The caffeine is coursing through my veins as I write this – Discourse Coffee Workshop at 88Nine Radio Milwaukee (158 S. Barclay St.) is open! If you haven’t heard of this place, you need to. Since landing in Milwaukee (from Sister Bay) in 2022, the business has been expanding like crazy. Currently they operate café locations at the Milwaukee Art Museum and on the MSOE campus. You may remember they also operated a café and nonalcoholic cocktail bar at Crossroads Collective food hall.

Co-founder/creative director Ryan Castelaz often talks about telling stories through drinks. The 88Nine space (which once house Stone Creek Coffee) allows them to tell new ones – lyrical ones. The menu they’ve debuted lists an assortment of more conventional coffee drinks (espresso, cappuccino, latte) along with seven craft drinks that illustrate the experimental side of their focus. The craft bevs include Moonwater (espresso, milk, honey, Ceylon cinnamon, tellicherry black pepper and smoked sea salt; and Lana Del Fog, made of Earl Grey tea, milk, n/a amaretto, vanilla, orange bitters and flamed orange oil.

They’ve also got quite a few pastries (croissants, scones, cookies), plus three sandwiches and one salad. If you like a little grain in your salad, order the Wilbury ($12), with kale, spinach, quinoa, edamame, dried cherries, walnuts and avocado in a chia seed vinaigrette. I’m thinking about the musical connection to that name… The Traveling Wilburys, maybe?

Building on the music vibes in the Radio Milwaukee space, Discourse has a little record shop/bookstore in one corner of the café. The albums come from the East Side’s Lilliput Records.

What I’m particularly excited for are some things Castelaz talked about when this venture was announced last year – the drinks inspired by Radio Milwaukee’s on-air personalities. That includes my friend/This Bites cohost Tarik Moody. His drink may or may not feature sake … More to come!

Meanwhile, Discourse is open daily 7 a.m.-6 a.m.

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