For years, Milwaukee has been known as a sneaky great food city. You can only fly under the radar for so long, though, so we’re stepping up right now and just saying Milwaukee’s food scene can hang with anyone. Period.
We used to celebrate the city’s culinary talent on the regular via SoundBites, an in-person celebration that brought together Milwaukee’s best restaurants and chefs with Radio Milwaukee’s DJs to create multisensory sampler platters. Like a lot of food-related things, the perennially sold-out event went quiet during COVID and remained that way for the past five years.
Not anymore.
Following the lead of last year’s resurrected Vinyl Comes Alive, SoundBites is back and gets an appropriately revved-up venue for its return: the Harley-Davidson Museum. Attendees will gather on the shores of the Menomonee River from 6 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, for a night of delectable dishes and equally tasty sounds — a truly interactive experience for all of your senses.
The stars of the event are the restaurants/chefs and DJs we team up at 12 tasting stations throughout the venue. With the big night coming up fast, we figured it was about time to share our pairings:
- Amilinda with Erin Wolf
- Birch with Arya Ahmadi
- Centraal Grand Café & Tappery with Megan Mathews
- The Diplomat with Tarik Moody
- Egg & Flour Pasta Bar with Kenny Perez
- Lake Park Bistro with Kat Froehlich
- La Dama with Britt Gottschalk
- Lupi & Iris with Anthony Foster
- Mother's with Element Everest-Blanks
- MOTOR Bar & Restaurant with Carolann Grzybowski
- Purple Door Ice Cream with Kim Shine
- The Wolf with Dori Zori
Each pairing features a dish created specifically for SoundBites and a playlist put together by an 88Nine or HYFIN DJ to compliment its flavors. But we’re not stopping there. Here’s what else the night’s menu includes:
- Wine and liquor pull from Thief Wine, Ruby Tap, Scout Wine Merchants and other area favorites
- Gift-card grab featuring local restaurants
- Silent auction with items from area businesses
- Marquee set from DJ DRiPSweat
- A free welcome beverage, plus cash bar
You can pick up your tickets right now on the event page knowing that all proceeds directly benefit Radio Milwaukee’s mission to bring our communities together through music, stories and more.
A special thanks to our sponsors for their generous support of SoundBites 2025: Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, s.c. and von Briesen & Roper, s.c.
