Vegan Milwaukee: Brunch, brats, and beer cheese

Spend a weekend exploring Brew City! This round-up includes everything from Milwaukee vegan restaurants and breweries to upscale dining.

Plus, fun things to do to fill your time between meals. (The Bronze Fonz gives it two thumbs up!)

If the name Milwaukee makes you think of Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, double brat hats, and cheese curds, you are in for a delicious surprise. There’s much more than meets the eye to Wisconsin’s most populous city.

With a downtown RiverWalk that is reminiscent of the one in Chicago, Milwaukee has a similar outward appearance to the Windy City. But the general vibe in Milwaukee is more relaxed. It feels like a smaller city but with big city amenities.

They also have two professional sports teams if you’re into that kind of thing. (I’m not. But the running of the sausages is the kind of absurd tradition I can appreciate.)

Even more than my affection for absurdity is my love of delicious vegan food, and Milwaukee has that many times over.

I visited the area for the first time ever with friends recently. And I was immediately flush with plant-based options.

Milwaukee welcomed us with vegan beer cheese, handmade seitan bratwurst, and even a Gardein-based fish fry.

Dead Bird Brewing

Dead Bird Brewing is a vegan restaurant and brewery with arcade games aplenty, and an outdoor patio.

Not a beer fan? They also have non-alcoholic drinks & enticing cocktails.

The cucumber melon cocktail is refreshingly light in flavor, like a day at the spa. The tropical elderberry slush was an adult take on a childhood favorite.

And you’ve got to love that bright pink color of the hibiscus guava cocktail.

They have a wealth of options for snacking. Our table shared several appetizers, as well as some individual treats.

The beer cheese is served cold with pretzels and tortilla chips. It has undertones of Kolsch beer.

The poutine tastes like Thanksgiving with chopped roasted potatoes, melty vegan cheddar cubes, and a topping of crispy string onions like you’d find on a green bean casserole.

It was atypical from the usual poutine I fell in love with in Vancouver with copious amounts of vegan turkey gravy on fries. But we still easily finished off the bowl.

(Craving potatoes and gravy? Make vegan poutine at home!)

Others at the table ordered the tacos – patatas bravas with spicy guajillo crema, zhoug, and pickled onions, as well as the Robertina taco with chick’un, salsa, pickled red onions, and a radish carrot slaw.

The potato taco got particularly high marks, especially the zhoug sauce on top.

My husband also finished off his meal with a homemade frozen Twix bar. I didn’t grab a pic, but I did grab a bite. Very tasty!

On The Bus & the Milwaukee Public Market

Milwaukee Public Market is a large food hall with shops in stalls selling spices, sauces, mustards, and local specialties. There are restaurants and bakeries.

You’ll know you’ve reached the right place in this indoor market when you see a small VW bus, home to On The Bus, an all-vegan eatery.

They have sandwiches & burgers aplenty, smoothies, and homemade ice cream.

I have an ongoing list of favorite restaurant reubens. So obviously I had to order the reuben at On The Bus.

This corned beef-style seitan sandwich is stacked with sauerkraut, aged vegan cheddar, and Russian dressing on toasted rye bread. I eagerly gobbled up every bite.

On the side, we shared a large order of bus fries with ranch dressing.

My husband, David, was craving something on the lighter side. So he opted for a blueberry smoothie.

This refreshing drink was flecked with berries and filled with bananas, almond butter, dates, and oat milk.

Next time I’d really like to try the Cuban sandwich. I’ve also heard good things about the basil pesto sandwich.

On The Bus also sells some grocery-type items. I picked up Heath-like vegan chocolates from Hands Off My Chocolate, and vegan Stroopwafels, which were made in Austin, Texas. They were both terrifically good.

Be warned that On The Bus in particular & the Public Market in general gets busy on the weekends.

We were there on a Saturday, which was also a game day. It was packed with people. (The overhead picture is from earlier in the day, before the lunch crowd.)

We waited in line for about 15 minutes to order. Then the food came 20 or 30 minutes later. 

There are picnic tables for dining outside. Or if you’d prefer to dine indoors, grab a glass of Rioja at Thief Wine while you wait for your On the Bus order. Then eat your sandwich there when it’s ready. They also have more general seating upstairs.

Sugar Cube, a vegan donut pop-up, is sometimes at the Milwaukee Public Market and/or has their donuts for sale at On The Bus. However, they are currently in the process of opening their own brick and mortar location.

If you like vegan donuts, keep an eye on that for your visit!

Beerline Café

Beerline Cafe is a fast casual vegetarian restaurant with indoor & outdoor seating. Pretty much everything on the menu can be made vegan with some substitutions.

While they are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I’d heard rave reviews about their brunch options.

We ordered at the counter, and then headed to the tables outside.

Vegan crepes are a rare commodity. So I had to go with one of the many crepe options.

The spartichoke crepes are filled with sautéed spinach, artichokes, and vegan smoked gouda. The crepes are topped with a smattering of walnuts.

Who needs English muffins when you could have hashbrowns for the base of a Benedict?

This hashbrown Benny is made with baked tofu ham and tofu scramble on hash browns, and drenched with vegan hollandaise. It’s served alongside roasted asparagus.

The Ethiopian lentil & sweet potato wrap is made with berbere seasoned lentils, sweet potatoes, lettuce, and tomato with garlic cucumber tzatziki in a grilled flour tortilla.

The breakfast wrap is loaded with rosemary potatoes and seasoned tofu, and a drizzling of vegan nacho cheese in a grilled tortilla. It’s served with chipotle-jalapeño salsa.

Even though it was breakfast, we made some room on the table for loaded nachos.

The vegan nachos were my favorite part of the meal – piled high with queso, black beans, chickpea chorizo, avocado, and pico de gallo. They were finished with a zigzag of cashew lime crema.

My biggest regret from Beerline is that I didn’t order the cinnamon roll pancakes. I’m more of a savory breakfast person than sweet, but I should have gotten an order to share. I’ve heard only raves about them. Next time!

Vanguard

Vanguard is a non-vegan restaurant that specializes in sausages.

They have several handmade seitan sausage options. They make all of them in-house, which is always so much cooler than pre-packaged.

In addition to their indoor dining space, they have a nice little patio out back.

The seitan sausages can be topped in a variety of ways with things like onions, cold or hot sauerkraut, hot giardinera, relish, and sport peppers.

I went with a vegan brat, which was seasoned with nutmeg, ginger, garlic, and mustard seed. Here it’s topped with cold sauerkraut and a squeeze of mustard.

The outside got delightfully crusty around the edges, and the flavors were on point.

Other dishes we tried:

• Vegan Italian with relish & onions
• Vegan schnitzelwurst
• Vegan chorizo sausage served Tijuana-style
• Vegan chili cheese fries with pickled jalapeños

Definitely make room for the chili cheese fries! It has a mouthwatering spicy-but-not-hot flavor mixed with swirls of non-dairy cheddar.

(Have a hankering now? Make vegan chili cheese tots at home!)

I’ve also heard raves about the burnt ginger tofu, but I didn’t have room for it this time.

Odd Duck

Odd Duck was easily our favorite dinner of the trip. It’s a high-end, vegan friendly foodie place that focuses on small plates. Every dish was a winner.

In addition to indoor dining, they have a lovely courtyard area in the back, which is where we sat.

While they have plenty of non-vegan options, scroll right across them to the “vegetable” section of the menu, where veganizable options are marked with a V.

We ordered almost every veganizable option on the menu. But keep in mind, their menu changes with the season. So what you see here may not be what’s available when you go.

We started with well-seasoned sweet rosemary & citrus roasted nuts, as well as fennel & citrus roasted olives. The roasted olives were served cold.

(If you like warmed olives, I highly recommend checking out my warmed Castelvetrano olives!)

Next, they brought out a butter lettuce salad with bosc pear, toasted walnuts, and a thin bread tuile. It was lightly dressed in a sherry vinaigrette.

The raw broccoli salad had swishes of hummus at the bottom of the bowl, and a topping of falafel croutons, tahini ranch, sumac onions, tomatoes, and pickled carrots.

It was a nice fresh option to whet the palate.

The raw & roasted Brussels sprouts put me to mind of my holiday favorite, roasted Brussels sprouts with apples & caramelized onions. Their dish had spiced pepitas for crunch and apple butter for sweetness.

The tempura-fried oyster mushrooms was my favorite dish of the night. They were lightly coated, and wonderfully crisp.

They were served with fried tofu, scallions, brined green peppercorns, and fresh herbs.

It was an addictively good dish that made me happy we had one mushroom-hater in the group. (More for me!)

Almost as soon as the Ethiopian fried cauliflower was set on the table another order was being placed for it.

It was seasoned with berbere and awaze sauce, timatim tomato relish, and a layer of collard greens underneath.

The little fried corn puffs were the star of the show in the peanut stew with pumpkin, roasted eggplant, and pear chutney. Cracking into the fried hushpuppy-style balls felt like breaking away at a matzo ball in soup.

The stew had delicious full-bodied flavors of fall, very reminiscent of my sweet potato peanut stew.

We finished dinner with a square of rich & creamy chocolate with flaked sea salt and roasted stone fruit. 

Did I say the oyster mushrooms were my favorite part of dinner? This may have squeaked ahead…

If you yearn for a vegan fine dining experience, definitely find your way to Odd Duck.

They spaced out the dishes perfectly, and led us from lighter dishes all the way through an indulgent dessert.

Riverwest Co-op

I love visiting grocery stores when I travel, and I’d heard several mentions of Riverwest Co-op. It’s in the space of an old house, and their adjacent restaurant is in the garage.

(Although the restaurant is currently take-out only.)

When we arrived I was surprised at the diminutive size of the store. It’s basically the size of a small convenience store. But what they lack in space they make up for in selection.

We found all kinds of local & specialty items. Everyone in our group walked away with something special – including chai seasoned nuts, cherry BBQ potato chips, smoked chicken seitan from Cedar Teeth, and coffee-flavored non-dairy yogurt.

While we were there, we had the vegan breakfast reuben with big chunks of marinated tempeh, kimchi, tofu scramble, and melted non-dairy cheese.

It was topped with a spicy sauce and served on toasted rye bread.

I loved how they kept the big chunks of vegetables in the scramble, and just made it work on a sandwich of organized chaos.

(Want to make a kimchi reuben at home? Check out this bulgogi tofu sandwich.)

Next time I need to try their vegan biscuits & gravy!

Café Corazon

When a restaurant has vegan chilaquiles on the menu, it’s basically as if they sent me a handwritten invitation. I’m RSVP-ing with a vehement yes.

There are two locations of Café Corazon. They both serve breakfast 7 days a week until 3 pm. Plenty of time to sleep in and still get your brunch on.

The restaurant has an uber casual vibe with plastic tablecloths and a menu taped to the table. They also have outdoor patio seating, but it was closed the day we were there on account of rain.

We noshed on chips and salsa in anticipation of our breakfasts.

The generous serving of vegan chilaquiles was made with fried corn tortilla chips, tofu scramble, and black beans smothered in red & green enchilada sauce. (The green sauce was easily the best!)

The chilaquiles come with your choice of vegan protein. I went with the soy chorizo, which tastes exactly like the one that’s a staple on my Trader Joe’s grocery list. I’d say it was the dominant flavor of the chilaquiles.

The vegan tofu scrambler is made with herbed tofu and soy chorizo with rice, black beans, and tortillas.

Add more decadence to the plate & add an order of fried plantains. Always so good! Crisp on the outside & sweet on the inside.

The vegan best burrito is filled with an assortment of sautéed vegetables including broccoli, black beans, soy chorizo, rice, and avocado in a flour tortilla.

It’s topped with both red and green enchilada sauce.

The vegan taco plate comes with your choice of vegan protein (mushrooms here!), black beans, cilantro, radishes, onions, and tomatoes.

You also get your leafy greens in with a salad on the side, which is a nice complement to the heavier comfort fare.

By the way, it was too early for margaritas, but I hear theirs are excellent.

Kegel’s Inn

Friday fish fry is a popular tradition in the Upper Midwest. Vegans can take part with a plant-based offering at Kegel’s Inn.

Kegel’s is a German restaurant that has been open since the 1920’s. They have an outdoor beer garden that shares the space with Public Table.

(Public Table also has vegan options if you want to mix and match. Although, on the tables they have rules about where people can sit depending on where you’re buying alcohol.)

Kegel’s vegan fish fry basket includes three Gardein fishless filets, french fries, and tartar sauce.

Gardein fishless filets are a staple in my freezer. (Perfect for vegan fish tacos!)

Kegel’s Inn did an especially good job of frying them. They were piping hot & delicious, and finished with a squeeze of lemon. The purple coleslaw on the side had a tangy sweet & sour flavor that wasn’t my favorite.

At $16 for the basket, the price was a little steep in comparison to other area restaurants we visited, especially for pre-made frozen items.

They have a second vegan option on the menu – a Beyond Meat bratwurst with cucumber slaw.

Sadly, their sauerkraut isn’t an option for vegans, because it’s made with bacon grease and bacon. Since sauerkraut is known for its preservation aspects, it would be great if they kept some pig-free kraut on hand for those who would prefer it.

Still, it’s nice that they have a couple of options for vegans. And the outdoor beer garden feels historic & fun.

More Milwaukee vegan options

Even with all of the places we dined, there are still more that I’d like to visit next time. Here are more veg-friendly and vegan Milwaukee restaurants I’ve heard good things about:

• Twisted Plants – a fully-vegan casual dining joint with burgers, sandwiches, shakes, and ice cream
• Strange Town – a vegan restaurant focusing on fancy small plates
• Babe’s Ice Cream – an old-fashioned ice cream shop with vegan options for shakes, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream cakes, and sundaes
• BelAir Cantina – fresh-style Mexican deliciousness with a few vegan options like jackfruit and soy chorizo
• Palomino Bar – an old-school, Southern-inspired bar & restaurant with vegan options like fried pickles, seitan + tofu wings, and vegan hot fried chicken sandwiches
• Blackwood Brothers – restaurant & social club with vegan options like a killer tofu sandwich, sticky tofu, and kimchi pancakes

Need something to do between dining at the best vegan restaurants in Milwaukee? Here are some touristy ideas I recommend…

Bring your Aaaaaaaay game

If you’re a fan of classic television, make your way up the Milwaukee RiverWalk to see the Bronze Fonz. (Open every day of the week – Sunday, Monday, Happy Days…)

It’s a nice walk in its own right. And then you get to grab a pic with the coolest motorcycle riding, diner-loving guy of the 1950’s from the 1970’s. We waited our turn while another couple posed, and then grabbed our chance.

Get away from it all

Don’t leave the Milwaukee area without visiting one of their beautiful beaches.

We went to the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, which is located on 185 acres of undeveloped green space along the Lake Michigan shoreline. They have a 6-mile system of trails.

We hiked down to Lake Michigan and walked along the stone-lined beach. The water was endless & blue. It felt more like an ocean than a lake.

We sat on the beach for a long while, scooping through stones, and showing each other the prettiest ones. It felt almost meditative & a wonderful way to replenish while on vacation.

Then we climbed back up to the observation tower to take in the expansive view of the nature preserve and lake.

I’ve heard good things about these other beach options as well: Atwater Beach comes highly recommended. Bradford Beach is a favorite but can get crowded. See more options on this beaches & parks list from Visit Milwaukee.

I’d also love to visit the Mitchell Park Domes on a future trip. They look really impressive, like the Des Moines Botanical Center in triplicate.

There are also sightseeing cruises & kayaking on the Milwaukee River that would be fun to try sometime.

Thank you to my AirBnb host, who just happened to be vegan & wrote up a lengthy list of “must tries” for us, and Vegan Milwaukee who had loads of plant-based recommendations.

Thank you as well to Visit Milwaukee for advice on things to do & see in the city, and gift cards for Milwaukee Public Market & Beerline Cafe.