Kil@wat

This week is "downtown dining week" in Milwaukee. About thirty different restaurants are offering three-course meals for $10 at lunch and $20 at dinner. It's a great opportunity to check out several nice restaurants for like half the cost. Tonight, the former roomie, his fiance and I took the opportunity to have dinner at Kilawat. Yes I am a total third-wheel. No, I did not spell the word "kilowatt" wrong. (The name of the place is actually spelled using an ampersand where I put the first "a" but blogger won't let me type it that way without making it an email address. Lousey blogger). It's located on the corner of Kilbourne Avenue and Water street. Get it? Kilbourne at Water => Kil @ Wat => Kilawat. (Coincidentally, I'll be going to a new place called Waterbuffallo tomorrow. It's located on the corner of Water St. and Buffalo St. I assure you that not every restaurant in Milwaukee is named after the street it sits on. But now that I think about it, most of them are. The Mason St. grill is on Mason St. and the Water St. Brewery is on Water St.... I digress).

Kilawat is a sort of trendy [read: it has table clothes and unconventionally shaped drink glasses]place in the Milwaukee Center building. Our downtown dining week options included braised short ribs or shrimp risotto. Although I didn't know what risotto was, I ordered it anyway. I'm all about trying knew things. It turns out that Risotto is a lot like Golden Crisp cereal (Remember Sugar Bear? "Can't get enough of that Golden Crisp, it's got the crunch with the punch.") when you let it sit in milk too long, only awesome and tossed with shrimp and asparagus. It was delightful. I also had a dominant Caesar salad and a root beer float (I'm classy, what can I say?). The former roomie got the short ribs, which were allegedly good as well. I definitely plan on returning to Kilawat. It's primarily a small plate dining place so the three of us decided we would return at a later date with reinforcements so we could sample a bunch of stuff.

After dinner, the three of us had a cocktail and watched the Spurs beat LeBron James at Clear. Clear is another trendy bar, also located in the Milwaukee Center building. The shtick at this place is that everything is... wait for it... clear! I'm usually a Jack & Coke kind of guy, but I made do with a vodka tonic. When in Rome, right? It was reminiscent of that trend in the early 90's when companies were making clear versions of their products to create an image of purity. Actually, an Absolute and Crystal Pepsi and a little Van Hallen music would have made for a perfect end to the evening...