Restaurants in Wauwatosa

Housed inside the old Gas Light building in the Third Ward, Tulip Restaurant combines an Old World menu of Turkish and Mediterranean fare with a chic industrial aesthetic. Cream City brick walls provide the backdrop to framed pattern prints and an onyx bar with colorful lighting. Amid the dining-room tables, a pair of comfy couches and a coffee table surround a red fireplace that provides a place to warm hands or interrogate uncooperative chestnuts. Turkish dishes include succulent lamb chops, while Mediterranean fare ranges from fettuccine with sautéed shrimp to homemade ravioli.

The “pleasingly puffy” crust and “inventive flavor combinations” Chef Vasyl creates for Transfer Pizzeria & Cafe’s inventive pizzas earned the establishment a feature on Serious Eats. Vasyl’s love affair with pizza began in his Ukrainian hometown, where he watched with rapt attention as Italian tourists showed him how to craft pizzas in just-assembled wood-burning ovens.

Today, he and his crew craft more than 40 different kinds of pizzas with different combinations of about 30 toppings, all laid atop house-crafted sauces: tomato, garlic, pesto, barbecue, and peanut. Made with local and organic ingredients when possible, the pizzas range from traditional to inventive, with combinations more compelling than that of Al Capone’s safe. The pollo verde features chicken with pesto and tomato sauce, feta, and asiago cheese, and the Diavola is topped with hot peppers and salami. Transfer Pizzeria & Cafe’s crew strives to give back to the community by featuring local art and live music, and it contributes its vegetable and fruit scraps, used coffee grounds, and discarded paper airplanes to an area compost network.

Karma Bar & Grill aims to feel more like a stylish friend's man-cave than a typical sports bar. Upstairs amid the tangy aroma of buffalo wings and the clink of beer glasses, clusters of friends gather around 72-inch TVs, eyes locked on the game. Downstairs, the Sutra Lounge eases post-victory comedowns with candlelight and sectional couches, while keeping coffee tables laden with cocktails and almond-crusted duck tenders. Karma has restored the former John Ernst Café's crafted stone and hand-carved wood to their former luster—and has also preserved its classic fireplace and replaced the springs on its many, many trap doors. Servers keep the atmosphere inviting as they deliver pitchers of beer, hefty burgers, and plates of six-cheese mac.

From their vantage point inside the InterContinental Milwaukee Hotel, diners at Kil@Wat can treat themselves to panoramic vistas of the city, including the bright lights of the neighboring Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. Inside the kitchen, chefs use locally sourced ingredients whenever possible to craft elegant meals fit for the awe-inspiring views. This focus on freshness and seasonality translates to a menu of upscale American comfort dishes such as pan-roasted whitefish from Lake Superior and braised short ribs with roasted garlic mash and wild mushroom jus. A staff pastry chef puts her own inventive twist on dessert, concocting delicacies such as peanut-butter-and-chocolate cheesecake with pretzel bark for an added crunch.

These gourmet morsels unite with the restaurant’s elegant décor to forge a luxurious, memorable dining experience. Vibrant chartreuse accents compliment orange suede chairs and crisp white tablecloths. Large light boxes cast a soft glow over people as they sip wine from the extensive list or pose as window washers to get in without a reservation.

Molly Cool’s Seafood Tavern overlooks the Milwaukee River, allowing guests to gaze out upon the water as they enjoy its flavorful bounty. The menu reaches far beyond freshwater fish, however. It’s chock-full of treats harvested from the oceans, including north atlantic salmon, served grilled, blackened, or broiled; champagne mussels culled from around Prince Edward Island; and potato-crusted calamari plucked from potato farms in the rainy region of Illinois.

In addition to serving an extensive dinner menu that offers everything from king-crab legs to new york strip steak, Molly Cool’s invites boaters to tie up to its dock for rounds of oysters at the raw bar or salmon BLTs for lunch on weekdays or weekends. The beverage menu offers something for everyone to accidentally spill, from black-cherry mojitos to more than a dozen beers on tap.

Before it became a large-scale pizza manufacturer, Palermo's Pizza was simply an Italian restaurant run by Gaspare Fallucca and his wife Zina. On the advice of a customer impressed by their pizza bread, the couple expanded their operations to begin making frozen pizza bread en masse. Today, Palermo pizzaioli continue to follow in Gaspare and Zina's footsteps, showering freshly baked crusts with premium sauces, fine cheeses, and high-quality toppings.

In addition to classics, such as thin-crust cheese and italian-sausage pizzas, skilled pizza-makers extend their culinary expertise to options such as breakfast pizzas adorned with real scrambled eggs and fajita pizzas garnished with sour cream. Palermo’s multigrain garden pizza was named one of the country's healthiest choices by Health magazine, providing a more savory option than competitors' pies, made of tree bark and organic sand. Palermo devotees can visit the main pizza-making facility to this day, marveling at pizzaioli in action and enjoying fresh slices in the elegant courtyard of the onsite café.