Caleb Westphal hasn’t missed a Friday fish fry since 2013. Follow his never-ending adventures—sponsored by Miller High Life—HERE. This week, fish fry #581: Sluggo’s Sports Pub & Grill in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
It had been five years since Valentine’s Day fell on a Friday, and thus five years to the day since I’d had fish fry as my Valentine’s Day dinner. This year should have looked different, because it was my first Valentine’s Day married and first with a daughter. Yet I did what any loyal yet fish-crazed spouse would do. I made plans to pick up a meal for my vegetarian wife, and took myself to Sluggo’s Sports Pub & Grill (12760 W. Burleigh Rd., Brookfield; 262-781-3663) for a fish fry.
I’m not sure how I hadn’t known about the place, located on West Burleigh Road, just west of 126th Street and not far from Highway 41/45, on the eastern edge of Brookfield. It had all the allure of a classic fish fry joint, from the unimposing, set-back-from-the-road exterior, to the straight-to-the-point split of the large rectangular bar and table-filled square dining area, and primed me up for what I hoped would be a stellar fish fry.
A seat at the bar was a natural choice. I’d leave the tables for the couples and families, and eat with the lonely hearts club instead. Most looked like regulars. There were the young and the old, casually hanging out, with a few taking down shots and halfway to party town. Most appeared to be single, although it did look like there were some couples after all, at the bar because they were regulars, not because it was Valentine’s Day. I thought I’d be eating with all these folks, but when I looked at the 25 or so seats around the bar, no one was eating anything besides popcorn. Leave the dining to the dining area, those at the bar were there to drink. Welcome to Valentine’s Day at Sluggo’s.
From at least the mid-1960s until 1990, the building was home to the Brookfield Inn, a watering hole frequented by many workers from the nearby Briggs & Stratton factory. In 1990, it became the first bar in Brookfield to lose its liquor license in nine years, after more than 20 drunk and disorderly allegations were recorded over a three-year period. When new owners sought a liquor license, Brookfield mayor Kathryn Bloomberg vetoed it, calling the bar an “absolute abysmal eyesore” and saying that she was “ashamed” that such a place had been allowed to operate in the city. The Common Council upheld her veto. Eventually, after some updates, mainly to the exterior of the building, a liquor license was granted to the new Hill Pub & Grill that December.
By 1993, Hill Pub & Grill was out and Sluggo’s Sports Pub & Grill was in. Three years later, Tom Beckmann took over ownership, with Sluggo’s continuing. For a small period of time between 2012 and 2013, it became Ella’s Barstraunt—under the same ownership as the place I had fish last week—but then Beckmann took back over in 2013 and it once again became Sluggo’s, which it has remained since. That’s fortunate, because last year BetUS named Sluggo’s the #2 sports bar in the United States. While BetUS based their ranking off a composite of Google reviews and beer and burger prices, I was at Sluggo’s for something else…the fish fry!
The Friday offerings at Sluggo’s are beer-battered or baked cod (two-piece for $14.99/ three-piece for $16.99), grilled salmon ($17.99), deep-fried perch ($17.99), deep-fried shrimp ($15.99), and a seafood platter ($19.99), which comes with two pieces of cod, three pieces of perch, and four shrimp. Dinners are served with a choice of fries or potato pancakes, along with rye bread and coleslaw. Clam chowder is the Friday soup of the day, available by the cup ($4.99) or bowl ($6.99). I went for the seafood platter and pancakes, as well as a cup of chowder.
While waiting for the chowder to arrive, a bartender came by with a tray of cupcakes and asked if I’d like one. I accepted the offer and set the Valentine’s Day treat aside, saving it for dessert. The chowder showed up in no time anyway. It was potato heavy, like potato soup with clams just as much as it was clam chowder with potatoes. Thick like gravy, it was a simple offering, a standard soup that satisfied the moment without otherwise being memorable.
A quick four minutes passed between soup and seafood platter. The rye bread was a typical yet rather flavorful half slice of light marbled rye. The slaw was a crunchy cabbage and carrot mix like so many others, fully coated though not juicy.
The potato pancakes, buried at the bottom of the fish pile, seemed to be the homogenized hash brown hockey puck type, signaled by their texture, appearance, and flavor. If they indeed were made from scratch, they fooled me. I hadn’t asked about them before ordering, probably because so many I’ve had as of late have been homemade. They weren’t bad, it’s just I couldn’t get over the thought that they had come out of a package.
The four shrimp were comparable to the ones I had last week. A handful of shrimp such as these brings feelings of reliability and stability, as well as speedy satisfaction, but then it’s time to move on. There’s sometimes a thin line between fish batter and breading, as was the case here. With the cod listed as being beer battered, and a similarity between the coating on the cod and perch, I assumed it must have been beer battered all around. Yet beer flavor was negligible, and the coating was more like a thin breading than a batter. It had an orangish tone, suggesting the presence of spices and perhaps a robustness. But while seasonings were present, the overall effect was more subdued than robust.
As for the fish beneath the nebulous covering, both the cod and perch were moderately chunky and meaty, and more than delivered in size, while having a flavor emblematic of their respective species. The tartar was thin and sharp, with a sparing amount of relish.
My expectations ran high for the fish fry at Sluggo’s, the environment spurring my hope I’d unearth a fish fry haven, a greasy foil to the stuffy, money-sucking Valentine’s Day restaurants that had pushed their fish fry off the menu for the day, if they ever had one in the first place. But while my time at Sluggo’s was well spent, and the fish fry was satisfying enough, it was somewhat uneven, with the sides and fish hanging somewhere in the middle. But as Stephen Stills sang, if you can’t be with the one you love honey, love the one you’re with, and I loved this Valentine’s Day fish fry up real good.
Takeaways: Voted the #2 sports bar in the United States by BetUS in 2024, and I can imagine it being a great place to watch a game with a few beers; potato heavy chowder; hockey puck pancakes; nebulous batter; big and moderately chunky fish; thin and sharp tartar; complimentary cupcake; quick turnaround: I was in and out in about 35 minutes.
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