9 Wisconsin Foods and Drinks That Horrify the Rest of the Country

Order a whiskey Old Fashioned in a Wisconsin bar, and the bartender might ask you to repeat that.

Brandy is the state’s answer, not whiskey.

These are the Wisconsin foods and drinks that leave the rest of the country staring at their plates and glasses.

1. Fried Cheese Curds

Wisconsin’s love for cheese goes well past a topping.

Cheesemakers across the state produced a record 3.64 billion pounds of cheese in 2025, about a quarter of everything the country makes.

Curds are what’s left once cheesemakers press that cheese into blocks, and Wisconsin never lets a byproduct go to waste.

Bar owners and roadside stands started breading the curds and dropping them into hot oil, and the squeak became the whole point.

Order a basket anywhere from a county fair to a supper club bar, and you’ll hear it before you taste it.

Outsiders expect mozzarella sticks.

They get something squeakier, saltier, and served without a hint of embarrassment.

2. Booyah

Wisconsin’s proof that a stew can double as a town reunion comes out of the Green Bay area.

Belgian immigrants settled Door, Kewaunee, and Brown counties in the 1800s, and they brought a hearty stew of chicken, beef, and whatever vegetables were on hand.

Locals call it booyah, and outsiders usually ask what that even means.

The stew simmers for hours in a cast-iron kettle set up outdoors over a wood fire, cooked the same way for generations.

Church picnics and school fundraisers build their whole calendar around it.

One kettle feeds a parish.

Almost nowhere outside northeastern Wisconsin has ever heard of it.

3. Hot Ham and Rolls

Sunday mornings in Milwaukee smell like a bakery before they smell like coffee.

For decades, Catholics fasted from midnight until after Mass, so churchgoers left the pews starving and made a beeline for the nearest deli.

Rupena’s Fine Foods in West Allis has served Milwaukee’s south side hot ham and rolls for more than 90 years.

The order never changes.

A pound or two of warm sliced ham, plus a half dozen rolls straight from the oven, crusty outside and soft in the middle.

Outsiders hear “ham and rolls” and picture a sad deli platter.

Wisconsin turns it into a Sunday ritual that shows up at weddings, taverns, and Packers watch parties too.

4. Friday Fish Fry

Fridays in Wisconsin still belong to fish, decades after the religious rule that started the habit faded.

Catholic settlers, many of them Polish and German, gave up meat on Fridays, and taverns during Prohibition leaned on cheap local walleye and perch to keep the lights on.

The Catholic Church eased that meatless rule back in the 1960s.

Not Wisconsin.

More than half of the state’s restaurants still serve a fish fry every week.

A proper plate comes breaded and fried, with a potato pancake, coleslaw, and a slice of rye bread standing guard next to it.

Order the fish without the sides, and a Wisconsin server might ask if you’re feeling alright.

5. Brandy Old Fashioned

Ask for an Old Fashioned in a Wisconsin bar, and brandy lands in the glass, not whiskey.

That switch traces to the years after World War II, when a Wisconsin liquor distributor turned up a stockpile of around 30,000 cases of aged brandy while whiskey stayed scarce.

Bars poured what they had.

Wisconsin never went back.

Wisconsin lawmakers made it official in 2023, naming the brandy Old Fashioned the state’s state cocktail.

Order it “sweet,” and it arrives muddled with a cherry and an orange slice.

Ask for whiskey instead, and don’t be surprised if the bartender needs a second to process the request.

6. Bloody Mary Towers and Snits

Order a Bloody Mary in Wisconsin, and it can arrive taller than the beer sitting next to it.

Bartenders stack the glass with pickles, cheese cubes, a pickled green bean, and sometimes a whole slider, until the garnish outweighs the drink.

Then comes the part visitors never expect: A small beer on the side, usually a 4-ounce pour of a local brew, poured free as a chaser.

Wisconsinites call it a snit.

Nobody fully agrees on how the tradition started, and bar regulars will argue both sides all afternoon.

Skip the snit, and a Wisconsin bartender might bring you a beer chaser anyway.

7. Supper Club Relish Trays

A Wisconsin supper club sends out its appetizer before anyone even orders a second round: A full tray of relish.

Radishes, celery, and scallions sit packed in ice next to a cheese spread, a dish of pickled herring, and a basket of crackers.

Everyone at the table digs in and passes plates around.

The tradition traces to Prohibition-era roadhouses that turned into full restaurants once the ban on alcohol lifted, and it took off after World War II.

Some habits never left.

Most of the country skipped that step decades ago.

Wisconsin supper clubs kept serving raw vegetables on ice like it never went out of style.

8. Butter Burgers

A burger in Wisconsin sometimes comes with an extra ingredient nobody asked for and everybody eats anyway: Butter.

Solly's Grille outside Milwaukee has cooked its patties with butter worked right in since 1936, and the idea spread to diners and taverns across the state.

Culver's later built a whole restaurant chain around the concept, buttering the bun before it ever meets the burger.

That's a lot of butter.

Out-of-staters hear "butter burger" and brace for something greasy.

Regulars just call it the only way a burger should taste.

9. Kringle

Wisconsin's favorite pastry looks nothing like a doughnut, and locals get prickly if you mix the two up.

Danish immigrants settled in Racine in the late 1800s and brought a pastry that started out shaped like a pretzel, filled with almonds, currants, and raisins.

Bakers reshaped it into the large, flaky oval Wisconsin sells today, folded into dozens of buttery layers before it ever sees an oven.

Racine calls itself the kringle capital of the country.

Nobody disputes the claim.

Multi-generation bakeries there still run the ovens their founders lit.