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.

For this installment, pull up your socks and put on your sandals, we’re talking Summerfest.

Now, is Summerfest the first place a reasonable person should go looking for a transcendent Italian meal? Absolutely not. But I am not a reasonable person. My mission this weekend was simple: find everything Italian, Italian-adjacent, or Italian-enough-to-count after a double pour of Pinot Grigio. I followed the scent of garlic, red sauce, melted cheese, family names ending in vowels, and whatever else might lead me to a little Sunday Sauce on the Summerfest grounds.

Start With The Wine

Like any great Italian meal, don’t start with the food. Start with the wine.

Summerfest is mostly a beer party, but if you wander over to the Summerfest Corkscrew, you’ll find a couple Italian vino options tucked among the festival pours. There’s Prosecco, of course: Italian, bubbly, and just classy enough to make you forget you’re drinking it next to a fried food stand and the bathrooms. Or, like me, you can order a double pour of Ruffino Pinot Grigio from Italy and drink it from a plastic Summerfest cup while reading tasting notes that include “medium-bodied,” “lively,” “elegant,” “minerality,” and “lemon peel.”

There’s something beautiful about sipping Italian white wine from a cup built for beer pong while the smell of cheese curds, lake wind, and the distant sounds of The Family Stone swirl around you.

Pizza, Popcorn, And Technicalities

Though I didn’t order from it, I wanted to make note of Angelo’s Pizza as an option on the grounds. I also spotted several Fazio’s popcorn stands throughout the grounds. Is popcorn Italian? No. Not even after a double pour of Grigio, but “Fazio” sure is, and why not make note of it for the sake of this half-assed article.

Roads Not Taken

That brought me to Pizza Man, where I briefly considered ordering the Italian Beef egg rolls: exactly the kind of strange festival food this assignment demanded. Unfortunately, I had already read Tyler’s grim review and lost my desire to try it. I may be unreasonable, but I am also a coward.

Still, if you are the type of person who sees “Italian beef egg roll” and feels something awaken in your soul, please note, I respect your journey.

My bigger regret came from Wild Dog, where I spotted something called Italian Stallion. This was a sausage cooked in marinara sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese, which sounds perfect, but somehow I did not order it. I saw the words “Italian Stallion,” nodded like a man who saw something titillating, and then simply walked away like a fool.

Sausage Betrayal

Instead, I made my way to the Johnsonville stand and ordered the Italian brat, which came topped with peppers, onions, and marinara sauce. Promising enough, but unfortunately it mostly tasted like a mushy log. I don’t know what I expected from a Johnsonville Italian brat at Summerfest, but I wanted a little snap, a little spice, some reason to believe. What I got made me question both my judgment and my loyalty to the Italian racing sausage at Brewers games. If that sausage tastes anything like the one I had at Summerfest, I may have to start cheering for the Polish sausage.

Espresso

In need of a little caffeine, I wandered over to Discourse Coffee, which felt spiritually connected enough to Italy’s espresso culture to qualify for this increasingly loose investigation.

I ordered the Iced Carnival Craft Latte, made with Guest House espresso, oat milk, caramel, Bittercube root beer bitters, Granny Smith apple powder, smoked sea salt, and a stroopwafel. Was it a traditional Italian way of drinking espresso? Of course not. Was it the best thing I consumed all night? By a mile. It was sweet, salty, strange, and wildly good. Do yourself a favor and pay them a visit when you need a little extra to make it to the headliners.

One Last Slice

Before seeing Amyl And The Sniffers, Shelby and I made one final Italian-ish stop at Ian’s Pizza. Now, Ian’s is not exactly Nonna-approved, not is it trying to be, but pizza would not exist without Italians, so it counts. We split some garlic breadsticks with dipping sauce and a big slice of sausage pizza, and honestly the sliced sausage on that pizza had more flavor than the entire Johnsonville Italian brat I ate earlier.

On Deck

Though I won’t be able to make it, there are a couple Italian-adjacent things still waiting in on the on-deck circle. This upcoming weekend of Summerfest (June 25-27) will include a Portillo’s brand activation that says will bring “Chicago-style summer fun” to the grounds with games, photo opportunities, and other festivities. That same weekend, Sargento Cheese Wheeler rolls back into the grounds.

Little Italy Is Coming

Of course, none of this is to say Summerfest is the city’s premier destination for Italian food. It is not. These same lakefront grounds will become a much more proper Little Italy soon enough when Festa Italiana returns July 10-12. Holy cannoli!