History Of The Wisconsin And Milwaukee Fish Fry

All sorts of types of fish are offered including native fish like perch, cod, bluegill and walleye but others are offered too now like catfish, smelt, pollack, haddock and even grouper. You can get the fish deep fried, pan fried, dipped in batter, dusted in flour or cornmeal or baked but no matter how you like it prepared, but the favorite is all-you-can-eat. We do love our fish.But how did this tradition get started? Why just in Wisconsin? Why fish? Why all you can eat? Well after some digging into a little Wisconsin history, we can find some answers. The Life Lessons From SpongeBob Squarepants history starts in the Milwaukee area in the late 1800 due to two reasons, beer and religion. Yes, thanks to the German, Polish and Italian immigration to Milwaukee that brought with them their Catholic beliefs, religion has a part in the tradition.The Germans brought beer makers from the old country who found a great water source (and ice source for shipping) and a growing grain center in the US to provide an ideal location to brew beer. Small breweries sprung up all over Wisconsin to provide locally brewed beer to the immigrants from Europe were used to good beer. Some of these brewers like Fredrick Miller, August Pabst, Joseph Schlitz and Valantin Blatz went on to produce giant breweries which went on to make make Milwaukee the beer capital of the world.These breweries were giants and produced not only sprawling breweries in Milwaukee but the competition of these breweries led to great hotels being built and many opulent "beer parlors" which were very upscale places to socialize and of course have a stein of beer. In addition to these hotels, these breweries built amusement parks to help establish their brand name early in the next generation of beer drinkers.

Pabst owned the Whitefish Bay Resort on the corner of Ardmore Ave and Henry Clay St in Whitefish Bay which had an attached amusement park. In competition with Schlitz at the time. Pabst wanted a way to bring in more people to the resort and since Lake Michigan had so much inexpensive whitefish, they decided to offer whitefish for cheap on Friday nights. It was a huge hit. People soon flocked to the Whitefish Bay amusement park and resort on Friday's and later on the weekends for a fish fry and soon after Schlitz and others followed as well.The breweries owned many of the taverns and restaurants in Milwaukee and soon saw the opportunity to offer the fish fry as bait to sell more beer. By keeping the price low on the inexpensive fish dinner, it brought people into their branded bars and consuming their beer further cementing the brand with Milwaukeeans. They then shifted to free fish lunches to further instill their brand and build loyalty. A free fish meal and a couple pints of beer will do that for the laborers at the time.Prohibition put an end to the beer although some taverns survived by keeping the tradition going. As restaurant and bar owners needed to keep customers coming back, they expanded the days that the fish fry was offered and made the fish fry a family thing to do. This helped to cement the fish fry as a tradition.