In Search of Milwaukee Style Corned Beef Sandwiches
How a City Created It's Own Style of Corned Beef Sandwich.
I’m a Jersey girl. I feel I need to fess up to that first thing, though I’ve loved a Wisconsinite for eons and he’s spent the last decade showing me around his home state. Right from the start I’ve been enamored with the state, but since moving to Milwaukee this past November, I’ve discovered a million more reasons why it is my favorite place.
Discovering Milwaukee’s wonderful style of corned beef sandwich may be my favorite reason yet. It is the best corned beef sandwich you will ever have and a product of Milwaukee’s finest attributes: it’s history with rye bread; the best dairy in the country; a long Germanic heritage producing some of the finest mustards; and, of course, the city’s many ethnic communities’ ways of cooking and serving corned beef. Generations of people in Milwaukee have passed down the tradition of corned beef. Since Milwaukee’s inception, corned beef has been an important staple for its working class.
There’s a dictated note in my phone that says “Mr. Vollman’s corned beef near Capitol Drive.” It’s from this past November—and it meant nothing to me when I looked at it to tell Robert about the restaurant I had seen.
“It was a drive though—for CORNED BEEF!!,” I told him. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to see that such a thing existed. And it did. I just couldn’t remember where it was or what its name was—searches turned up no Mr. Vollman.
Just a week later we were driving to a Chinese restaurant called Sze Chuan, on the recommendation of our friend John Dye, and we passed a store front with giant yellow letters saying “Top Corned Beef.” (Fantastically, the “O” in the word “Top” was a top hat!) I thought, could this be a thing? Are there restaurants in Milwaukee that specialize in corned beef? Are there restaurants in Milwaukee that have corned beef in their name?
The answer was: Yes, there were, and we needed to investigate.
Now, I love corned beef like any girl who is named Mary Kate after the Maureen O’Hara character in the John Ford movie, The Quiet Man would. But my German-Norwegian husband did not. Not, that is, until I made it well for him about ten years ago. But he does love it now, so we were on the job! Off we went to look for Milwaukee restaurants that specialized in corned beef.
Finding Mae Velma’s
A few weeks after that mysterious voice dictation (Mr. Vollman!) we passed an old restaurant on Capitol Drive and I realized I had originally seen the corned beef place near there. After a quick search, Robert found a place called Mae Velma’s Corned Beef was nearby. (“Mr. Vollman’s Corned Beef”—nice job, autocorrect!)
We were on our way. Mae Velma’s was a bright shiny drive-thru on 76th Street. After we placed our order, we sat in the car in anticipation. And sat, and sat. It was quite a wait, but when we got to the window, we realized they were making the sandwiches a la minute. The meat was cut fresh, assembled into a sandwich and toasted on the grill. This is a drive-thru, I thought, not a fast-food joint. There is a big difference.
Even after we brought the sandwich home, it was still hot and juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside. We were amazed at the tenderness of the corned beef. The grilled bread with melted cheese and brown mustard enveloped the meat in a cocoon of flavor. It all highlighted the corned beef—there was no sauerkraut to get in the way of this taste explosion, just perfect silky bite after bite, over and over.
Tyron Smith and his wife, Tonya, started Mae Velma’s in 2017, named after his mother. He has since opened three other Mae Velma restaurants. He said in an 2024 interview for Urban Milwaukee that he remembered his mother bringing home corned beef for dinner. “It was kind of like caviar for us,” he said. “Like we were eating high on the hog. We just loved it.”
I can see the need for more Mae Velma’s. We were off to a great start.
Time to Go to Jake’s
Robert decided that we should go to Jake’s Deli, a place that he has known for half a century—though the last time he went, ten years before, he was not happy. ”I was disappointed,” he said. “The corned beef was fatty (not in a good way) and tough.” The letdown there was especially cruel, considering Robert grew up with his father telling him about going to Jake’s often as a young man.
But it was not a disappointment this time. In fact, Robert selected Jake’s one of the 62 iconic Milwaukee experiences in his Mix post this past February. We walked into Jake’s, and were greeted by the giant white menus that list what they sell. We ordered a pastrami sandwich and a corned beef sandwich, both toasted with cheese and brown mustard. I watched the counterman slice the corned beef, then disappear, returning a few minutes later with a sandwich wrapped up in white paper.
We unwrapped the package: this was a beautiful corned beef sandwich. I lifted the bread to admire the thick slices. They were moist, crowned in fat (which I like, but you can order it lean if you prefer it that way) and nestled on a bed of melted cheese and mustard. The look of it was the kind of corned beef that can only come from a freshly sliced piece of meat, having just been pulled from its briny bath.
Jake’s Deli, Robert said, was back!
So, we looked up to find out what had been going on there since his last visit in 2015. We seemed to find the answer in the owner of the House of Corned Beef. In a 2022 On Milwaukee article by Lori Fredrich, Wajeeh Alturkman describes being a customer at Jake’s during his time driving a taxi to make some money while he was a student earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees.
In a phone call with Mr. Alturkman, he told me about buying Jake’s Deli from former baseball commissioner and Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig in 2022. He described going to Jake’s every week as a young man. His order in those days was corned beef, with pickles and mustard on the side. No cheese, no bread, no sandwich. Alturkman hadn’t had corned beef prior to Jake’s, but “I fell in love with it” he said.
After graduating and getting married in 2007, he was trying to find a job. The opportunity to open a restaurant presented itself and House of Corned Beef was born. Mr. Alturkman expanded the hours of House of Corned Beef so that customers were able to get corned beef when they could not at Jake’s (Sundays, late nights, etc). Wajeeh described his passion to compete with Jake’s, which was considered the best. In order to do that he had to “present a product that people were going to love, not just to like.”
Wajeeh started selling the sandwiches made like a Rueben, but without the sauerkraut. They were made of thick-cut, hot corned beef (a Jake’s tradition), cheese and a choice of mustard or thousand island dressing.
“I started that,” he said. “The corned beef with the Swiss cheese, and the toast and the customer’s choice of mustard or thousand island.”
At that time, Jake’s did not toast anything but its Reuben sandwiches.
On to House of Corned Beef
House of Corned Beef is not an eat-in place, nor is it a drive-thru. You go inside, walk up to the window and place your order. A very nice lady took my order. I perused shelves of cake that were nestled in clamshells while I waited, finding the slice that I would have bought, had I not been subsisting on corned beef alone now.
We got to the car and decided we did not want to wait until we got home to eat the sandwich. (Forgive my dashboard photo.) The bread was broken on the sandwich and it wasn’t the prettiest, but I can assure you, it was delicious. Thick slices of hot, juicy corned beef on toasted rye with melted Swiss cheese and brown mustard. It was perfection. It really did melt in my mouth. I watched a video online where Alturkman reminds us of the old saying, “you do not need teeth to eat my beef,” and he was right.
It was at this point that I realized that a Milwaukee style of corned beef sandwich was a thing.
Benji’s
People told us we had to go to Benji’s. Robert knew of it, but hadn’t been there. Heck, we saw it in the 1982 Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle article titled, “Looking for Deli’s? Milwaukee’s got them!” The writer named seven Jewish-style delis: Bagelnosh, Benjamin’s, Benji’s 2, Goldfarb’s, Jake’s (she had corned beef sandwiches there on Miller’s rye bread), Milton’s (biggest corned beef on bialy bread she ever encountered), and Nu Mike’s.
So, we went. Benji’s has two locations; we visited the one in Shorewood.
Benji’s was adorable—diner-in-a-strip-mall-since-1963 adorable. Counter man; nice waitress; great menu. There was even the cutest toddler you’ve ever seen behind me ordering a grill cheese for his night out with his nana. Would I go back? Yes! Would I get the corned beef? No!
My $17.99 corned beef sandwich—which should have been a dollar more for the cheese I ordered, but the server forgot—came not really well-grilled, but with the bread more like toasted, with a large-ish layer of slices of corned beef slice cut thin—not hot, not thick, and not at all juicy.
When I pointed out to the server that she forgot the cheese, she brought the sandwich back to the kitchen and returned in a minute later with two of the thinnest, coldest slices of Swiss cheese you have ever seen, placed on each side of the sandwich. I put the bread on top quickly, as the cheese looked like it was freezing to death. After a very disappointing bite, I ate some of the meat and cheese, none of the razor-sharp bread and all of the very good fries.
A voice inside said: This is not the corned beef sandwich you are looking for.
Return to McBob’s
You can’t win them all, so we cut our losses and moved on to McBob’s.
I had been to McBob’s the first day I began looking for a house in Milwaukee, so I felt a little sentimental about it. Katy Kinnert and Sara McConnville had taken ownership from Steve and Christine McRoberts just a few months prior to my initial visit. Steve and Christine had run McBob’s for 36 years prior and stayed close to the two new owners during the transition.
The fact that McBob’s had newish owners—and coming off my first unsuccessful corned beef sandwich experience at Benji’s—made me a little trepidatious. But I had nothing to worry about. McBob’s understood the assignment.
The waiter explained that “John,” who prepared the corned beef every Sunday for the week ahead, had been doing so for the past forty years. We ordered a grilled corned beef sandwich with Swiss cheese and horseradish mustard. It was perfectly crispy on the outside.
The Swiss cheese, mustard and corned beef created a luscious stew, perfectly contained between two slices of grilled bread. This sandwich tasted like it had been prepared by a pro and I really didn’t want to give up the other half to my husband, but I did because we are a team.
The same day, we tried to visit Deli 1614, which goes by the nickname “That Corned Beef Place!” It is situated in a building that stands alone on an otherwise vacant block of W. Walnut Street. By the looks of the signage outside, the joint has been around a few decades.
Unfortunately, there was a sign in the window saying that were closed that day, a Saturday, apologizing for the inconvenience. We would have to return.
Corned Beef Memories
For corned beef lovers, the memory of it is almost as good as the real thing. Beth Kracklauer, the former long-time food editor at the Wall Street Journal, remembers getting hers from their local deli, Hal’s, in Mt. Lebanon, PA. The Reuben was her childhood go-to.
“I loved the one at Hal’s, cooked on their griddle,” she said. “It was right by my elementary school. My mom was always too cheap to give me the money to go there. But I knew if I caught my dad in the right mood, he’s slip me a few dollars to go there for lunch on a school day.”
A local deli is key, it seems, especially for a large family. Kathleen McLaughlin, filmmaker and my favorite college roommate, grew up outside of Cleveland going to the Sands Deli in the Van Aken Shopping Center after mass at St. Dominic’s. Her mom, Kit, was a corned beef lady, ordering the sandwich on rye with mustard. Not grilled. But then again, she’s not from Milwaukee.
Veteran soccer executive and Milwaukee bon vivant, Peter Wilt, shared with The Mix that he had his first corned beef at Jake’s Deli in 2006 with an intern from Marquette University, whom Wilt took there. Wilt said, “Let me take you to this place, Jake’s. It’s the best corned beef in town.” Wilt laughed and said, “So, we’re standing in line waiting for our order and it’s probably like a dozen people in front of us. The person immediately in front of us was this older gentleman in a trench coat and a baseball cap. And I said to Brett, my intern, I whisper to him ‘You know who that is? That’s your U.S. Senator and the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, Herb Kohl.’ He was a regular because that’s his old neighborhood.”
Wilt has been to every corned beef place I mention here and more; it should be noted that Mae Velma’s is his favorite.
I ate a lot of corned beef growing up, but at home (and not just on St. Patrick’s Day). As a young adult I would order it in diners and delis, but I have not had a corned beef sandwich that was truly good until Robert and I went to Market House Meats in Seattle. I had hot corned beef and American cheese on an English muffin. And even that wasn’t as good as the Milwaukee sandwiches I’ve had. Shapiro’s in Indianapolis wasn’t as good. Langer’s in Los Angeles, not as good. Katz’s deli in New York City isn’t this good.
Yeah, I said that. Milwaukee is really on to something with its corned beef sandwich.
When I spoke with Wajeeh Alturkman, he mentioned several things that made his corned beef as good as it is. The cuts of meat he purchases for both restaurants are excellent. (Anyone who has bought the supermarket special on corned beef for St. Patrick’s day can tell you how important a good cut is.) He buys it from Chicago.
In our discussion he mentioned a guy name Mike Kassoff. Mike started working at Jake’s when he was 13 years old and started bussing dishes for his father, Irv, according to this article in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle in 2008. According to Alturkman, after Kassoff stopped working for Bud Selig at Jake’s, selling his ownership stake in 2009, the quality of the corned beef went downhill. (So, Robert hadn’t been imagining things when he had that bad experience at Jake’s around 2015.)
Wajeeh also said that having the meat cut hot and fresh by hand is essential to a delicious corned beef sandwich.
Milwaukee History Leads to This Sandwich
If there ever was a perfect sandwich for Milwaukee, this one is it. The city’s deep history of producing rye bread (Robert’s great-grandparents were German rye bread bakers in Milwaukee) and this state’s history with dairy production—especially that of the Wisconsin Swiss cheese makers—along with every kind of mustard you can imagine being made and readily available here, makes this sandwich a symbol of Milwaukee food culture.
With all those components already available, all you needed was the corned beef. There is plenty to find in Milwaukee. Just peruse old newspapers from the 1800s and you will find constant mentions of corned beef: corned beef recipes, how to buy it, where to buy it, where they are serving it, who is serving it. There was even a preacher in the 1840s who told his flock that the “dear girls want more pudding and less piano, more frankness and less mock modesty, more corned beef and less corsets.”
The nineteenth century in The United States saw the heat rise under the melting pot. Salting meat was common in the ancient world in order to preserve it, and it made the journey into this more modern age as Corned Beef. It was practical, inexpensive and plentiful. Popular among Milwaukee’s kosher Jews, corned beef was served at most delis.
Milwaukee has a history of prize-winning corned beef sandwiches. Kramer’s Kosher Corner, at 5101 W. Keefe Avenue, was voted in 1990 the seventh best kosher corned beef sandwich in the nation by members of the Kosher Club, based in Middletown, New York. Kramer, the proprietor, said the corned beef was a secret family recipe.
The Irish integrated corned beef into their households from living near the Jewish delicatessens in the immigrant sections of newly populated cities. Milwaukee’s African-Americans found themselves relegated by racist policies such as redlining to certain sections of the city, often alongside the Irish and Jewish populations; and then, after the Irish and the Jews left the city, they lived there alone.
In the 2008 article from the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Jake’s manager and part owner Mike Hassoff said, “‘As the clientele has changed (98 percent of the customers are African-American), so has the menu. Once popular items like short rib and brisket dinners are no longer available. Today’s top sellers include corned beef, pastrami and Reuben sandwiches.’”
Ricky Means who opened the now closed Top Corned Beef in 2021, marinated his corned beef in Dr. Pepper before slow frying it. According to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from 2023, Means did not know what kind of restaurant he would open in the space, but noticed that, unlike the north side, where he grew up watching his mother and grandmother cook, “I looked at the landscape and realized you can’t get corned beef on this [south] side of town,” Means said.
He was right. Jake’s Deli, House of Corned Beef, McBob’s, Deli 1614, and three out of the four locations of Mae Velma’s are all on the north side of Milwaukee.
In a post on the food and cooking website Magical Mahogany, founder Yolanda Davis gives her recipe for a crispy corned beef sandwich on rye. Her corned beef memory is about the Milwaukee Corned Beef Sandwich [bold-faced words are hers]:
I live in Texas now, and don’t get me wrong, I love Texas food. But when it comes to food culture and variety, where I’m from still takes it for me. It’s just different. It’s layered. It’s rooted. It’s comfort in a very specific kind of way.
And one of my forever favorites?
A good, corned beef sandwich.
If you know Milwaukee, you know the classics.
Jake’s was my favorite.
McBob’s too, always on rye bread with spicy mustard and a pickle on the side. No extras. No fuss. Just right.So, this is my version of that memory, made at home, slow, simple, and soulful. Boiled for tenderness, then baked for that crispy edge that makes the whole sandwich hit different.
This isn’t just a recipe.
In the past two decades, this sandwich has evolved into something more than a meal—it is a connecter with all of Milwaukee. Where else in the world are there so many restaurants with Corned Beef in the title? Where else is the sandwich made predominantly on rye bread with on-the-spot, hand-cut, thick-sliced, hot corned beef, Swiss cheese and mustard, grilled to perfection? No where else that I know of.
Sitting the in the wooden booths at Jake’s, savoring my sandwich, I thought about all the people who had sat there before me; all people of different ethnicities and nationalities, as the cultural landscape of this neighborhood changed. It made me feel a sudden sense of pride as a Milwaukeean.
In a February 6, 2024 article in Urban Milwaukee, writer Sophie Bolich quoted Katy Klinnert as she looked over her newly acquired McBob’s restaurant. “I looked around and I thought, ‘this is Milwaukee,’” she said. “If you’ve ever wanted a glimpse into the reality of what this city is like: it is diverse, it is beautiful, it is ‘Midwest nice.’”
I’m with you Katy. And if you want to know what brings everyone together, in my opinion it’s the Milwaukee Corned Beef Sandwich.