Food tour day! We love our. It's food tours and this one was no exception. We took an uber to the fashionable East Side neighborhood of Brady Street -- the ethnic district that was settled by Italian and Polish immigrants. The weather cooperated and we had a wonderful tour of 6 different places:
Zaffiro's Pizza - one of the best pizzas ever with a cracker-like thin crust, cut in squares instead of wedges to give people who want the crust, the crust, and others can eat from the middle.
La Masa - beef and chicken empanadas
Peter Sciortino Bakery - cannoli. There was a sign in the window advertising "Sunday Special" - Buy one pound of ham and get 6 rolls free. Our guide said this was a way to get people to buy beer on Sunday.
Gloriosos Grocery - 2 cheeses, Genoa salami and prosciutto and olives.
Red Lion Pub - Shepherd's pie and an outdoor human-size billiards game
Wildlife on Pulaski - pitchers of beer
Too many stories from our guide to relate here but a few notes.
Milwaukee became a great trading center because of the confluence of the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic Rivers along Lake Michigan. It grew rapidly from the 1830's to the 1880's. Many of the immigrants came from Germany and they brought their know-how of brewing beer. So from then on, the city became known as a beer town. When the Chicago fire burned most of that city in 1871, breweries in Milwaukee shipped vast amounts of beer to the ravaged populace, thus creating loyal drinkers of their brands forever.
Following our tour, the weather did not improve and we decided to go to a musical "The Producers," being performed in nearby Elm Grove. Even though we had seen the play before, it was highly entertaining. One addition was a chorus of "old ladies" all dressed in various shades of soft pink, who were Bloom's groupies.
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