Sunday Sauce is a monthly Milwaukee Record series about the area’s Italian food and the places, people, and traditions that make a meal feel like home. I’m chasing how these restaurants, grocery stores, events and small details keep feeding people into comfort, community, and a sense of belonging in a loud world.

Last year, I biked 91 miles to visit three of the last remaining Chip’s Hamburgers locations in Wisconsin. To keep that questionable tradition alive, I recently decided to set off on another long, mildly unreasonable day of riding. This time, the goal was simple: bike from Milwaukee to Chicago on a Super Sunday Sauce ride, all while immediately canceling out those burned calories with Italian food.

A couple of years ago, my childhood friend Nick, better known by his DJ moniker Neon Grey, decided to bike from Pilsen in Chicago up to Milwaukee. He asked if I would meet him halfway, so I did. Then we biked back to Milwaukee together, turning the day into a roughly 100-mile ride. It was a great time, and I’ve talked ever since about wanting to do the trip again in reverse.

The 5:30 a.m. Meatball

Since I planned to leave Milwaukee at 6:30 a.m., the ride needed to begin with one important stop the night before. I went to Groppi’s in Bay View and bought one of their huge, bocce ball-sized meatballs from the deli counter. That way, I could start this marinara-drenched journey properly: standing in my kitchen at 5:30 a.m., eating a microwaved meatball for breakfast. Some people start long rides with oatmeal. I started mine with something that looked like it shot out of a volcano. The kind of breakfast that makes your cats look at you with concern. It was tasty, protein-packed, and just strange enough to feel like the right beginning.

Taking a Break with Da Crusher

Meatball still breaking down in my stomach, I got on my bike and started cruising. Depending on various twists, turns, and questionable route decisions, it was going to be roughly 95 to 100 miles to my final destination. My plan was to stop about every 10 miles for a quick break, and sure enough, almost exactly 10 miles from home, I took my first one at Da Crusher statue in South Milwaukee.

Tenuta’s Deli and the Great Wall of Giardiniera

Eventually, the Oak Leaf Trail bleeds out to rural county roads. With a little help from my GPS, which I would apparently follow straight off a cliff into Lake Michigan, I was able to find the Kenosha County multi-use trail. From there, the path takes you into Kenosha and eventually toward Illinois. Once I reached Kenosha, I stopped at Tenuta’s Deli, a historic, family-owned Italian market that has been passed down through four generations.

Tenuta’s is delightful in that classic, proudly Italian way: family photos, imported goods, deli cases, trays of lasagna, a massive roll of provolone, cookies, thin-sliced meats, and one of the largest giardiniera selections I’ve seen in Wisconsin. The Great Wall of Giardiniera, if you will. A beautiful oily border wall against blandness.

I ordered an Italian sausage sandwich around 10:30 a.m., piling more Italian meat into my gut all before noon, which felt spiritually correct and medically unadvisable. It was great: tangy sauce, fantastic provolone, no complaints. The only real issue was that the roads near Tenuta’s are not especially bike-friendly, so I got off and walked my bike through construction like a clickety-clack dipshit horse. Not glamorous, but neither is being roadkill in a cycling jersey.

Rendezvous at Quonset Pizza in Waukegan

Moving along, I biked through Pleasant Prairie and stayed on the Kenosha County Trail, which takes you right up to the Wisconsin-Illinois border. Eventually, I made it to Quonset Pizza in Waukegan, the rendezvous point for meeting up with the rest of the crew. I arrived around 12:30 p.m., about a half hour ahead of everyone else, so I grabbed a seat at the bar and treated myself to a bottle of Old Style and the largest glass of water I could get, which felt ideal after hitting the 56-mile mark of my journey.

Quonset Pizza is adorable. It has a classic diner feel, with rounded vaulted ceilings, burgundy accents, brass fixtures, Corvette-looking booths, and checkered tile floors. Even the walk to the bathroom gives you a peek into the kitchen, with white tile, splattered green-and-red tile, and tiny botanical tomato illustrations. It’s exactly the kind of classic joint I love to highlight for this series.

Around then, Neon Grey arrived with DB and Lulu, his friends who were new to me but, by the time the meal was over, already felt like old pals. Maybe it was the shared pizza, maybe it was the mid-ride delirium, or maybe they’re just great people to immediately fall into step with. Either way, I was excited to keep riding with this crew for the rest of the journey.

The menu is simple: pizza, sandwiches, deli sandwiches, and apps. We split a pizza half cheese and pepperoni, half Italian beef and giardiniera. It was my first time having Italian beef on a thin-crust tavern-style pizza, and it was delightful. I was a little worried about the spicy giardiniera, but after 56 miles and an Old Style my body threw away its rulebook.

The Grind

From Quonset, we started riding toward Chicago with plenty of breaks, plenty of punk music, and plenty of kick-ass tunes in general.

We took a few stops along the way: a little park, then a little ice cream parlor. By the time we reached the park, I was about 75 miles in, with roughly 25 more to go before our final destination.

I was loving the day, but around then, I started feeling it. Every other mile, my legs were sending little warning signals I did not care for. I was tired. Dog-tired. Woof, woof, bark, bark.

But that kind of exhaustion comes in waves. You’ll have a few miles where everything hurts and the pedaling feels like pushing 400 pounds through a bog, then a few miles where the energy comes back, and you’re having a blast again. The closer you get to the end, the more that euphoria kicks in, and suddenly you’re thinking, “Oh my god, we’re goddamn champions.”

The Finish Line

Eventually we made it to the end, where I checked my mileage: 98.3 miles. That’s close enough to 100 that only a kid who asked for Friday night homework and now has a Strava account would complain.

A Trophy Dipped in Beef Au Jus

Shout out to Shelby, my Polish princess of a wife, for meeting me by car and providing a fresh T-shirt before our final food stop. At that point, I think we were all too wiped out to go anywhere with table service. A simple to-go window was all we needed, so I was taken to a neighborhood favorite called Best Submarine (2729 W. Division St.)

It’s the kind of place that hits every possible base—roast corned beef, gyros, a foot-long Polish sausage, wings, fish, burgers, shrimp—the kind of place where the menu seems prepared for any possible hunger-induced panic. It’s a humble, liminal space, but it provided exactly what we needed.

I ended the day with a dipped Italian beef. Was it the best Italian beef I’ve ever had? Maybe not. Was it the most rewarding Italian beef I’ve ever had? Absolutely. It was a perfect trophy to the day.

Later that night, and the next day, and frankly two days after that, I felt like a loose plastic bag full of broken bones. As I write this, five days removed, I finally feel hunky-dory and ready to go again.

It was a friggin’ awesome journey. I got to meet new friends, eat great food, and create another memory by saying yes to something just far enough outside my comfort zone. Sometimes I fall into a spell of saying yes to too many things, but this was the good kind of yes: the kind that gives you a goal and a story.

Would I ever eat this much beef and pork in one day again?

Yeah, maybe if I’m biking 100 miles.

P.S. Big shout-out to the new friends I met along the way and all the great music they’re making. Neon Grey has a local DJ show on WIIT and plays in Cave Brain as well as The Chives, a Hives cover band. DB plays in No Men and Graphics, and also releases solo music as Donn Bó. Lulu makes music as Mouther. Check them all out. They provided good company, good recommendations, and didn’t abandon me when my legs started to revolt against my brain.