Find Me at a Wisconsin Bar
Claire Elizabeth HarnEnz
A typical Midwest tavern.
I'm from Wisconsin. This means that when it comes to drinking, I have high standards. Wisconsin has more bars — or as we call them, Taverns — than grocery stores or churches. Most Taverns are old, built in the 80s or earlier, and the typically single-story, windowless buildings often stand alone at county highway intersections. Each feels the same when you walk in — the ever-present scent of frying oil, cheese, and cigarettes. Faux-wood paneling lines the walls and stained linoleum tiles cover the floors. A good Tavern will have a healthy offering of beers under four dollars and an excellent-but-greasy cheeseburger.
In Wisconsin, everyone drinks like they are twenty, even if they are well past fifty. It can be a Monday night and if a Packer game is on, you will find the Tavern clientele — all of whom have known each other for a minimum of 10 years — as drunk as a bunch of college kids. Often, their kids will be right there with them, munching on cheese curds and downing Sprite. Or if they are a lucky teenager, a beer (in the state, you can drink as young as you want with a parent present).
When I first moved to New York, my duty as a Wisconsinite was to find a good bar. So after many misses — including one night where I blew a quarter of my rent money at Jake’s Dilemma — I stumbled into Kettle of Fish.
Kettle of Fish is wedged between two iconic gay bars, Stonewall and Duplex, and is famous for its association with the Beat Generation. The bar has moved twice since Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac were regulars, but it’s easy to picture them sitting in the current location. The place is small, with a low ceiling, and adorned with string lights and dark wood. In the dimmest corner, three couches surround a defunct fireplace. Nine times out of ten, a couple will be making out on the floral cushions.
For me, the real draw of Kettle of Fish is not the decor, nor its history — it’s the unlikely fact that it’s a Wisconsin Tavern located in the West Village. A fact that I, a homesick and broke 22-year-old, noticed as soon as I walked in. Not only does the whole place feel like my best friend's basement, but it is filled with University of Wisconsin flags and Packers memorabilia. During a football game, Kettle of Fish will be packed to the gills (ha ha) with Wisconsinites looking for a few moments of connection, and a taste of home. On these special occasions, the bar will even offer bratwurst — a hometown favorite.
Behind the bar at Kettle of Fish.
On one wall, Kettle of Fish displays a poster from one of the best breweries in the world — Central Waters. It is headquartered outside of the village of Amherst, Wisconsin, which has a population of about 1,000. Small Wisconsin towns like Amherst make good beer because of their history of German immigrants and excellent water quality. The brewery uses Wisconsin-grown hops, and while relatively new, it has quickly gained prominence in the land of a thousand beers.
I immediately ordered an Imperial Stout and savored the taste. My parched lips had suffered enough flat ten-dollar Stella Artois and Sam Adams for a lifetime. As I looked down at the beer, my young mind was baffled that, just like me, it had traveled all the way from the cornfields of Wisconsin to this bar in the middle of Manhattan.
I knew regional bars existed before I came across Kettle of Fish. When I moved to New York, my sister was living in San Francisco and often headed to her local Wisconsin Bar to watch the Brewers. Until I moved out of the midwest, I didn’t understand the appeal. Why would you move across the country to hang out with people from your hometown? Now that I live in New York City, I understand why: When I meet someone from Wisconsin, I can let my guard down. I am guaranteed a certain degree of niceness and decades of shared experiences. And more often than not, we will have at least one mutual contact.
Regional bars are places where you are almost guaranteed to bump into someone who knows where you’re from. They are bits of home, transported to these strange metropolises. And they are safe locations where you can openly root for your sports team without damaging your Bushwick reputation. Bars with state affiliations are scattered across the city. OSU Reddit has pages of Ohioans debating the best Ohio bars in NYC. A close friend of mine frequents Windjammer, a bar in Ridgewood loosely affiliated with her home state of New Mexico. A bar that she claims is cool, even if you are not from there.
While Kettle of Fish was my first introduction to the Wisconsin bars of NYC, I have since found what I believe to be the finest Wisconsin-themed bar in the city: The Long Island Bar. Located in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, it is truly a delight, even for those not from Wisconsin. The place boasts an iconic neon sign, Formica tables, and an art deco bar, making the place look less like a Tavern and more like a movie set for a 1950’s diner. And sure enough, it is — a Netflix film shoot foiled my first attempt to go.
Long Island Bar was recommended to me by a friend who understood my passion for the midwest. Initially, I found this confusing because, at first glance, the Long Island Bar is every bit Brooklyn. Founded by a local family in 1951, the bar existed even before the BQE cut this section of Atlantic Avenue off from the river. In the fifties, the West end of Atlantic Ave was populated by immigrants from Spain, focused less on upscale boutiques we see there today, instead catered to the local dock workers. A different strand of the same family still owns Montero’s, a popular nautical-themed dive across the street.
Long Island Bar.
The original Long Island Bar and Restaurant (they later dropped the ‘and Restaurant,’ though it still serves food) held on until 2007 and was run by Emma Sullivan. Five generations of her family still live in the neighborhood. The iconic space remained shuttered until 2013 when aspiring restaurateurs Joel Tompkins and Toby Cecchini signed the lease. As they tell it, they fell in love with the place as soon as they saw the old bar through dust-covered windows. They left notes to Ms. Sullivan for years before she would consider leasing out her beloved spot. Tompkins and Cecchini scrubbed and restored the place, but overall, the space remains essentially the same as when Sullivan’s family founded it. Their only additions were new light fixtures, a neon sign on the back wall that reads “No Dancing,” and some tasteful Green Bay Packers paraphernalia behind the dish station.
Toby Cecchini, the memoirist and bartender who lays claim to the creation of the modern cosmopolitan, is from my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. In the Long Island Bar, he married the best parts of a Brooklyn bar and a Wisconsin Tavern. The lighting is the exact shade of dark as the Taverns I grew up in.
And in addition to expertly-crafted cocktails, he made sure to stock the essentials: Good burgers, cheese curds, and pitchers of beer.
During my first visit on a Saturday night, I was seated immediately — a fact that surprised me due to the Long Island Bar’s prominence on all the standard “best-of” lists. I debated getting one of the pricy cocktails the Brooklynites around the bar were sipping on, but ultimately went with what any good Wisconsinite orders: A double cheeseburger, a side of cheese curds, and a Stoli. The beer arrived immediately, followed by a platter of deep-fried cheese curds, which are chunks of young cheddar cheese fried to perfection. While light on the cheese, these curds were easily the best I have tasted east of Lake Michigan.
I returned to the Long Island Bar a week later, craving another taste of home. This time I ordered the beef stroganoff. I was pleasantly surprised to see the dish on the menu of a trendy Brooklyn bar and to my amazement, it turned out to be my favorite meal of the year. The mushrooms were tender, the sauce rich, and the beef! The beef was perfect! Beef stroganoff was a staple of my childhood. It was the meal my grandpa cooked for my parents at their wedding. And this stroganoff blew me away, each bite transporting me home. I cleaned my bowl and felt like I was eight years old again, asking my grandpa for a second helping.
Cheese curds at Long Island Bar
Throughout the meal, our waiter had been dutifully refilling my beer the moment I emptied it, and all around me, groups of happy drinkers filled the booths — tables filled with pitchers and cheese curds or cosmopolitans and nuts – one-half Brooklyn hangout, one-half Wisconsin Tavern. And as I sat in that dining room, ringing in my fifth spring in New York City, not quite a New Yorker but no longer all the way Wisconsin, I felt truly at home. ,
Claire Elizabeth HarnEnz is a devout cheese-lover, who hails from Wisconsin. In her spare time she paints, sculpts, and writes.