Sam M.'s Profile

You know, I thought about this place because my last review was also about cockroaches.  Yeah, this place had a cockroach infestation.  Whatever.  It's all good.  They cleaned it up, and like I said about House of Nanking--it's a risk you have to take eating at any dive.

The bigger issue is that my teriyaki chicken looked almost too unappetizing to eat, and I've eaten at Goosebeary's food truck more than 200 times.  I've ordered fish served out of the back of a truck in the middle of summer and yet this food looked nasty to me.  That's really challenging.  Two stars only because it's cheap and I didn't get food poisoning, so in the event of a nuclear apocalypse destroying all food on Earth except for Shinkansen, I would still probably eat here.

But seriously, Asian food sketching me out--that's really hard to do.  That's really, really hard to do.

I'm reminded of this one scene in my favorite musical, 1776, where the delegate from Georgia isn't sure how to vote regarding American independence because he personally supports independence but his constituency does not.  So, I mean, I had some good food here, but I'm a little dubious after seeing all the other Yelp reviews.

A lot of people are just like "I saw a roach.  One star."  Whatever.  It's a risk you assume when you go to a chinese dive, like getting sick when you order sushi or a headache when you order tequila shots.  Most of the time, you won't see a roach or get sick or get a headache, but there's always some small risk, no matter where you are.  So if you go here, go into your meal knowing that there are probably roaches somewhere in this restaurant.

And, you know, I had some pretty good food, roaches or not.  We took the "give us whatever you feel like" option and everything we got was tasty, but in different ways--there was a rice porridge, some roasted pork over greens, some other stuff, and in the end a really tasty fried chicken dish with sweet potatoes.  You know the deal--fat, salt, sweet, umami, all at the same time.  You're not gonna get anything that craveable unless you wrap figs in bacon and dip them in MSG you bought from Ranch 99.

So it's totally free and kind of fun, but seriously, Lakefront is not to be missed.

You watch an informational video second in hilarity only to the video about civic responsibilities that I had to watch while serving jury duty in Massachusetts.  Then you go on a short tour of the factory which will be interesting only if you're a process engineer and really like seeing bottling machines in action (this describes me).  There's one room where they're like, "It's 80 degrees in this room and there are 54 steps, so you don't have to come up if you don't want to."  Yeah, pretend you broke your leg or something, unless you really like nasty beer-brewing smells.

They take you to the Miller Inn and you get pretzels and unlimited postcards to send to all your friends.  Then you get three free beers, and so this tour gets three stars.

Honestly?  A nice enough place to grab a bran muffin, and not quite as touristy or overpriced as you'd think, being the first thing you see the moment you emerge onto Canadian soil from the mean streets of Detroit.  Because I have no shame, I also tried the barbecue sauces straight out of the bottle during breakfast, and they seemed pretty good.  I mean, I dabbed them on my finger first, but the story is less fun that way.

Ruth M has a story about how it's advantageous to take American dollars there, but I'll leave that for her review.

I mean, I'm from Central PA, so I know Amish.  This place is pretty Amish, or at least as Amish as you're going to get for a roadside shop.  We're not talking barn-raising here, or anything, but it's pretty Amish.

I liked their reasonably-priced selection of prepared foods (dry egg noodles, cashew crunch, etc)--anything there would be great for the car ride home or a souvenir for a friend.  The ingredient lists were short and lacking in preservatives, so if they don't make them on-site, they definitely make them somewhere nearby.  

I only got two turtles, and although they tasted fresh, they were just okay--the chocolate was a little bland, but the caramel filling was pretty well done.  Anyway, it's really splitting hairs; when someplace is this Amish, it definitely deserves a four-star review.

The pizza is tasty, but pretty standard.  This kind of pizza is the reason they put parmesan cheese and red pepper on the table at pizzerias.  A medium pizza will set you back about $18-20, and that's just a little silly.  Beverage selection is pretty extensive, but you pay for it ($5-6 pints).

Idonno, it seemed like there were a lot of other cool places around to eat--this was one of the few establishments in Milwaukee that disappointed me.

It is so rare that I am stuffed after breakfast, unless it's 3 AM banana pancakes, but this place managed to do it.  I don't know how--the pesto scrambled eggs did not look so large on my plate, but after finishing them I was just like "Blerg, I am so full of pesto.  Pesto and joy."  They were tasty, too, and the breakfast potatoes were flawless and crazy full of garlic.  Perhaps best of all, they gave me a bagel, cream cheese, and jam instead of toast.  The jam was totally the key element of the meal.  Or maybe I just want to say jam.  Jam jam jam.

It's actually reminiscent of The OtherSide Cafe in Boston, except the waitresses over there have tattoos of the Red Sox and Dropkick Murphys.  The waitress at Beans & Barley had a giant red and green tattoo of Wisconsin across most of her left bicep.  And seriously, I would not mess with her.

I apologize in advance for using such coarse language in a Yelp review, but the MILF at the bar told us that the her favorite margarita is "the second one" after I asked the bartender to make us "two of his favorite margarita."  Ruth M was on her third and I was on my first, so I guess it all averaged out.  We ended up having a pleasant, if slightly awkward, conversation over our collectively-second margaritas.  

Reading the other reviews, it seems like a good thing that we got there too late for food, but the deluxe margaritas were indeed pretty decent.  And since we were stumbling in from The Signature Room, they also seemed like a steal at $10 each.

Seriously, any other night it would be flirting with two stars, but at that moment all we needed were some margaritas, some salsa from a jar, and a friendly MILF full of travel tips.

We got 1/3 of a pound of cheddar jalapeno, 1/3 of a pound of barbecue cheese, and 1/3 of a pound of sour cream cheese and just shook it like a Polaroid picture.  The only reason it lasted two days on our road trip was because it dyed our hands bright orange and we were running low on napkins.

They also have a cheesecake popcorn that has red Jelly Belly jellybeans in it and that is just almost too much for me to even process.

I am reminded of an old joke that I don't remember exactly but the punchline is "I don't want to poop.  I want to eat cheese."

That's kind of how I feel about Cheese Mart.  I asked for like 1/8 of a pound of eight-year white cheddar just for a late-afternoon snack and they gave me a quarter pound.  I mean, whatever, it's like $2, but still--measuring cheese is like your only job.  And it's quite an enviable job.

If the cheesemonger hadn't been so incredibly nice and the cheese hadn't been the greatest cheddar I have ever eaten in my entire life, I might not even give this place the maximum possible rating.