Toast Milwaukee

 

The first two times Lisa and I wanted to try TOAST, a breakfast/brunch restaurant on S 2nd St, there was a line out the door and we passed and went elsewhere. Last Saturday we solved that problem by arriving ten minutes before TOAST opened and were first in the door.

Until we were seated and looked around it didn't dawn on either of us that the restaurant's theme was weed related; the double entendre of the restaurant name, tie dye shirts on the servers, the late '60's rock, and even the tongue in cheek names for the menu items, all relate to weed. 

Which is odd, because the food is not infused or, in any way I could tell, associated with marijuana. So is it just a kitschy and ultimately irrelevant gimmick? It would seem so. 

The majority of the seating appears to be up a flight of stairs. Luckily, we were seated in one of the few booths on the first floor. 

Lisa ordered a tequila sunrise which was a nice middle ground between too strong and "where's the alcohol?"

For an appetizer,  sausage and bacon stuffed croquettes with gruyere cheese served on a petite salad with a pepper aioli.  Quite good. 

My entree choice was a "country benedict," a cross between biscuits and gravy and a traditional benedict.  Breakfast sausage and poached eggs on a buttermilk biscuit, covered in sausage gravy and served with breakfast potatoes. 

The taste was excellent, and I'd order it again. But the timing of the dish was clearly off. The potatoes were almost too hot to eat, while the benedict itself was cool and had clearly sat for more than a moment. 

Lisa ordered lemon berry croissant French toast.  French toast, made from croissants, drizzled with a lemon creme anglaise and served with berries. De-light-ful. 

If you ignore or enjoy the pot references and value great tasting food, I would recommend you try TOAST. We will definitely be back. 
 

Daiso

I had never heard of Daiso, a Japanese retail store that is apparently well known on the socials. To be fair, I'm not their target audience, and regardless, last Sunday I found myself driving Lisa, Junie, and two of Junie's friends to check out the place in Kenosha, about 50 minutes south of us. 

 

I was underwhelmed. It's essentially a dollar store, with a few sections of "higher end" items -  merchandise you'd expect to pay five bucks for at other places. That's fine, I like Dollar Stores, and I make no effort to hide that. 

Two things bothered me. One, other than a very small assortment of Japanese food items, nothing in the place was Japanese. Oh, it may have been from Japan, but if it's all copies of the stuff in the stores to either side, what's the point? I was expecting culture shock, and instead felt right at home. 

Two, the only REAL Japanese thing about the place was the pricing. Some items had prices in yens, and you'd look on a chart posted in every aisle and translate that to dollars. Whatever lacked a price - i.e. most of the place - defaulted to $2.25. 

 So you'd pay $2.25 for scads of items that you know weren't worth it, items you could find for $1.25 at any Dollar Tree, or even a buck or less elsewhere. What a ripoff.  But, just as you do whenever you're a tourist, you go and buy it anyway. I spent $33, and while $12 was reasonably spent on a set of bowls, the rest was just me being a sucker. 

Sigh. 

Afterwards Lisa treated the kids to White Castle before we drove home. The food, the travel, and the company made up for what was, to me, a disappointing trip to Daiso. 

A Dream

Not all of this flows logically, but it was a dream. It's not required. That said, it felt very factual and true-to-life at the time. 

 I had a dream last night where I got a job working in an office in a typical Milwaukee home that was central to my family's history (aka like my real life home). But it was much longer, with a windowless side that stretched hundreds of feet.

The office existed because of a secret in the house: a sunken WWII submarine that was only half exposed in the basement, like a fossilized dinosaur still mostly trapped in stone. It ran the length of the basement (hence, I suppose, the unusual outside length of the home).  Although we sold tickets to go see the sub, it was also apparently a secret to the public at large. 

I was promoted into a position of some authority in the office, and revealed the submarine's existence to the public, because I felt the fallen sailors in the wreck deserved to be buried with honors. 

Cut to some odd scenes set in and around the Green Bay Packers of the late 70's and early '80's. 

Back to the office, where a worker/relative was angry with my decision. "Did you even think about our jobs? How are we supposed to make a living now?" I was told. 

And that was the dream in full. 

Worst. Adoption Profile Pic. Ever.

We ARE not looking to adopt another cat, but we were keeping tabs this past week on a cat that had been found and turned in to Lisa's work, and subsequently taken to the pound (eventually, it's owners retrieved him). While checking on his profile, I stumbled across this doozy. 

Why you wouldn't spend one additional second to get a picture that doesn't look like the cat was respawned in Pet Semetary, I don't know; but it did make me and Lisa laugh.