Milwaukee's Best Food Tours

Cream City Brick and Fresh Donuts: A Milwaukee Food Tour Through the Third Ward

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Why the bricks are that color

Ask a Milwaukeean why it's called the Cream City and you'll get a story about bricks. Ask our guides and you'll get the story while holding a fresh donut.

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The walking tour opens at Uncle Wolfies on North Broadway, on the ground floor of a restored Third Ward building that has a history of its own. Donuts come out first, often with a rotating danish alongside. Then we head into the Historic Third Ward proper. This neighborhood used to be marshland. It was drained, filled up with Irish and later Italian immigrant families, burned in the great fire of 1892 and rebuilt in the pale cream brick you'll see on almost every old warehouse you pass. Those warehouses hold galleries, shops and cafes now.

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A long sit at the Public Market

The middle of the tour slows down on purpose. Inside the Milwaukee Public Market you get time to browse local vendors and find a seat upstairs, and C. Adams Bakery hands over a sweet treat from its case of creative cupcakes and pastries. If it's cold out (this is Milwaukee, it might be), the market is a warm place to linger.

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Back on the street, Broadway Paper is a longtime Third Ward shop stocked with Milwaukee gifts, so this donut tour comes with a souvenir stop built in. The Milwaukee River and its Riverwalk are never more than a block or two away.

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The last cookie

We finish near the river at Likewise Coffee. Their cookies are oversized, in flavors like salted caramel and honey, and we split them so everyone gets a piece of both. It's a fair system.

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There's one tour here, the Downtown Milwaukee Donuts & Sweet Treats Tour, and by the end you'll know a good deal more about the Third Ward than you expected to, plus a short list of places to come back to.