Phobruary, winter drinks and SoundBites

We’re a day away from February, which is not important. We’re also a day away from Phobruary, which is very important — so important, in fact, that we slapped it at the top of this episode.

If you’ve somehow not partaken of Phobruary in its previous 11 years of existence, the gist is that it’s an annual celebration of the Vietnamese noodle soup at a handful of restaurants in Milwaukee’s Silver City neighborhood. The 12th installment includes the following three eateries and their respective specials:

• Vientiane Noodle Shop — $7 small beef/meatball pho bowl
• Thai-Barbq Restaurant — $7 small steak pho bowl, $5 for three egg rolls, #3 BBQ meat skewer, $5 shrimp skewer
• PK Palace — $7 small beef/meatball pho bowl, 10% off total purchase (not valid for pho promotional price)

All three of the restaurants are on National Avenue between 34th and 38th streets, so if you really like your pho, you could easily eat your way from one to the next to the next and then probably feel uncomfortably full for the rest of the day. But satisfied.

Speaking of which, here’s what else we discuss to satisfy your weekly need for Milwaukee culinary news:

• Momo Mee has whipped up a very special menu to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
• Two special dinners at Lupi & Iris will focus on winter cocktails (Feb. 7) and petite black truffles (Feb. 11).
• Marcus Hotel restaurants have Valentine’s Day events galore at Mason Street Grill, The Pfister and The Dark Room.
• Venturing outside Milwaukee, we talk about Our South, a cookbook focused on Black Southern cuisine.

Back inside Milwaukee, we’ve got something special baked into this episode, Radio Milwaukee's Dori Zori. She and Kristen Schwab from The Wolf on Broadway talk about their food-and-music pairing at the upcoming SoundBites event happening at the Harley-Davidson Museum on Feb. 27. You can learn all about it here or just skip right to buying tickets.