The Lowlands restaurant group
continues to expand. Now, in addition to the Café Centraal, Café Benelux, two
Café Hollanders and the Trocadero Gastrobar, the group has added another
locale. It’s called Café Bavaria and it’s within shouting distance of the
Wauwatosa location of Café Hollander. Tosa continues to be fertile ground for
new restaurant openings. Centraal, Benelux and the Hollanders offer the
Netherlands and Belgium as guideposts for their menus and especially for their
beer lists. The new place takes a nod toward Germany.
The renovated building seems
well suited for a German establishment with nice exterior brickwork and a
proper roofline. The interior has two levels. The first has the main bar followed
by a comfortable nook with a fireplace. The dining tables are long and
communal, like a traditional German beer hall. The second level has more
seating with tables of various sizes. This is the preferable place to be seated
as the communal seating can be a bit snug—make that a very tight fit—when the
place is busy.
The Lowlands establishments
set high standards for beer lists and this one is no exception with 16 on tap
and even more served in bottles. Prices aren’t cheap but seem gentle when
compared to the Belgians on the list at Café Benelux. Much of the menu is
geared towards the beer. A wurst sampler board ($10.95) or a Munich pretzel
($7.95) are appropriate accompaniments for a 2-liter boot of Hofbrau Maibock,
providing ballast for this potent brew. For more substance try the veal
meatballs ($9.95), a big plate of them in tasty mushroom gravy and with fresh
spinach and Swiss cheese. It’s a filling starter.
When ordering a full meal
start with a soup or salad. The bier cheese soup ($3.95-$5.95) is a bit salty
but not too much; the romaine salad ($5.95-$8.95) has chunky pieces of bacon
and a gentle buttermilk herb dressing, much like the fare at the other Lowlands
restaurants. Sandwiches include a tempting wild boar ($9.95) and some tasty
burgers ($9.95-$14.95), all weighing in at half a pound. The prince, and
priciest, of them is the Maximilian with bacon, thinly sliced mushroom, roasted
garlic and a tad of pungent weisslacker cheese. Everything is in the right
quantities.
The entrées aim more directly
at Bavaria. Schnitzels come with three meat choices—veal ($22.95), chicken
($14.95) and pork ($14.95). The chicken is a meaty breast with a nice batter
coating. It also has some asparagus, spätzle and a lemon caper cream sauce. Ask
for the sauce on the side as it eliminates any crispness in the batter. The
most impressive entrée clearly is the schweinshaxe ($18.95), a big piece of
pork roast that towers over a bed of potatoes with a sweet-and-sour black pepper
sauce. In recent years pork seems to get have gotten leaner and, as a
consequence, drier. Not this succulent meat, which has a great crispy crust.
Don’t be in a hurry to eat those potatoes. They get better as they absorb the
sauce.
Vegetarians can find a few
options among the appetizers and entrée-sized salads. Also there is a curious
entrée of Bavarian pho ($12.95). It tastes nothing like its Vietnamese
counterpart but otherwise is pleasant enough with spätzle substituting for rice
noodles and plenty of vegetables with the occasional zing of a red Hungarian
chili pepper.
German food has been steadily
disappearing from local menus; restaurants like John Ernst, Ritter’s and the
Bavarian Wurst Haus are memories of the past. So it is nice to see a restaurant
revisit Milwaukee’s Germanic heritage, albeit with a few timely updates.
Café Bavaria—Grand Café
7700 Harwood Ave.
414-271-7700
$$
Handicapped access: Yes