Wisconsin Café Serves Up Wisconsin’s Best

Café at the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center Sources Local Ingredients
 

After guests tour the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center, Aaron Sloma wants them to experience the next step of Wisconsin agriculture.

“When a farmer has done all their hard work to produce the food, we want to showcase as many of those great Wisconsin-based products as we can in a breakfast and lunch restaurant setting,” says Sloma, who along with his wife, Jennifer, operates the new Wisconsin Café located within the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center near Manitowoc.

The list of Wisconsin food partners Sloma has is as long as his café’s grocery list: Waseda Farms meats of Baileys Harbor, Circle B Bison of Meeme, Sunset Apiaries of Elkhart Lake, In the Woods Sugarbush of Manitowoc, Milo’s Organic Eggs of Bonduel and many others, including a long list of Wisconsin cheese providers.

The café serves breakfast sandwiches and sides, salads, cold sandwiches, burgers and paninis along with daily specials and a soup of the day. You do not need to pay admission to Farm Wisconsin to eat and drink at the Wisconsin Café.

The Wisconsin Café’s list of Wisconsin-based beverages was certainly not neglected, featuring Lamer’s Milk of Appleton, Twig’s Sodas of Shawano, Torke Coffee of Sheboygan, a number of Wisconsin-crafted beers, and even Nan’s Naughty and Nice Bloody Mary Mix of Hudson.

Sloma and his wife also own three Parker John’s restaurants in Kiel, Menasha and Sheboygan as well as the Log Cabin Inn in Howards Grove, where so many of their vendor ties already had a foundation.

“Operating the Wisconsin Café has really given us the opportunity to grow those relationships with Wisconsin vendors,” Sloma said.

A signature item the Slomas developed for their Wisconsin Café menu is their Blueberry Cheese Bombs, featuring Blueberry Cobbler Cheese from Henning’s Cheese in Kiel.

Sloma says that when he and his wife first tasted that cheese, he knew he wanted to develop a dish around it, and they decided the Wisconsin Café was the place to feature it.

With the blueberry-laced cheese at its center, this popular menu item is battered, then fried and served with maple syrup collected just a few miles away.

The Wisconsin Café also provides catering services for the Wisconsin Farm Discovery Center’s conference facilities.

The Wisconsin Café is located within the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center at 7001 Gass Lake Road in Manitowoc, just off of Interstate 43, Exit 144. They are open 8 a.m.-2:30 p.m. daily.