Smoke Shack – Wauwatosa
11340 W. Burleigh StreetThere are three things I usually look for when we travel when it comes to finding restaurants. Pizza, breweries, and BBQ. I had already hit the first too on this quick trip to Milwaukee. Our last meal in town was going to be BBQ.
There were some highly rated places near out hotel out by the airport but I was concerned about finding something for the kids. I also found a few places downtown but no way in hell I was going back downtown now that Summer Fest traffic was in full swing, so I had to expand my search a little bit and came up with something that fit us perfectly.
Smoke Shack is a two store restaurant chain in the greater Milwaukee area owned by Hospitality Democracy. There is one located in the Historic Third Ward downtown and one just west of the city in Wauwatosa. We picked the Wauwatosa store on Burleigh Street near I-41. It’s in the Mayfair Collection which is an upscale outdoor mall. The Smoke Shack is the first building you see when you turn in at the corner of 114th Street. The building itself is a pretty simple brick box, but they dress it up with a roughed up wood arch that is meant to resemble…well….a shack.
Discovery World
500 N. Harbor Drive- Milwaukee, WI 53202
- (414) 765-9966
- Website
Indoor activities. We desperately needed indoor activities on our second day in Milwaukee. Our afternoon at the Milwaukee County Zoo was pushing it when it comes to heat tolerance. Day 2 could not be spent outside.
I just started searching “Things to do with Kids in Milwaukee” and got a few good ideas. The one that looked the coolest was a Science and Technology Museum near the lake downtown.
Discovery World is on Harbor Drive near where Michigan Street runs in to the lake. The area is under some construction right now and, just like the issues we had parking downtown, Summer Fest is going on at night so that basically means the city shuts down during the day too.
It was really hard to figure out where to park. There was no signage and there were cones already set up to direct traffic for the concerts that were still six hours away. I went around a couple of cones and it was then that I saw the garage underneath the building at Clybourne Street. There was, of course, a sign for festival parking at the entrance to the garage, but I pulled a ticket anyway. As I went through, the guy taking money asked if I was there for the festival or the museum. I said museum and he waved me through.
Milwaukee Ale House
233 N. Water StreetOur trip to Milwaukee was a quick one. Just two days. The main objective was to go to the Milwaukee County Zoo. We did that on the first day. The second day in town was oppressively hot so we needed to find an indoor activity.
There are a couple of options downtown for kids so we thought that’s where we would head. But first…lunch.
Sure, Milwaukee is known for it’s beer, brats, and cheese, but it’s the city that helped make American Adjunct Lager’s famous. The craft beer scene in Milwaukee is still catching up. Most of the places I could find didn’t do food or didn’t seem super family friendly There was one though that stood out….so that’s where we headed to eat.
Milwaukee Ale House is on Water Street in the Historic Third Ward in downtown Milwaukee. The restaurant takes up the first few floors of the Saddlery building between Buffalo and Chicago Streets. The building dates back to the late 1800’s and has been home to a variety of different businesses before sitting empty for some years. It’s big claim to fame (according to the brewpubs website) is being home to the inventor of the hula hoop…though I can’t find any reference to either of the men credited with it’s invention being tied to Milwaukee.
Ice Cream Factory
6967 S. 27th Street- Franklin, WI 53132
- (414) 215-7666
- Website
- No Online Menu
You gotta get ice cream after swimming. Right?
We actually used that as a bribe to get the kids out of the water…otherwise there would have been tears all the way back up to the room.
Looking for ice cream stops on family vacation is no different than looking for places to eat. Sure. We could have just went to Culver’s…but where’s the fun in that?
I started looking for ice cream shops around our hotel and found one just a couple of miles away. There were a few to choose from but I chose the one that does something interesting with their ice cream.
Ice Cream Factory is in a small strip mall in front of a Lowes on South 27th Street in the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin. The small storefront looks to be fairly new taking over the space from a gift shop sometime in the last year.
Milwaukee’s Classic Pizza
3929 S. Howell AvenueWe broke our “Friday is pizza night” rule again after a long day at the Milwaukee County Zoo. It was only Thursday but no one was really in the mood to go out to a restaurant. We had spent most of the day either in the car or walking around in the hot sun.
We got back to our hotel in Oak Creek, WI around 3:30. The kids were itching to go swimming but we had told them we were going to wait until after dinner. J and I just wanted to rest.
A little after 4:00, as the kids were being forced to watch whatever was on PBS instead of having an Apple TV Remote in their hand, J told me to order a pizza from somewhere. I had a couple of options. One was a regional chain. One was a local place. I wanted somewhere that just does carry-out/delivery style pizza and I found one not too far from our hotel that was highly rated.
Milwaukee’s Classic Pizza is on Howell Avenue just to the south of Howard Street in the Tippecanoe Neighborhood just north of the airport. The restaurant is on a very busy boulevard with street parking up and down the street. I was lucky enough to find a spot right outside.
The Coop
10001 Bluemound RoadEating at the zoo is never on the top of my list of lunch choices. The food is usually served cafeteria style and while that’s fine, there are a lot of other places in the cities we visit that I want to eat.
We got up Thursday morning and drove from J’s parents house in the south Chicago suburbs straight to the Milwaukee County Zoo. I didn’t want to get there really early because we couldn’t get in to our hotel until 3:00 PM. If we get to the zoo early, we get done early, then we have no place to go.
We got to the zoo around 11:00. That’s lunch time for us on East Coast time and it’s pushing nap time for B. We didn’t want to start out day in the cafe so we started walking hoping the excitement of seeing some animals would hold the kids off for a while.
When we got through the Aquatic and Reptile Center, we started to hit a meltdown point. We quickly looked at the map to find a restroom and something to eat. I read the map wrong and we started heading towards Lakeview Place…which wasn’t open, but there was a better option right in front of it.
The Coop is a food truck operated by the zoo’s concession contractor Service Systems Associates near Lake Evinrude. It really looks like a food truck you’d see out on the street. I actually thought they had brought it in for the day until I started trying to find information on it later in the day. Read more…
Milwaukee County Zoo
10001 Bluemound Road- Milwaukee, WI 53226
- (414) 771-3040
- Website
Some people like to do beaches for their summer vacations. We like zoos. We’ve been members at Binder Park Zoo since before L was born. We’ve always loved going to the zoo and it’s gotten even better with kids.
We’ve been planning our vacations around zoo trips the last few years. Last year, we took a trip to the Columbus Zoo. In the past we’ve done Indianapolis, Brookfield, Lincoln Park, Toledo, Detroit, and all the smaller zoos we can go for day trips.
This year we took off around the Big Lake to the where the sun rises instead of sets over Lake Michigan.
The Milwaukee County Zoo is on the west side of Milwaukee right where I-94 and I-41 meet. The zoo’s main entrance is on Bluemond Road. Unlike most zoos, when you enter the parking lot, you actually pay for both your parking and your admission at the same time. With our reciprocal membership, which is half off, came out to just under $35 for the four of us to get in.
Dialo’s Cafe
1924 M-139I seem to have been in Benton Harbor a lot recently. It’s been both for work and for pleasure. On the work trips, I usually try to find some place new to eat. I’m always tempted to just order a pizza from Silver Beach Pizza but I know if I just look a little harder, there are places tucked in to a corner somewhere that I haven’t been able to find yet.
I was in Benton Harbor for work last Wednesday. I knew I was going to have some time to stop for a sandwich so I started looking around. I somehow stumbled upon a website of a BBQ place I had no idea existed. The menu looked great and they do counter service carry-out so when I got to my lunch break, I headed to the south east side of town.
Dialo’s Cafe is on M-139 which is also known as Scottsdale Road about a mile north of the interchange with I-94 in Benton Charter Township. This small brick building has been many restaurants over the years. It was a Wing Heaven as recently as 2015 and became the resurrected Dialo’s Cafe in early 2016.
Popcorn World (Michigan City)
1750 Lighthouse PlaceI’m always amazed how good of memory our kids have. L has been able to identify logos she sees everyday for quite some time and now, even B is starting to recognize logs…you know, the obvious ones…McDonalds, Starbucks, etc.
Near J’s parents house in Oak Lawn is a popcorn place that we pass on our way back to the Tri-State. We always seem to pass it when it’s closed but B always recognizes it and asks if we can stop. We have to tell him no because it’s just not open.
After eating lunch with my parents, we headed over to Lighthouse Place to do a little shopping. The first spot we hit was the Gap and as soon as we pulled in to the parking lot, B found a familiar sign.
Popcorn World is in the Lighthouse Place in the row of stores furthest to the south. It’s the building that is separated from the main area by a parking lot. It must be a pretty new store as it doesn’t show up on the map between Gap and Casual Male XL yet on Lighthouse Place’s website.
Matey’s Bar & Restaurant
110 Franklin StreetIt’s rare my mom has weekends off. She’s a server at a couple of different restaurants near where I grew up in Illinois. A few months ago she was kind of forced in to it full time. The company she did customer service for sold to a new company and she and the new company didn’t always see eye-to-eye. She only kept that job for the insurance until she was shown the door. She really enjoyed her weekend gig as a waitress but there was no way to make it full time. Now that she’s working at two restaurants as her primary source of income, she’s hesitant to give up her Friday and Saturday nights.
The restaurant she does those weekend nights at is closed for a little bit for renovation. She took advantage of the time off and took a trip to Vegas with her sister. When she got home, she asked if we wanted to meet for lunch halfway. We had nothing else planned for Saturday so we said yes and headed towards Michigan City.
I’ve never had great luck finding places to eat in Michigan City that weren’t chain restaurants. We were just in Chicago last weekend and on our way back to Michigan, I noticed a billboard for a place near the Outlet Mall we were eventually going to end up at. I looked it up and saw they had a decent menu so I picked that as our meeting spot for this meet-up lunch.
Matey’s Bar & Restaurant is a three-story indoor/outdoor nautical themed restaurant on Franklin Street just before the Trail Creek Bridge near Lake Michigan. The restaurant is hard to miss when you turn off Pine Street. It’s a large blue and yellow building with several outdoor deck areas. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 