55 Years Old, Mama Mia’s Still Cooking

Mama Mia’s. Photo taken Dec. 5, 2025 by Cari Taylor-Carlson.

When you step into Mama Mia’s, you step into a piece of local history. The dining room feels like an old-time Italian restaurant with its mirrored walls, stained glass windows, and dim interior, especially noted if you walk in with your sunglasses on as I did.

Since 1970 Mama Mia’s has served classic Italian cuisine at this location in Milwaukee, and is the last of several restaurants with that name and run by members of the same family since the mid-1950s. When a friend and I came for lunch on a rainy day, she commented that she came here in 1991 for her first Milwaukee restaurant meal. “Nothing has changed,” she said. We also agreed that with no windows looking out at West Greenfield Avenue we could imagine that we were dining at a bistro somewhere in Rome.

Because Mama Mia’s is known for its garlic bread, we ordered lunch specials, spinach lasagna, and eggplant parmesan because the specials come with the famous garlic bread. We got lucky, as our server said, “You got the last two pieces of garlic bread. He is out there making more right now.” That confirmed what we thought we knew. Mama Mia’s garlic bread is homemade. It was an oversized roll sliced in half vertically and drenched with garlic butter that permeated every bite of the yeasty and chewy bread.

The spinach lasagna was a large serving smothered with oozing mozzarella cheese. It came in a bowl that was filled with marinara, a delicious red sauce studded with chopped tomatoes. It sauced the lasagna and provided a dipping sauce for the garlic bread, as if it needed more flavor.

The other lunch special, eggplant parmesan, had two eggplant layers topped with a lot of crusty mozzarella. It was served in a bowl on top of spaghetti which all together added up to a filling entrée.

Other lunch specials included baked pasta with mozzarella and meat sauce, manicotti, chicken parmesan and lasagna with meat sauce. All the lunch special entrees appeared to favor a lot of mozzarella.

Even the Margherita pizza had a load of mozzarella along with chopped tomatoes, fresh basil, and an artistic drizzle of balsamic vinegar. It had a thin crust and all the flavors of a traditional Margherita pizza. The lunch special mini was a nine-inch pie and not especially “mini.”

You can also build your own pizza and choose from a list of 18 toppings, or, you can order the E.B.A., everything but anchovies, the garden with mushrooms, olives, onions, peppers and tomatoes, the Hawaiian with Canadian bacon and pineapple, or the Sicilian with Italian spice blend and extra olive oil.

There are five sandwiches on the menu and three of them are made with that garlic bread, the grilled mozzarella cheese, meatballs, and the one my companion ordered, the hand-formed Italian sausage. This was a Paul Bunyon-sized sausage sandwich topped with add-ons, fried mushrooms, and onions. For $1.00 you could add cheese if you thought a half-pound of meat needed more heft.

The ravioli left no doubt that it was house-made. You can order meat or cheese, or, do as I did and order the combo. Each ravioli was huge and due to its size, I tasted the individual flavors in the filling. It came in a bowl with a sauce, either the meat or the marinara.

If you want a light lunch, you could order the house salad, iceberg and romaine lettuce tossed with the house dressing. It was a large bowl filled with crisp lettuce, mozzarella, pepperoni, tomatoes, and pepperoncini.

To tweak your sweet tooth, there are several desserts including tiramisu, cannoli, spumoni ice cream, and limoncello cheesecake.

When you dine at Mama Mia’s, you will not leave hungry and you are likely to leave with a doggie bag for another meal. It is all good. Mama Mia’s is a classic. It is not fancy. It is a Milwaukee institution that has maintained a reputation for good basic Italian food for 71 years.

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• Location: 8533 W. Greenfield Ave.
• Phone: 414-475-0400
• Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mon-Tue, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thu, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fri-Sat, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sun
• Website: https://www.mamamiasmilwaukee.com

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