The Wisconsin winter - a repost of sorts

A huge thanks to those of you who have chosen to brave this winter so many weekends in a row. It's quite a statement that you continue to make it out in this mess and the staff thanks you even more.

An insiders tip for those that are driving in, please feel free to use our parking lot to the North of Starbucks on Water Street, it's free to both Water Buffalo and Swig guests.

New Years Eve 08

Always a big event for Swig and Water Buffalo. Sullivan's too for that matter. Here are the details on our packages at the restaurants, most easily found at this webpage.
Click Here for New Years

Non - Smoking

It's a big decision for sure, but one that Angie and I would rather not have made for us. After reopening Swig as a non-smoking restaurant to much praise and some phenomenal aromas upon walking in the restaurant, we've decided that it was the right move for Water Buffalo as well. So far guests seem more than pleased and the smokers in the bunch don't appear to be hassled with the outdoors option (unless its negative 6 degrees!). So now you know, Water Buffalo and Swig are now both officially non-smoking restaurants. As always, your feedback is very welcome. Please visit the front page of any of our websites and click on send an email.

New Flight Nights at Swig

In our original location the concept of Wine and Martini flights took off, well like a...
Anyway, in our 3rd Ward location we found some operational challenges in providing you with that option. but that can't stop us! We took some time to re-evaluate and are proud to introduce Sunday night (and day) Flights. The program is back in full swing and now with infusions available as part of the package as well. Thanks for your patience as we brought this back to life, I'm sorry that it wasn't sooner.

New WB Menu Items

Ok, let's get right to it with my personal favorite of the new items, a sausage meatball hero with peppers and provolone cheese, called a hero because you will be MY hero if you can finish the whole thing. There is also a new curry turkey sandwich, an Italian eggplant entree and a new steamed clams appetizer. Throw in our famous pumpkin roll for dessert and a few new seasonal cocktails and a whole new fall experience at Water Buffalo is yours, now get in here.

Finally - Wine Tastings return to Swig

For those of you who don't remember, the wine tastings occur once a month. We taste 2 reds, 2 whites and a sparkling plus you choose one small plate. All for $25 a person. Plus we sell the tasted wine at a discount at the end of the evening.

We now host the tastings in our new event space with our new hosts Jen and Tom from Capital Husting distributors. We've made the new program a bit more fun and relaxed, but there's still lots of information to discover. questions asked make for a much more informative tasting, for sure.

Hope to see you next month, don't forget, the 1st Thursday of each month, unless a Holiday or special event.

A special events breakthrough

Please allow me to introduce our new special events manager, Joe Lawton. The best way to describe Joe is to say that he is cordial, gracious and maybe, most importantly, highly organized. This spring we finally completed construction of our private event space. It is located just above our sister restaurant Swig, on Broadway just across Water Street in the 3rd Ward. I know you will be very pleased with the event options that the new space provides. As always, the best place to start to plan your event is at downtowneventplanning.com
or call Joe directly at 414-455-2115.

A nice vote of support

Yesterday Milwaukee Magazine released their annual readers choice award results.

Water Buffalo was named best moderately priced restaurant and runner up to Trocadero for best outdoor dining. The real pleasant surprise was Swig being voted in for the Tapas/Small Plate category, we had only been open a month in the new location and closed for 9 months so again, a bit surprised by that one.

Wine Tasting events

This week we have taken the first step at Swig back to our popular wine tasting events. The first step was the re-installation of our weekly feature list, excited vendors take the opportunity to fill that feature list with new and exciting wines and the ones that our guests demand more consistent supply of end up on our main menu and are almost always featured as part of our wine tasting program.

For those of you who don't remember, the wine tastings occur once a month. We taste 2 reds, 2 whites and a sparkling plus you choose one small plate. All for $25 a person. Plus we sell the tasted wine at a discount at the end of the evening.

Look for more details soon.

Every once in a while..

The pieces don't all fit together and play nice. That was our problem tonight, Saturday July 5th at Water Buffalo.
All was fine until the witching hour of about 830pm. We were running a bit short staffed with the holiday and everyone was doing their best to pitch in so as few guests experiences were affected as possible. But, we crashed and burned, I have no excuse, we did all we could to save the ship as she was sinking but to no avail. I'd say about 85% of our guests left pleased tonight and that's pretty far away from making me comfortable. So what's the point of this rant? To say that I'm sorry and we're human and we make mistakes. I hope if you did join us tonight that you either finished your meal very satisfied or at least I got a chance to chat with you for a bit to say I'm sorry for ruining your night. If neither of those two things happened, please visit the home page of this site and send me an email so that I can make it up to you.

Play in the City and 3rd Ward growth

Not sure if you know this, but there's a person out there who's name is Karen that the city of Milwaukee employs to blog, yes that's right, blog about all things Milwaukee. She basically explores the universe that we know as Milwaukee from virtually every angle, it's a pretty neat job, Check it out here. Of course I know about it because she was kind enough to visit both Water Buffalo and Swig over the last year, but I am also an avid reader as well.



Summer is here and the riverwalk and 3rd Ward in general is a buzzin. It's even slightly surreal to stand in the spot pictured and see all the activity that now includes the patio at Water Buffalo. Even traffic on Broadway where Swig and the Palms are located is up significantly from a year or two ago, it feels great!

On Milwaukee loves Swig

Another really great review for Swig. This time from Amy Carlson of On Milwaukee . com. Quite a headline too: Spectacular food, service make Swig a standout! What more could you ask for! I wasn't super pleased that she referred to former meals as average with highlights in between, but then again OnMilwaukee.com did vote Water Buffalo best new restaurant last year and Amy herself called the food good, but I digress. If you'd like to read the article, please do so, click here

Our single biggest compliment yet.

Tonight we had the pleasure of serving 7 guests from the Milwaukee Health Department. When I approached the host for the group she said that our health inspector personally recommended the group dine at Water Buffalo based upon our last inspection that she performed a couple of weeks ago.

A compliment from some particularly discriminating guests that I am quite proud of, thank you.

New Swig review in Shepherd Express this week.

This one I was waiting for. Jeff Buetner had reviewed Swig in it’s 1st location and specifically mentioned that he thought lunch was a good idea and I was hoping he would recognize that we had listened in this new review and he did indeed. Read it here if you like It’s really too bad that so many of these articles have to come out just while we’re getting our kinks worked out as so many guests come in with standards set pretty darn high after these kind of write ups. So, if you happen to join us in these 1st few weeks, please be forgiving, or at least share your experience with me so that we can improve for you.

How quickly we have been revealed.

In a very pleasant surprise, Carol Deptolla decided to write a quick piece on our reopening. She was very engaging on the phone and distinctly interested in our new version of Swig. She expects to fully review the new location later this year. We were ecstatic with the coverage as we didn't expect to see any coverage in the Journal after Dennis was so kind to us. Here's the link