The Milwaukee County Historical Society held its first ever Milwaukee Meatball Challenge on Saturday, pitting 15 restaurants and caterers in a contest to, well, find Milwaukee's best meatball.
"The event was a huge success," says MCHS' Michael Reuter. "We had 140 people."
The winners were, Calderone Club, which is located directly across the street from MCHS on 3rd and Kilbourn, in first place; Tall Guy & A Grill Catering in second; and The Pfister Hotel in third place.
Tall Guy & A Grill Catering also took the people's choice award, which was chosen by the event's attendees. A panel of three judges selected the first-third place winners.
As the big winner, Calderone Club gets a $2,000 stipend to use as airfare to Rome, Italy, booked through Bayside Travel, Inc.Tall Guy & A Grill Catering's second place finish earned "A Night In Sanford's Kitchen," a $500 value. Third place winner The Pfister got a $250 Milwaukee Public Market gift card.
As the People's Choice winner, Tall Guy also earned a Milwaukee County Historical Society gift basket, which included several of the MCHS publications, including John Gurda's "The Making of Milwaukee" and a free MCHS Family membership.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
