied Bienek with hardto-find produce, game and fish through Kuranz’s company at the time, The Fresh Connection.
That meant items like radicchio, baby zucchini with the flowers still attached (so the chef could stuff the flowers), and Belgian endive, which he’d halve, roast, braise with white wine and aromatics and serve with a warm blue cheese sauce.
“I haven’t made that in a long time. I should make that,” said Kuranz, who also helped in the kitchen at Claus on Juneau on occasion and kept in touch with him over the years. Even fresh herbs were exotica that couldn’t be found in grocery stores then, Kuranz said. In summer, the chef kept a garden behind the restaurant where he’d grow herbs and vegetables, Charlotte Bienek recalled, and visited farmers markets for local ingredients.
The menu was brief — usually four appetizers, four entrées and a few desserts that changed fairly frequently, Kuranz recalled. The dining room likewise was small for the era, about 50 seats.
Bienek conceded he initially lost customers who expected a strip steak and onion rings, but the restaurant soon thrived.
His plating was considered unusual for the time but elements became standard in fine dining, such as placing the sauce under the fish instead of over.
“Who in the hell can see the monkfish (on the plate) when they come in? The construction of the fish is so nice and it looks so nice, so let the fish be a fish and look like a fish,” Bienek said at the time.
“He would just constantly push the envelope,” Kuranz said of Bienek.
Bienek would acquire live turtles and butcher them at the restaurant for turtle soup and other dishes, Kuranz recalled. “Who knows how to butcher a turtle? Who’s buying turtles? I didn’t know anybody who was doing that but him,” Kuranz said.
Bienek sold his restaurant after having heart surgery in early 1989. His first turn back in the kitchen was a private dinner that June for 125 people where former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter were the guests of honor.
Tom Sietsema, then the Food editor of The Milwaukee Journal and now food critic for the Washington Post, referred to Bienek’s restaurant as “the late, great Claus on Juneau” in writing about the Carter dinner.
The chef was in charge of appetizers, sides and dessert, preparing dishes like jumbo white shrimp marinated with gingerroot and cilantro, and imported prosciutto with asparagus and lemon mayonnaise.
After selling Claus on Juneau, Bienek became chef at what was then Strong Corneliuson Capital Management in Menomonee Falls from 1990 to 2004.
Besides overseeing the company cafeteria, he prepared VIP dinners for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, publisher Steve Forbes, singer Jimmy Buffett and others.
Bienek is survived by his wife, Anne Brita, whom he met after winning a culinary competition in Germany that led to a job at the hotel in Norway where she also worked; their children Charlotte, Henriette, Kai Boris and Therese Maria; and six grandchildren.