Milwaukee’s pop-up fine dining experience

Ball’n Biscuit Catering of Milwaukee offers a delicious, innovative experience for diners every few months, but there’s a catch: Ticket-holders don’t know where the event is going to be held until 48 hours beforehand. It’s a unique, limited-seating pop-up dining experience aptly named And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Crumbs. Haven’t heard of it? Now you have.

The team running the show includes some of the most personable, down-to-earth people you’ll meet. Almost every person in the kitchen prepares and serves their own gourmet recipe for the meal. Only being responsible for one course might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s a lot harder than it looks when given the challenge of an unpredictable setting such as an old warehouse just north of downtown where the dining room and kitchen are 2 floors apart.

Last weekend’s theme was The Supper Club Experience, and is the fifth event the team has hosted. The 30 people who bought advance tickets were greeted and ushered up a freight elevator into a makeshift dining room on the third floor. The night began with craft Wisconsin-style Old Fashioned cocktails made with bing cherries, blood orange bitters, and custom spiced simple syrups until everyone eventually finished mingling and settled into their seats.

Each course included an updated version of traditional supper club fare. Some highlights included brine-pickled root vegetables and quail eggs, a roasted radicchio wedge salad with drunken raisins and candied bacon, duck foie gras au torchon with kumquat and sweet onion marmalade, caramelized shallots in beef & veal marrow stock, and Oysters Rockefeller. The main dish was a seared free-range elk steak in garlic butter with sautéed mushrooms, followed by Godiva liqueur-soaked pound cake topped with hand-made pink squirrel and crème de menthe goat cheese ice cream. Hungry yet?

For the record, everything I sampled was exponentially more delicious than any supper club I’ve ever been to, and I’m a central-Wisconsinite by birth. Each plate was artfully arranged and looked just as great as it tasted.

You can learn more about upcoming pop-up dinners on the Trail Of Crumbs website or Facebook page. Don’t want to wait that long? Ball’n Biscuit is available for weddings, corporate lunches, parties, or any other event you may need to feed the masses for. They’re licensed, insured, can accommodate for vegans or celiacs, and strive to keep their ingredients organic and local. For more information, contact Maria & Daniel at 414-962-9779 or visit Ball’n Biscuit’s website.

See our slideshow below for photos from Saturday’s event: