North Shore Boulangerie opening a second location at Foxtown in Mequon
North Shore Boulangerie is expanding with a location at Mequon’s Foxtown development — large enough to house its entire baking operations — where its neighbor will be a butcher shop called Foxtown Meats.
The shops are the next phase for the 17-acre development, which already has a brewpub and apartments. There is much more to come, including a bistro and beer lounge with fire pits in spring plus a private-event venue for up to 400, as well as more shops, offices, extended-stay rooms and also single-family homes.
“Tom Nieman always wanted to provide three things to the market: goodquality beer, good-quality bread and good-quality meat,” said Patrick Erdman, the food and beverage director for Foxtown restaurants, referring to the Foxtown development’s owner.
The soft opening for North Shore Boulangerie is Jan. 25 to 27 in the building at 11120 Weston Drive, just off West Mequon Road, and for bakery owner Gene Webb, it’s just in time.
With a growing number of wholesale accounts, North Shore Boulangerie has “maxed out” its current oven in the Shorewood bakery, at 4401 N. Oakland Ave., he said.
“We couldn’t bake any more bread if we tried,” said Webb.
And that’s after dispersing his staff more than three years ago, with the bread bakers in Shorewood and the pastry team in a rented kitchen at the University Club downtown. Now Webb can consolidate the workers at the bread and pastry kitchens at Foxtown and consolidate deliveries of baking ingredients, as well.
More goods, more variety
The centerpiece of the North Shore bread kitchen in Mequon will be heavy, heat-holding Bongard ovens manufactured in France that are twice the size of the bakery’s current ovens. The new kitchen also has a much larger proofer for croissants and pastry.
That means North Shore Boulangerie can double and even triple its production. Webb said the staff currently bakes 250 to 300 loaves of bread a night in Shorewood.
The larger kitchen also means more varieties of bread and pastries for shoppers, in Mequon and in Shorewood
alike. For the past six months, bakers have been testing new recipes; the new ham and Swiss croissant alone went through about 20 iterations. “And now we’ve got it to where we like it,” Webb said.
MK Drayna, North Shore Boulangerie’s head of pastry who will be the general manager at the Mequon location, said customers can expect new flavors of mousse domes and of entremets, the little layer cakes; coffee, chocolate and almond Opera cake will also come in pistachio-raspberry.
New items will include cookies, biscotti and bicolor croissants — the first ones will have a swipe of red running through the many-layered pastries. “It looks really cool in the case, a nice pop of color,” Drayna said.
Mequon won’t have the cafe menu that Shorewood does, but it will brew the same coffee — Cafés Richard, from Paris — and sell quiche, soup and wedges of country omelet at the counter.
The store’s look echoes the century-old corner shop that North Shore Boulangerie occupies in Shorewood, Webb said: finishes such as wood and brass, and lighting based on vintage schoolhouse lamps. Windows in the kitchens face a seating area for customers that’s expected to open in summer.
The Mequon shop will keep the same hours as Shorewood, as well: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
Foxtown Meats
The butcher shop, projected to open in spring, will sell premium meats, shop-made fresh sausages and take-and-bake dinners in a setting designed to look like a classic butcher shop — even each tile in the black-and-white tile floor was laid by hand. As at those classic shops, home cooks will be able to ask for specific cuts for dinner as well as advice on how to prepare them.
The shop’s manager, Ray Brotherton, previously worked in kitchens in his native Houghton, Michigan, at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs and at Manny’s Steakhouse in Minneapolis before apprenticing in Whole Foods’ meat-cutting program in suburban Minneapolis.
“It’s always been kind of my passion in the culinary world,” he said. So, “when this idea for the butcher shop came around, it just was perfect.”
Brotherton designed the space for function and work flow, but the focal point is the 24-foot display case and its custom millwork.
Once customers have looked over the display case, they can peek through the window to the refrigerated cutting room, where the butchers will be at work.
Brotherton said purveyors will include Meats by Linz, which will dry age corn-fed beef for the shop, and Wisconsin Meadows for grass-fed beef. Niman Ranch and Pederson’s Natural Farms will supply pork; poultry will come from Bell & Evans. All are purveyors considered to have high standards for practices such as humane treatment of animals or sustainable farming.
“We have this opportunity with a blank slate of what we want to do, and that’s been my focus, making sure we have top of the line,” Brotherton said.
Besides meats that can be cut to order, the shop will have meats seasoned or stuffed and ready to prepare for dinner, as well as its own seasoning blends for dry rubs. It also would carry wing sauces and rubs from Foxtown Brewing’s restaurant.
And it will make fresh sausages from Brotherton’s recipes for bratwurst, chorizo, breakfast sausage, chicken sausages andouille made with chopped smoked ham and bourbon. The butcher shop will cure and smoke its own bacon, and it expects to make smoked sausages eventually.
Foxtown Meats will have prepared foods that will be available hot and ready to eat one day a week and available frozen the other days, Brotherton said — items such as lasagna, barbecue from the shop’s smoker or pasties like the ones he grew up with in the Upper Peninsula. Brotherton’s wife, Elizabeth, is a pastry chef whose pie crust recipe will be used for the pasties.