Made In Milwaukee: A Mooch Around Wisconsin's Largest City by Mary Novakovich

I met the Fonz once, back in 1988. Nice chap that Henry Winkler. Quite short, very affable, a bit nervous because he was about to premiere the first feature film he had directed. Years later, I was standing beside his newly commemorated statue in Milwaukee, the setting for the much-loved US sitcom Happy Days and proud ‘birthplace’ of Arthur Fonzarelli, America’s favourite short, leather-clad Fifties throwback.

Attractive Riverside Setting

The statue isn’t quite life size: it’s shorter than I am and Winkler and I are the same height. What was also unexpected was the attractive riverside setting for the statue. Not in a Fifties-style burger bar. Nor anything associated with Milwaukee’s traditional image of a brewery town, where Happy Days offshoot Laverne and Shirley (and their friend, Spinal Tap’s Michael McKean) used to bottle some of America’s weakest beer. My late uncle did too, at Schlitz brewery, an establishment so mediocre that it deserved its nickname of Schitz. Its official slogan was “the beer that made Milwaukee famous”. ‘Infamous’ was my thought when I first tasted it years ago.

Schlitz was bought out in 1982, and its old brewery became a business park. Pabst Brewing Company, also founded in Milwaukee in the 19th century and the official beer of American GIs during the Second World War, has been swallowed up by brewing giant Miller. Its enormous derelict building is awaiting a very expensive transformation into shops, restaurants and offices. Now the only major brewery left is Miller, which, although it produces beer that is just about palatable, it is hardly comparable to the high quality of beers Europeans are used to.

German Community

When the breweries started to disappear, this once-thriving city on the western shore of Lake Michigan began to lose its soul. Unemployment hit astronomical levels, surpassed only by Detroit. Slowly, however, things started to perk back up. Milwaukee’s backbone had always been its German community, which gave the city its culinary focus: cheese, and lots of it. Followed by bratwurst. And knockwurst. And sauerkraut. And spätzle, those little dumplings Brits tuck into while skiing in Austria. Along the Milwaukee River is the Old German Beer Hall, which offers a lunchtime special of bratwurst, sauerkraut, spätzle and a beer – brewed to a 400-year-old Bavarian recipe, apparently. Who needs McDonald’s when you can eat like a Kaiser?

With the loss of the major breweries, Milwaukee had to do something to keep its metropolitan population of 1.4 million going. A microbrewery, the Lakefront Brewery, opened on the lakeshore in 1987, and its classy beers quickly found their way into many of Milwaukee’s bars. The city fell back on its rich culinary heritage and unselfconsciously reinvented itself as a foodie town. It didn’t have to work too hard in that regard: it had the meat and cheese and it was working on the beer.

Waterside Playground

The lakeside, where Lake Michigan is so vast it resembles the sea, had become a waterside playground and less of the no-go area it used to be. Rebranding is everywhere: the riverside is now Riverwalk, where public art sits easily with the renovated 19th_century industrial buildings. Third Street along the river is now Old World Third Street, home to restaurants and bars (including the Old German Beer Hall). Old warehouses converted into lofts typify the Historic Third Ward. It’s a very pleasant downtown area in which to stroll, made more human by the scarcity of skyscrapers thanks to the city’s sandy foundations. You can see the sky without craning your neck.

I headed down to the lakefront to stare at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the audacious bird-like structure designed by the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. Within minutes, a fanfare sounded on the hidden loudspeakers and the graceful ‘wings’ slowly opened and closed. Nice touch and one I wasn’t quite expecting.

What really took me by surprise though was what the Guinness World Record calls the world’s biggest music festival. I thought I was familiar with the world’s major musical events, but Summerfest was news to me. It’s been going on since the 1960s and the 12 music and comedy stages take over the lakefront for the whole 11 days. It’s hard to see a pub band in London for that sort of price nowadays. The line-up, admittedly, is a bit surreal: American stalwarts such as Tom Petty, Cheap Trick and Kansas rub shoulders with the stars of the UK revival scene (Eric Burdon, the Zombies) as well as artists actually from this century (Gnarls Barkley, Alicia Keys, Plain White T’s). But while the line-up is hardly edgy, the festival has been one of the major players in the rejuvenation of the city.

Bring Together and Celebrate

Summerfest’s organiser, then mayor Henry Maier, was inspired to create his festival after visiting Oktoberfest. His vision was to bring together and celebrate Milwaukee’s many ethnic groups, but it hasn’t quite turned out this way. The city’s German, Italians, Poles, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Irish, among others, have their own festivals, most of which take their turn filling the lakeside venues with the sounds and flavours of their respective mother countries.

If you want real unity in Milwaukee, you’ll need to experience a tradition many are convinced are unique to the city: the Friday fish fry. The Catholic ritual of not eating meat on a Friday has mushroomed into a weekly seafood binge. Restaurants offer a menu consisting of cod, perch, pike or other local fish plus generous side dishes. No wonder it’s so popular with family groups.

You can find a Friday fish fry in most restaurants, regardless of cuisine. One of the best in the city, I’m told by my less than objective Serbian-American cousins, is at the Serb Hall next door to St Sava Cathedral, handily located a stone’s throw from my aunt’s house. The queue going out the door shows that its popularity wasn’t limited to the Serbian community. The fish was delicious, as were the goulash and cabbage rolls the carnivorous (and non-Catholic) Serbs couldn’t help but include in the buffet. It was the perfect back-to-basics way to deal with the gloomy financial situation that was getting worse by the minute. Comforting peasant food had never tasted so good. Perhaps some clever person should market the fish that made Milwaukee famous.

Inspired? Check out Travel Intelligence's listings for luxury hotels in the United States