For the 10th straight year, October is Dining Month on OnMilwaukee, presented by the restaurants of Potawatomi Hotel & Casino. All month, we're stuffed with restaurant reviews, dining guides, delectable features, chef profiles and unique articles on everything food, as well as voting for your "Best of Dining 2016."
It looks like there isn't just one bakery taking the cake this time around in the annual OnMilwaukee Best of Dining readers poll. After Rocket Baby enjoyed the title alone last year, it now shares it with veteran Brady Street counterpart, Peter Sciortino's.
Both bakeries offer up sweet treats – albeit of distinctly different varieties: French-influenced at Rocket Baby and Italian cookies at Sciortino's – and fresh bread. Rocket Baby also serves sandwiches, soups, salads and some breakfast dishes.
Runners up: Lori Fredrich's pick: Amaranth Bakery & Cafe This year we also asked a variety of prominent Milwaukeeans to weigh in on their pick for specific categories. For this category, we consulted Bruce Evans, executive chef at MATC.
Evans' Pick: Le Reve Patisserie and CafePeter Sciortino's and Rocket Baby
2. National Bakery and Deli
3. Simma's Bakery
4. Grebe's Bakery
5. Cranky Al's
As bakeries go, there aren’t many that are cuter than Amaranth Bakery & Cafe on Lisbon Avenue. Staff is engaging and responsive. Slow-fermented breads made with organic flour offer up a taste of the old world. The pecan brioche is on point. And even the coffee – an after-thought in some places – is always great, too.
Other menu items include French apple turnovers, a variety of croissants, and Danish pastries, just to name a few. Saturday mornings wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the Wauwatosa Farmers Market, followed up by a cappuccino, a pistachio chocolate croissant or Berliner Beignets at Le Rêve. My drop-dead favorites are the French macaron cookies – a flavored meringue cookie filled with French butter cream. I can eat them like popcorn.