It's been a good 25 years since I moved on from Green Bay, so I'm hardly a Titletown insider. But I have to say that Adam Richman touched on the key culinary points of beer, brats and cheese.
Richman's "Man Vs. Food" traveled to Green Bay on Wednesday night's show on Travel Channel and offered a green and gold half-hour that began at Kroll's West.
During my years in Green Bay, we spent more time at Kroll's East, but this spot is in the shadow of Lambeau Field, and far more familiar to out-of-towners who head in for the game. He went beyond the butter burgers to a butter prime rib sandwich.
Big-name visitors usually hit Kroll's. I remember covering a 1984 campaign stop by Walter Mondale, then challenging President Ronald Reagan's reelection bid. On his stop at Kroll's, I was waiting in line for a one-on-one interview that never came. Nature called and I found myself standing at a urinal next to the Democratic presidential nominee.
But I digress.
Let's get back to Richman. My only real criticism of his visit was how he pronounced where he was. No, Adam, it's not LamBEAU Field. It's LAMbeau Field. His mispronunciation grew grating during the show.
But he did teach America about bratwurst in beer and deep-fried cheese curds.
As is the ritual on this show, Richman gets a team of locals to take some food challenge. This one involved two college kids trying to eat a six-pound hamburger named after Gilbert Brown. Also making a guest appearance was Antonio Freeman.
They lost the challenge, although the pair came pretty close to downing the whole thing.
Richman's Green Bay produced a better show than his visit to Milwaukee earlier this season. But it's a more concentrated target, with none of his stops leaving the shadow of Lambeau Field. And that's LAMbeau Field, Adam.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
