My
Daughter-in-law invited me to join her at a south side Milwaukee restaurant to
celebrate my Son’s birthday. The dinner
at the restaurant was wonderful; we used the menu to order a series of small
plates and turned it into a tapas place.
The restaurant specializes in fresh Wisconsin ingredients and the only
deviation was a Spanish Tempranillo wine we drank. Afterwards we had a beer at a great beer bar
and then met some of their friends at Koz’s Mini-bowl.
Koz’s is a
Milwaukee classic, though it was my first time there. How was it my first time? I don’t know, but I’m glad to have “found” it
after so many years. Koz’s features
duckpin bowling which is a miniature version of the real game. The lanes are 17 feet in length, the pins
proportionally smaller and the balls about the size of a grapefruit, with no
holes. The game is scored the same. Pins are reset by real people, like the
larger game years ago.
Koz’s has
been around for almost a century and was rumored to be a speak-easy during
prohibition. Later it was rumored to be
a house of prostitution and the four lanes were added to provide the clients an
excuse to give their wives. Whether any
of that is true doesn’t matter. The
place hasn’t changed in many years. The
feature beer is Pabst Blue Ribbon, which happened to be the beer of choice in
Milwaukee during my early drinking years.
It is nice to see a place dedicate its beer list to this classic. The only thing reasonably modern is the music
play list.
The group we
bowled with was fun and good duckpin bowlers.
This group grew up with computerized scoring and automation that kept
the game in order. Only three of us knew
how to keep score manually and there was confusion all night as people bowled
on the wrong lane and out of order, but that just added to the fun.
A partially
stuffed lion keeps guard in the bar. I
say partially stuff, because only the head and upper body have material inside
the carcass and the back end hide hangs off of a liquor cabinet. It provides a strange and creepy look, but
doesn’t cause anyone to slow down their consumption of PBR.
My high game
was 266 and I now desire to get my name on the Koz’s 300 club poster, so a
return visit is in the cards. I’m glad
my Daughter-in-law and Son helped me to "find" Koz’s. Check out the Youtube video below.
No comments:
Post a Comment