Dining for special occasions
Milwaukee restaurants serve takeout food for those precious moments
Milwaukee restaurants serve takeout food for those precious moments.
It can feel like life is on pause during this pandemic, except it’s not — we still have birthdays, anniversaries and other milestones to observe. But it’s disorienting for those of us who marked those milestones and date nights with dinner out. Some of our go-to dining rooms might not be open yet, or we’re just not ready. Restaurants are still reopening — this week, the downtown steakhouse Carnevor was opening Tuesday for the first time since the lockdown, and Mistral in Bay View was resuming dine-in service Wednesday — but even most restaurants that have reopened their dining rooms are continuing with takeout.
It’s worth noting that 13 of the Top 30 restaurants have not opened their dining rooms yet, although they offer takeout and many have outdoor dining.
But two of the Top 30 have closed altogether, as have other restaurants. Even if we’re not dining in, we still can support our favorites in hopes that they’ll be around for future celebrations.
This isn’t an exhaustive list — I’m still making my way to the hundreds of restaurants in the Milwaukee area after spring’s lockdown. But it’s a starting point (in alphabetical order) if you’re looking for a way to celebrate a special occasion or date night at home, minus the cooking.
I’d recommend ordering as early as each restaurant’s system allows, to avoid the disappointment
of a dish or preferred time selling out. Then put on some music, light a candle and bring your big night out home.
Here are Milwaukee restaurants to consider this week; up next, suburban restaurants for special-occasion takeout.
Ardent Lounge
Ardent finds a way to translate its little luxurious details into its carryout, down to the carefully packed to-go bag that looks like you’ve been shopping someplace swanky.
Even before the pandemic, the restaurant planned to turn part of the restaurant into a lounge, with a quicker menu than the 10 courses served in the dining room.
The Ardent Lounge At Home menu ($90 for two, $180 for four) is five courses, plus the restaurant’s own moist sourdough and cultured butter.
For the main course, diners can choose beef or chicken. While it seemed counterintuitive to not order the excellent beef sourced from the Carlisle family farm in Sparta, I couldn’t resist the chicken in a thin, browned coating of sourdough-starter, served then with dark meat in sauce and potato puree made even richer with chicken cracklings.
The carved slices of breast meat miraculously stayed moist; it was a delicious dish.
The menu changes from week to week; in
early summer, the courses included taste-of-the-season radish with uni butter and ramp greens, green-garlic custard topped with Ardent’s reserve caviar, asparagus salad in an egg dressing with beer vinegar and bottarga, and parsnip cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert. A menu printed in card stock guides diners through the courses.
That those courses were served cold was smart; it avoids the disappointment of eating a tepid meal or having to reheat everything. Instructions are provided for heating the main course (15 minutes in the oven after the caviar-custard course).
Wines by the bottle are available; so are bottled cocktails, like the summery East Side Royale (gin, génépy, mint, lime and sparkling wine).
The restaurant, by the way, this month opened for in-person dining, with a limit of six people at partitioned seating. It has one seating at lunch (12:30 p.m.), when Ardent serves its burger, and one at dinner (6 p.m.) Thursday through Saturday. Market items, like beef cuts, tinned seafood, pastries and other items, can be ordered online for pickup Thursday through Sunday for customers who want to assemble their own meals.
1751 N. Farwell Ave.; ardentmke.com
Order the to-go lounge menu online through Tock as early as Tuesday afternoon for scheduled curbside pickup Thursday to Saturday.
Birch + Butcher
Summery salads, meats seared at the open hearth. Birch + Butcher’s menu seems especially appealing at this time of year.
The aim is to share plates; do as you like at home, but sharing is intimate, and a good rationalization for ordering more plates.
Crisped, tender pork belly is good any time of year, but it feels especially at home with the season’s corn,
chanterelles and charred tomato in corn mousse ($14) as an appetizer.
It was a feast to share salads of heirloom tomato tumbled with cantaloupe, two fruits that are happy together, gilded with burrata, basil, Calabrian chile and grilled croutons ($11), and then ribbons of summer squash with cherry tomatoes, finished with peanuts, mint, chile and basil ($9).
The half-dozen main dishes include the always delicious grilled ribeye ($49), deeply flavorful under its crust, served medium rare. We shared it and the charred green onions, mashed potatoes and dollops of horseradish sour cream that came with it.
Desserts are classics, like dark chocolate tart with whipped cream and almond nougatine ($9), the garnishes wisely packaged separately for plating at home. 459 E. Pleasant St.; birchandbutcher.com Open 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday to Sunday; order online the day of pickup. Pickup is curbside.
Goodkind
With some restaurants’ hours truncated during the pandemic — open mainly midweek to the weekend — it’s a little more challenging to find a special-occasion sort of meal on Mondays.
Enter Goodkind in Bay View, which is open for brunch on Sundays and seasonal dishes of whatever strikes the chefs’ fancy on Mondays and Tuesdays, with a burger special added on Tuesdays.
You can count on Goodkind’s popular spicy crab pasta as well as another pasta to be on the menu, as well as their excellent Caesar salad, plus a vegan version of a Caesar. The menu when I had Goodkind’s takeout in July included terrific skewers of dry-aged New York strip with mushroom pilaf, snap peas and romesco sauce. Lately, the restaurant has its rotisserie chicken on Mondays and Tuesdays, a half bird with roasted red potato, beans, zucchini, snap peas, kohlrabi and kale, drizzled with marigold vinaigrette.
I like that the brief menu always includes vegan dishes, and it doesn’t forget dessert lovers, either. Bottles of wine and beer are available to go, as well as bottled versions of the restaurant’s cocktails.
Just to make the occasion a little more special, Goodkind includes a coloring page in the takeout bag. Customers can also find gifts: The restaurant takes orders starting Thursdays (for pickup on Saturdays and Sundays) for market baskets filled with food and is adding Victory Boxes of cheese made by Wisconsin women, besides Goodkind merchandise.
2457 S. Wentworth Ave.; goodkindbayview.com Order online through Tock the day of pickup, for curbside pickup of dinner Monday or Tuesday at a scheduled time (or brunch Sunday).
The Packing House
This south side institution is sticking with daily carryout only, by way of its drive-thru. Its takeout menu reflects entrees that would be good everyday dinners, for kids included, but the Packing House is also a steak specialist, a place to turn to for a celebratory dinner.
In fact, it has what it calls a date-night or celebration special for two: juicy 8-ounce filets, mashed potatoes with garlic butter, and a vegetable of the day (crisp-tender green beans and carrots, when I had it) for $77.99 (or $39.99 to serve one). Packed in a sturdy aluminum container, the dinner was still hot after my 20-minute drive home.
A slice of banana cream pie capped that celebratory dinner ($4 a slice, with whipped cream and sliced almonds; a whole pie, if you’re really celebrating, is $20).
Besides the takeout menu, the entire menu is available with 24 hours’ notice — if you need a lobster tail to go with your filet, say.
The Packing House also sells Old Fashioned kits and wine by the bottle. Now, to make it back on a Saturday, when the Packing House serves prime rib...
900 E. Layton Ave.; (414) 483-5054; packing housemke.com
See the weekly menu online, and order by phone the day of pickup.
Sanford
Think of Sanford and you think of fine dining, but the restaurant (still carryout only) has branched out during the pandemic. Sandwiches? Yes. It’s also made family meals for four, and meals for two.
The menu changes at least somewhat from day to day and week to week; my special meal in July from Sanford was all small plates, sized for one ($13 to $16). Grazing on a bite or four of this and that felt like a party.
The party started with a charcuterie plate of chicken galantine, flecked with morel mushroom and accompanied by more morels — pickled — and sliced radish ($15), then went on to three little cannelloni filled with bolognese ragu and topped with toasted breadcrumbs, then smoked salmon with pickled beets, goat cheese and fingerling potatoes in caraway vinaigrette. We shared a salad of roasted beets, asparagus, feta and golden raisins with greens in mint-garlic dressing, and slices of smoked duck breast with grilled endive, pickled mushrooms, preserves and birch reduction, too.
Dessert pastries change with the season (strawberry and peach tarts were on the menu then), and Sanford offers bottled cocktails, wines and beers to take home.
And a traveling version of the rosemary breadsticks that graced tables at Sanford are packed in the takeout bag, a sweet memory of visits past and a reminder of Sanford’s hospitality.
1547 N. Jackson St.; (414) 276-9608; sanford restaurant.com
Open Tuesday to Saturday for curbside pickup. Call in orders between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. the day of pickup. Customers can arrange custom celebratory menus from Sanford in advance.
Zarletti
Having one of the classics from the Zarletti menu takes me back to that cozy downtown dining room, packed in the before times. They’re socially distancing now, but the dishes are one with that memory for me.
Deciding between Zarletti’s changing ragu with fresh pappardelle or the bolognese is a torment for me. They’re both so good, and the bolognese is my favorite in the city. But this time the ragu ($23) — made with moist pork shoulder — won out. No regrets; it was excellent.
Chicken saltimbocca ($23) was every bit as satisfying, the white meat still moist under the crisped prosciutto and fresh sage leaf. It was served with asparagus that day, and all entrees include bread.
So satisfying, in fact, that we saved the antipasti platter ($15) of cured meats such as mortadella, aged cheeses, olives and artichoke hearts for the next day’s lunch. There are worse things than extending a celebration.
If it’s not an Italian dinner without an Italian wine, note that Zarletti’s list is marked at retail prices for now.
The takeout menu is briefer than the menu for dining in, but it has easily portable favorites that were smartly packaged, down to the boozy, luscious tiramisu ($7), placed on a sheet of paper that kept it intact in the move from box to plate.
741 N. Milwaukee St.; (414) 225-0000; zarletti.net (The Mequon location, open daily for dinner in or curbside at 1515 W. Mequon Road, has a different menu.)
See the curbside menu online and call in the order after 2 p.m., up to two days before pickup, for dinner Monday to Saturday. Special requests or large orders should be emailed to zarlettirestaurant@gmail.com.
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.