milwaukee spots: cafe centraal

I've posted before about restaurants and places I've loved in the Milwaukee area, and today I'm adding another to the list. This one is even more fully vetted than the rest because I go there kind of all the freaking time.

Cafe Centraal is pretty much the destination of choice for my roommate and I, whether brunch or dinner is what we seek. I have yet to see someone order something bad...the first time I was there, I did get a dish I didn't like, but it was my own mistake for ordering something that had chorizo in it and somehow thinking it wouldn't be too spicy for me?? That was a silly decision. And that dish isn't on the menu anymore anyway, so no harm done! Everything else I've had has been excellent, as with the rest of my dining companions. If you go for brunch, get the sugar donuts. They come with a berry cream cheese. Get the big order. No matter how many of you there are. You won't regret it. My personal favorite dishes so far are the Grand Cafe Club (which has green apples on it! Crazy but insanely delicious) and the Bay View Burger (mmmm burger). I also ate the pig tails without actually realizing they were literally pig tails, and they were utterly delectable.

Centraal is well-known (along with its sister restaurants) for their beer selection. I don't drink beer, so I'm afraid I can't vouch for the quality, but I can vouch for the fact that there's a giant book filled with all the beers they have and that their staff takes classes (!) to learn more about beer. Friends assure me that it's very good, and I trust them! I've always been happy with one of their specialty cocktails or a garden-variety mixer.

I was, in fact, at Centraal last night for trivia (which occurs every Thursday at 8!). It's such a great way to spend some time with friends while challenging your mind too - and an excuse to eat at Centraal, of course. We weren't too shabby last night (tied for fourth!).

Basically, this is a place to go. The staff has always been super friendly and attentive, the food is always delicious, and I'm a big fan of the atmosphere. Fickle Kitsch gives it four forks for highly recommended!

pinterest attempt: german manicure

Yesterday was Germanfest, the best of fests! For those that don't know, Milwaukee is the home of many ethnic festivals, most of them the largest of their kind in the US. Germanfest has always been special to my family; we are of German heritage, for one thing, and for another, my parents actually got engaged at Germanfest. We go every year, enjoy delicious food, great music, and just generally have a fine time.

This time, I had an idea for a thematically appropriate manicure inspired by something I pinned, so here is my very first attempt at bringing Pinterest into the real world:


Doesn't look too hard, right? So I picked up some red & yellow nail polish (I already had black because of course) and some stickers and set to work!

Okay, not quite as beautiful as Pinterest promised. But all in all, a fairly successful experiment! If you couldn't tell, I am not actually that good at painting my nails. I have shaky hands, and I haven't actually done them that often...back when I was living at home, my mom would paint them for me (I know, I know). But overall, I'm pretty proud for my first attempt at level 2 nail art. I love that it's such a flexible technique. The middle one with two colors would be great for any kind of sports team-themed manicure (or, perhaps, Gryffindor nails?), and well, it just looks cool.

My biggest problem was with the nail colors smudging (even after I waited until they seemed completely dry), but I think that's mostly due to the quality of my polish (the $3 Sally Hansen X-treme from Target). I also had some issues with the stickers leaving residue on the nails (which then were difficult to remove due to the aforementioned smudging problems). I'm not sure entirely how to fix that...decreasing the stickiness by handling them more would help, but I don't know if that would diminish how effective they are blocking the polish. It'll take some experimenting to get right, but I'm pretty confident! It was a lot of fun to have some German pride on my fingernails while I was enjoying spanferkel and Bavarian chocolate torte to the sweet sounds of polkas and German guys singing Gangnam Style. Yup, that happened. Ich liebe Germanfest!

summertime (and the livin's easy)

It's finally summer! Which means it's super hot in my apartment...hooray? Whatever - at this point in the summer, it's all such a welcome change after winter that I'm happy to deal with a stuffy apartment now and then. That's what fans are for!

Hello, blog! Long time no see! As you may have heard in the previous paragraph, the weather in Wisconsin is finally getting warm and, believe it or not, I've been doing things. Occasionally even outside-things! Still, I miss blogging and have made a goal to make it part of my schedule again. If I have time to watch Shark Tank, then I have time to write a blog post.

There are a couple cool things I've been doing lately - I'm really enjoying my new job, and it just happens to both put me in touch with a lot of great things going on around the area and sometimes we even do fun things as an office. For example: this Thursday we went on a cruise down the river as a staff outing!

I'd actually never been on a boat in the Milwaukee River; I went on a similar sort of trek in Chicago, but it was great to see the skyline I know and love from a new perspective! Plus, floating down the river, enjoying fancy appetizers in the warm sun instead of being at my desk? That was pretty awesome too.

And I went to Bay View Gallery Night, where I strolled the streets, saw cool art, and ate some chips. It wasn't as fun as it could have been, since I didn't end up connecting with the people I was planning to meet there, but it was still pretty cool. I didn't get too many pictures of the art because I was busy looking at it and wrangling a purse, my phone, and a cup, but trust me - there was some great stuff! My city is awesome.

Plus, cross stitching! Having a new hobby is fun! I've always had crafty urges, but a hard time actually finding a project I could stick with. This is my second cross stitch, and I think I may have found my craft! I have a bunch of ideas for new projects. My roomie is already worried that we'll run out of space for me to put my projects...I intend to bring that concern closer to reality!

That's what I've been up to! I'll try to have more fashion/home/all that good stuff content coming soon - what have you been up to at the start of summer?

things to do: brewcity bruisers

When I was in college, the movie Whip It came out. The local roller derby team sponsored a premiere with free posters and such, so I figured I would check it out. I loved the movie (female friendships! awesome music!), but more than that, I was super intrigued by the sport. I wished I was tough enough to be a roller girl (for reference, I somehow managed to scrape my hand on the couch yesterday. The couch!), but the fact remained that I still hadn't seen a live bout. Well, no longer! Last night I checked off one of my year goals: I attended a roller derby bout! And it was awesome!

Warm-ups! Everybody was already blurry and this was the slowest part of the night!

The Brewcity Bruisers are Milwaukee's rollergirls; the league is made up of four teams, so really, it's two bouts for the price of one. Last night, we saw Crazy 8s vs. Maiden Milwaukee and Rushin' Rollettes vs. Shevil Knevils. Each bout has two periods, so we got plenty of halftime shows too! Halftime for the first bout was a dance performance by the Beerleaders; during the second, there were Racing Beers ala Miller Park's Racing Sausages (if you aren't familiar, well...it's a quintessentially Milwaukee thing, kind of hard to explain. Basically people dressed as anthropomorphic sausages (or in this case, beer bottles) race one another in a humorous fashion). The main halftime between the two bouts featured a bout by the Micro Bruisers, the youth derby league. Man, I wish I was that awesome when I was 8-17 - maybe I would be tougher today if I'd been doing derby instead of whatever it was I was actually doing (reading, probably, or theater. Both worthy hobbies, but not lending to athletic prowess).

For an $18 at the door/$15 in advance (or with a promo - K and I got a discount for bringing nonperishable items for a food drive) ticket price, you get an awful lot of bang for your buck. There was a communist lime cheering on one team, beerleaders slingshotting t-shirts into the cheap seats, and rollergirls going flying into the crowd seated around the track (K and I decided to stay off the ground level in some real seats for our first outing). If you're not familiar with the rules of the sport, don't worry! The announcers give a lot of information in their play-by-plays, and it's really not hard to pick up on the basics. Even if you aren't sure what's going on, it's always exciting to watch!

K and I came home with the urge to make our way to the local roller rink to strap on some skates ourselves (for some much slower, hopefully less hip checking fun), and are definitely planning to hit the next bout on March 9th - if you're in the Milwaukee area, put it on your calendar now and prepare for some high-speed fun!

starting off right

One of my general goals for the year is to be better at stuff. And blogging is stuff! So, right on the heels of my year in review post, this is what I did over the long weekend!

As mentioned in the previous post, my fabulous artist friend and first-ever houseguest Claire came down from her shanty in the wild woods of Minnesota to ring in the new year Milwaukee-style. (Note: she does not actually live in a shanty. Or the woods. But she does live in Minnesota.) We had a lovely time - we took a trip to the Milwaukee Pubic Museum, which I hadn't been to in years. It was fun to see the new stuff and all the exhibits that fascinated me in my youth. We ate at the Milwaukee Public Market (always a favorite spot!) and brunched at Cafe Centraal, which is right in my new neighborhood! It wasn't all downtown treks and fine dining, though - we also spent plenty of time playing video games, watching funny videos on Youtube, making butterbeers, and just talking about everything. Basically all the stuff you need your best bros for. We rang in the new year with mimosas and thoughts and dreams for the new year. And before Claire had to go back to her shanty on New Year's Day, we helped my roomie Disdainbrook fulfill one of her 2013 wishes.

We dyed her hair! It was my first time being on the begloved end of a dyeing session, and it went quite well! We only did the underside of her hair (with Atomic Turquoise from Manic Panic) and somehow managed to keep from getting dye on anything in our bathroom, including our big white tub. Great success! It definitely gave me the itch to get my hair dyed again. I'm way overdue for a coloring, but I still have to decide what I want to go with. I'm going to stick with red, but I might go with something a little deeper than before. We'll see what swatches sing to me next time I'm at the salon. Although there's something wonderful about dyeing hair in a little bathroom with a white tub, two friends with gloved hands and a tupperware to do a cold rinse in. It's hands-on, gives you a sense of shared purpose and community. But it does also make everything smell like dye, so. You can't win 'em all.

a year in the life

Happy 2013! The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. Like, for example, how a year has just ended! I really like having time to reflect back on the year behind me and to look at the year ahead.

In 2012, I:

• got out of my retail job and into a full-time temp gig
• got a permanent (though part-time) job in my field 
• had my face in a nationally circulated magazine
• moved out of my parents' house (and in with my best friend)
• attended my first convention (LeakyCon!)
• hosted my first houseguest (who is here now! Hi Claire!)
• read more books for pleasure than I have since before college
• learned how to pick up a cat
• opened a bottle of champagne with no injuries (New Year's Eve, just squeaked by!)
• survived a suburbs-to-downtown commute (every day!)
• bought my first piece of furniture 
• handled a plumber
• tried two different kinds of Butterbeer
• ate brunch downtown
• got a book signed in person by an author I admire

As for 2013, I don't really believe in "resolutions." It seems like a way to set yourself up to fail, making sweeping declarations and plans that will fade when you get back to everyday life and probably be a bust within the month, which is a bummer when you have a brand spankin' new year to explore. But I do believe in goals and my goal for 2013 is...to achieve more goals. Basically, I want to do things, things that I've never done, or things that I've been afraid to do. I might make an actual list, but either way, I sort of feel like my adult life has really "begun" now (with a job, car, apartment, even a cat running around!) and with all the serious building blocks in place, it's time to enjoy some extracurriculars. I want to write more, I want to explore my new(ish) city, I want to make things and share things and accomplish things. My goal is to nurture my confidence, my creativity, and my relationships with family and friends.

Happy New Year! May we all enjoy happiness and success in the coming year.

milwaukee spots: coquette cafe

Last Sunday, my lovely little sister turned twenty! Yikes! Luckily, I was able to face this inescapable proof of my own mortality in the best way possible:  with celebratory brunch!

We all know brunch is totally fetch right now (is it too late to make fetch happen?), but this was my first foray into the downtown brunch scene. As resident foodie (or the closest thing), I was placed in charge of researching the possibilities and presenting the birthday girl with her options. In the end, there was a clear winner:

Photo taken from my phone during brunch - I love technology!

Coquette Cafe (warning: site features autoplay music if you wait too long!) is located in the city's Historic Third Ward, serving "authentic bistro fare." Their menus are available for perusal in the website, and one look at the brunch menu convinced us that this was the right option (plus the fact that they serve brunch all the way through 5 o'clock; we would be arriving at 2, which is sort of a no man's land as far as brunch-serving restaurants are concerned). It features both brunch-y fare and many of their usual entrees, so there's an option for everyone.

The restaurant is really lovely and charming, and the staff was warm and attentive. Of course, the number one question is, as always, "how was the food?"

I am not a great food photographer. Trust me, it was super good.

I had the salmon cakes with poached eggs and bernaise sauce with a side of dauphinoise potatoes. It was absolutely divine, and I say this as a person who isn't particularly fond of eggs (but who loooooves salmon and bernaise sauce). I also had a mimosa - because, brunch! - and that was also very good. My sister had the pain perdu (brioche french toast with carmelized pears, candied pecans, maple syrup and a side of bacon), my mom had chicken confit crepes, and my dad went traditional with an order of coq au vin. All of the dishes received thumbs up from their respective diners.

All in all, I definitely recommend Coquette Cafe to any eaters in the area. It was my parents' second time eating there - they'd gone for dinner something in the neighborhood of ten years ago, and they said that nothing has changed. As far as I'm concerned, nothing needs to! The prices are definitely more on the side of "downtown" as opposed to discount (brunch meals range from $9 sandwiches and omelettes to $23 hangar steak) but I felt they were reasonable (of course, I wasn't the one paying, so...your mileage may vary!)

What's your brunch destination? I've read a lot of great things about the brunch scene in Milwaukee...hopefully I'll be able to investigate some more!

state of the union

I hope all you Americans had a happy 4th of July! Mine was pretty laid back, but it was followed by three days (well, two long evenings and one full day) of music festival-ing. I saw some great bands, had lots of laughs with my sister, and didn't get heat stroke or even a sunburn! I have some fun posts in the pipeline (including a neat product review!) but I was thinking about how projects on blogs always just kind of disappear into the ether - they happened, you posted, it's done - and I wanted to give a little update on how things were going.

I tweeted about the Sally Hansen Polish Strips I reviewed in this post, but I have to reiterate here:  they were horrible to remove! I don't know if it was because I left them on longer than advised, but the adhesive used on the strips got gummy and everywhere. I was scrubbing at them with nail polish remover and all it seemed to do was push it around. I still have a little residue on my nails - proceed with caution!

My bookshelf brightening project is still a smashing success! I was a little worried that the paper might bubble up in the heat, but it's all smooth and lovely as ever.

Finally, the tablet case I purchased is still doing a great job! It's started to wear a tiny bit at the corner and some of the fabric on the inside has started to fray, but that's user error - it's where I hook my stylus, and putting it on and off has worn at the fabric a tiny bit. I'm still totally in love with it and it's kept my baby safe and sound through thick and thin and daily travels to the office shoved in my tote with my lunch, umbrella, passcard, notebook, and all those other important work-related things! The tablet is also a homerun - I actually finished my very first full ebook on it last week and it was a lot of fun! I don't know if I'll start buying a ton of books that I don't already own, but it's an excellent resource for checking books out of the library (the ebook I checked out, by the way, is called The Paris Wife and I heartily recommend that too! It's about Ernest Hemingway's first wife...I read it for my book club [I'm in a book club now! How grown up and literary is that?] and can't wait to discuss it with the ladies!)

That's basically the state of things around here - how are all of you doing? Anything new and exciting? Projects or purchases that aren't holding up like you expected them to (or exceeding your expectations!)?

milwaukee spots: the safe house

This past summer, I posted about some fun places to get a bite to eat in Milwaukee, my home city. I was on that adventure with an old friend of high school, Ms. Gail, and since she was in town again last weekend, we had to hit up some more downtown spots!

On Friday night, I met up with her at the Milwaukee Public Market (mentioned in my first Milwaukee post) for a little dinner before we started checking out the nightlife. We checked out several establishments, but my favorite was a place I've been wanting to visit for a while: The Safe House.





Did somebody say spy?


The door reads "International Exports Ltd.," but that's just a ruse to throw enemy agents off your trail. The Safe House is a spy-themed bar and restaurant that is a ton of kitschy fun. It's themed to the gills, and I love it. If you're not a fan of James Bond, 60s style corniness, or looking a little silly in the name of a good time, the Safe House is probably not for you. But if Bond, cornball, and silliness are your bread and butter (hello!), prepare for a good time!

Once you enter, you'll be asked to provide the password before you can get into the bar proper. If you don't know, you'll be asked to perform some sort of humorous feat in order to prove your worthiness to gain admittance which, you will discover after getting inside, is shown on TVs in the bar area. It's all in good fun, but if you really want to avoid it, the password is...just kidding! What kind of spy would reveal that kind of sensitive information in public? I'm no double agent!

Although Safe House does have a full menu, we just ordered some chicken tenders to munch on in the bar area. They were very tasty, but...they were chicken tenders. Nothing too out of the ordinary, so I can't really speak to the quality of the menu. I didn't end up trying any of their specialty drinks (which are wonderful and thematically appropriate and, in the tradition of these things, pretty pricey) but had a delicious amaretto sour. For younger spies, just keep in mind that after 7PM the Safe House is a bar and no one under 21 is admitted, but you can still come in for lunch or dinner to enjoy all the atmosphere!

There's also a secret exit, if you're a particularly clever spy, which I'm sure you all are.

Have any of you found your way to the Safe House? Is there a kitschy theme restaurant in your city you'd like to recommend? Comment below!

places to eat: milwaukee

I had a great time adventuring in Chicago with my dear Kaitlin this Saturday. We got very very lost and very very wet, but the shows were great and we had a darn good time. It was also a day of firsts for me; I rode the subway without a parent for the first time, hailed my first cab, and braved my first outdoor concert in the rain.

But the good times weren't about to stop rolling yet; on Tuesday, I had another adventure, this time in Milwaukee with Gail, my best friend from high school. Since she moved further north for school, we don't see each other as often, but when we do it's just like old times! While in Milwaukee, we hit up three awesome places to get a bite to eat that I thought I would share with you.


Image via Serious Eats

First up was Northpoint Custard on Bradford Beach. This old-school custard/burger stand is run by one of Milwaukee's premier restauranting families, the Bartolotta's. They put a slightly more upscale twist on classic beach stand food, but for the most part, it's just great food to eat sitting at their picnic tables, on the rocks along Lake Michigan, or (as we did) sitting in the trunk of your car. I had the Old School burger with cheese (ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles) which was a bit mustard-heavy for my tastes (but I don't actually like mustard except for mixed in with other condiments on burgers) and beer-battered onion rings, which were awesome. Gail got the Seagull (sauteed onions, Merkt's cheese spread) and cheese fries, both of which got a thumbs up from her. The burgers are the expected thin chargrilled type -- I'm personally a fan of big thick burgers, but I knew that wasn't what a place like this offered.

The food is great, especially paired with the view. We were lucky enough to have a gorgeous day, warm with a nice cool breeze off the lake, and it felt pretty amazing to sit outside and eat our food. We did get mobbed by seagulls after the rather ill-contemplated plan to just let fallen french fries lie, but a small child clutching an Angry Birds plushie chased them away for us.

I only really regret not getting a chance to try out their custard. (If you aren't familiar with frozen custard, get thee to a Culver's ASAP! It seems to be a particularly Wisconsin-based dessert, and it's amazing. Richer and creamier than ice cream, frozen custard is a boon to the world.) But I couldn't have sweets at Northpoint, because our next stop was...


Image via yelp.com

Another first: my first visit to a cupcake bakery! As trendy as they are and as much as I love cupcakes, I haven't found an actual cupcake bakery before visiting Classy Girl Cupcakes. One of their specialties are their "cheesecake cupcakes" which, although delicious, felt like a little bit of a misnomer to me. I was expecting something more...cupcakey, I suppose, when what I got was a paper cup filled with cheesecake. That was probably just my own preconceived notions, fueled by an amazing cheesecake/cupcake mash-up that roomie Elise used to make.

I ordered a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake cupcake and a Ghiradelli chocolate cupcake. Gail had a hazelnut nutella cheesecake cupcake and went classic with Red Velvet for her standard cupcake. They were all very good, though I don't know if they were necessarily the best cupcakes I've ever had. There's a full-service bakery/baking supply store not far from my house that makes the most incredible cupcakes; I wanted a place that focused entirely on cupcakes to meet or surpass them, but no such luck. Still, the cheesecake cupcakes are a lot of fun and felt fresh and different to me. The store itself is great, with a girly-meets-industrial look, and some really cute cupcake-inspired accessories and t-shirts for sale. I would go back for the experience...and because with 20 flavors offered every day, there are so many more I want to try!

What could we do after burgers and cupcakes? It seemed like it was time to get something a little bit healthier, so we headed out down to the Milwaukee Public Market.


via ettractions.com

The Public Market is a great piece of Milwaukee food culture; the building houses a number of independent artisan vendors, offering both grocery products (seafood, spices, artisan breads and cheeses) and dine-in options (sandwiches, wine bar, salads). It's a ton of fun to poke around and see what nifty stuff is up for sale. Gail and I stopped at The Green Kitchen, which offers artisan sandwiches, made-to-order salads, and raw fresh juice. When we stopped at the stand, I didn't realize that they would be slicing and juicing all of the fruits for my juice right there and then! I had a Pink Flamingo (orange, grapefruit, pineapple, strawberry) that was delicious, and Gail thoroughly enjoyed her Obango (orange, banana, mango). They offer a number of combinations, both fruit-based and with vegetable influence, as well as shots of wheatgrass.

I was thoroughly tempted by the artisan breads and the number of candy stores in the market, but alas, our parking meter was about to run out, so it was time to return to the car and head out of the city. I really enjoyed spending the afternoon in Milwaukee; even though I've lived just outside it for the majority of my life, I haven't had a chance to experience most of what it has to offer. My time in Milwaukee has mostly been through trips to the museums or the theater, often through school. It feels like time to explore the city as an adult!

Are there places in your "home" city that you've always wanted to check out? Where would you take friends to eat to show them what your city is?

(Northpoint is only open in the summer, but the other two are available year round, in case you want to check them out next time you head up to Dairyland!)