A noted Milwaukee pastry chef will open a bakery and his dream burger-and-custard stand
A pastry power couple are at the center of two of the food stalls lined up for 3rd Street Market Hall: a bakery with everyday and fancy items and a stand that salutes Wisconsin’s frozen custard and classic burgers.
Kurt Fogle — a partner in Muskego’s Bass Bay Brewhouse, an MATC culinary faculty member and former SURG executive pastry chef — is opening the burger-and-custard-oriented Milk Can with his Bass Bay partners.
The partners also will open Milk Bottle, a bakery selling items such as fanciful cakelets, American classics, sourdough and other breads, croissants and simple sandwiches. Katie O’Neil will oversee the baking.
3rd Street Market Hall is the food hall due late this year in the former Grand Avenue mall downtown.
Working with master pastry chef Jacquy Pfeiffer in France and meeting other French chefs left an impression on Fogle. (A graduate of the French Pastry School in Chicago, Fogle assisted school co-founder Pfeiffer at the prestigious Meilleurs Ouvriers de France pastry competition in 2007.)
He was struck by the chefs’ “motivation to preserve their own culture and to steward and showcase that.”
So he wants Milk Can to showcase some of his favorite foods growing up in Wisconsin, foods that out-of-town visitors at the convention center across the street might want to try.
Milk Can will have a simple menu, he said: a few composed burgers, bratwurst and sandwiches like ham and cheese, and fried bologna. There’ll be cheese curds, onion rings, fries and “fries with stuff on them.”
“We’re not trying to reinvent the cheeseburger; we’re trying to amplify what we think it should be by following simple rules,” Fogle said.
That includes “buttering the bun with the best butter we can afford,” Fogle said, and grinding the meat for its patties. They’ll likely be 4 ounces — “not a burger that will make you feel like you need a nap before you go back to work,” he said.
Frozen custard is a must for Fogle. “My favorite pastry is ice cream. What’s the best ice cream? It’s frozen custard,” he said.
Milk Can will be the rare custard stand making its own cream-and-egg mix, Fogle said. It also will make its own hot fudge and caramel sauces, and add-ins such as brownies or cookie dough.
“I didn’t want Milk Can to be different; I wanted it to be really good,” he said.
The stall’s name refers to the days when ice cream parlors’ cream was delivered in cans, and the shop owner probably knew the dairy where the milk was coming from.
“It’s a nod to old-time quality and relationships and keeping it kind of community based,” Fogle said.
Pastry chef O’Neil, Fogle’s fiancée, is in charge of the bakery program that will supply Milk Can, Milk Bottle and Bass Bay. One of her specialties is viennoiseries, the richer breadlike items such as croissants.
“I love making items that take a lot of attention to detail. Croissants take three days of production; I love every step of it,” she said.
“And they’re so messy to eat,” she said, referring to the shower of crisp crumbs that fall from a well-made croissant. “I just love them.”
O’Neil just finished an internship at Cacao Barry’s Chocolate Academy in Chicago, assisting in tests for products (such as pistachio praline) that result in recipes.
While doing that, she honed her chocolate skills. “I think it will really elevate our petits gateaux,” she said of the cakes sized for one.
One dessert that customers likely will see is a favorite of O’Neil’s: malted vanilla whipped ganache under shiny chocolate glaze, with pecan streusel and cherries soaked in verjus, the tart juice made from unripe grapes.
Expect to see baguettes, multigrain bread, danish, slightly oversized macarons and chocolate chip cookies on Milk Bottle shelves, among other items.
Fogle and business partners Ryan Oschmann, Laurie Oschmann and Andy Meinen plan more food hall stalls, to be revealed later.
Other vendors at 3rd Street Market so far are Donut Monster, Funky Fresh Spring Rolls, Char’d, Stone Creek Coffee and Waterford Wine & Spirits.
