Food and Froth Fest at MPM

If you’ve never had the opportunity to roam the halls of the Milwaukee Public Museum shitfaced on some amazing micro brews, I highly recommend it. Seriously, you will never look at this venerable institution the same way again. I promise you. There is a microbrewery representative around every diorama and behind every dinosaur. There are also food stands down every street of Old Milwaukee and in front of every Micronesian straw hut. Museums are great institutions for education and cultural enrichment. F&F does both: Educating it’s attendees about the many micro-​brews from the Midwest and by enriching Milwaukee’s great culture of brewing, eating, and general prevalence of gemütlichkeit.
MPM’s Food & Froth has been rocking February for about 15 years now. I’ve been to about half of them. They used to be a complete mob scene until 2013 when they cut back on the number of tickets sold to ease the congestion. It helped, big time. Gone are the long lines and frustration that you might not get your fill. These last few years have been a whirlwind of sprinting from one beer table to the next while still leaving the last hour to hang out in the Streets of Old Milwaukee for the Usinger and Old German Beer Hall’s rocking Polka Party always featuring Art Kumbalek and the Brewhaus Polka Kings. If you’ve ever thought that Polka was dead, then you’ve got to see this. You might even loose your place in time. You might think it was 1892 and you were at one of Milwaukee’s beer gardens. This is where I am most happy and you will be too!

Food & Froth happens yearly at the Milwaukee Public Museum — last night was the 16^th annual and we’ve been to at least half of them over the years. There are tons of local breweries and restaurants spread throughout the museum offering food & drinks. The beverage offerings are mostly beer, but there is some cider, a few wine stops and the ever popular Great Lakes table.
This years event may have been the best so far — the lines for beer & food were short in most cases, there were tons of different beers to try & the vendors are always friendly & happy to talk about their product. I always end up finding something new from a brewery I didn’t even know existed — in this case Four Brothers Brewery’s Sibling Rivalry. The food here isn’t meant to fill you up, so eat something beforehand. That said, the polenta from Wild Earth was amazing!
I’m not going to share my «which floor first» strategy (because it’s a good one!) but I will say that the right thing to do is end the night in the European Village. The OGBH has beer hall tables and chairs set up, Klements gives out tasty sausages and the Brewhaus Polka Kings (with Art Kumbalek on sax!) really get the crowd going. You haven’t had «real Milwaukee» fun until you’ve gotten schwasted at the museum & done the Chicken Dance in front of the Slovenian House. Good times.