Odd Duck restaurant opens March 31 in Walker's Point, with a mix of old and new
Ten years after it debuted in Bay View, Odd Duck restaurant is about to open again — on March 31 in its new, larger home, in Walker's Point.
It's taking reservations for tables at 939 S. Second St. — the site of the late Meraki restaurant, which closed in the pandemic — and this week's bookings were filling quickly. (Diners can choose to be notified if tables become available.)
Odd Duck still will serve its finer-dining small plates with global flavors, and much about it will feel familiar (including tables from the Bay View restaurant). But some things are new:
The bar now will open at 3 p.m. instead of 4. Dinner service still starts at 5 p.m. The restaurant is open Tuesdays through Saturdays.
High-top tables in the lounge will be open to diners dropping in without reservations.
At the bottom of each list of small plates ("animal" and "vegetable") is a larger-portioned plate.
A "raw" section has been added to the menu, where customers will find oysters and crudo.
House charcuterie offerings are expanded, with items such as mortadella and duck ham.
And at dessert, two additions: Chloe Kwiat, previously an Odd Duck line cook, has been promoted to pastry chef. And Odd Duck now has a soft-serve machine, which will be put to use daily, said co-owner Melissa Buchholz.
The larger restaurant now has the space for other equipment, as well, such as a little masa grinder for making corn tortillas to go with suckling pig quesabirria. "By little, I mean it's still several hundred pounds," Buchholz said. In Bay View, she said, cooks would use a meat grinder to grind the corn.
RELATED: Odd Duck makes Yelp's list of top 100 places to eat in 2020
A wood-fired oven already was in place when Buchholz and her partner, chef Ross Bachhuber, bought the Walker's Point building.
"It basically gives us a whole other station and another way of preparing dishes," Buchholz said. For instance, the za'atar bread Odd Duck makes turns out crisper, with more rise and bubbling; the ash of carrot pulp, dehydrated and charred in the oven, is used to add complexity to a gnocchi dish, she said.
And the restaurant now has a larger, fully outfitted prep kitchen in the basement that has a ventilation hood, gas burners and a convection oven and steamer. Previously, the staff worked with induction burners in its prep kitchen.
"The whole kitchen team is happy because it changes their lives," Buchholz said. "This kitchen is now at the level ... we were always capable of producing."
That's not to say the crew wasn't thankful for the old kitchen; before, Buchholz said, Odd Duck might not have been ready for the kitchen it has now.
"We’ve evolved, and we’re ready for this space," she said.
The restaurant also has more room for diners. It has twice as many tables as pandemic-era Bay View Odd Duck — 24, up from 12 (it had 15 before COVID-19). More of those are now tables for two, which gives the restaurant more flexibility in seating parties.
The owners hope to add a parklet by midsummer or so, for outdoor dining on the building's Mineral Street side. The parklet would be created by the Three Sixty design-build firm, which also constructed the new back bar at Odd Duck.
Buchholz, who said the restaurant wouldn't have made it through the pandemic without a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, observed that Odd Duck had outgrown its old space on Kinnickinnic Avenue and was facing repairs. It made sense to own their own building, she said, but attempts to buy the building on KK were unsuccessful.
Buchholz and Bachhuber secured financial backing from their families to buy the Walker's Point restaurant.
"Every place for a restaurant is risky at the moment. To us, this seemed like the same amount of risks and a lot less headaches," she said.
Odd Duck's new beginning, after being closed since mid-February for the move, is coinciding with the onset of spring in Wisconsin. One dish, a version of chicken Calvados, is galantine of chicken with beech mushrooms, fondant potatoes and spring onions grown by one of the farmers who supply the kitchen with produce.
"It’s kind of exciting to be opening right now, because things are just starting to come in," Buchholz said.
Reflecting the drop in COVID-19 cases in Milwaukee County, Odd Duck is not requiring masks or proof of vaccination from diners, although its staff will be wearing face coverings. Requirements can change if COVID cases rise again, Buchholz noted.
To reserve online, go to oddduckrestaurant.com. To call, (414) 763-5881.
Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at [email protected] or (414) 224-2841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Odd Duck restaurant Milwaukee opening in new home in Walker's Point
