Throughout Wisconsin, especially in larger cities like Madison, Racine, and Milwaukee, Black-owned restaurant owners and chefs are introducing diners to food that represents their heritage and creativity—from Southern soul food to West African cuisine to Jamaican jerk.
Some are continuing family recipes passed down through generations, while others serve food they grew up eating in their homelands.
Here are seven Black-owned restaurants in Wisconsin worth supporting this Black Business Month and beyond.
1. Bigg Boyz Kitchen, Racine
In 2025, Jasmine Carr brought soul food to Washington Avenue in Racine when she opened Bigg Boyz Kitchen, offering to-go meals. Her business motto is “cooking with love,” a mantra that’s quickly evident once you take a bite of their pork chops, catfish filets, baked or fried chicken, and rib tips.
For a customized “meat and sides” meal, select from one meat and two sides; two meats and two sides; or three meats and three sides. Among the sides are yams, jerk dirty rice, coleslaw, and potato salad. Then, wrap up the feast with a sweet ending, such as red-velvet cake, lemon cake, or strawberry-crunch cake. For beverages, the owners also serve what they would in their own home: Kool-Aid in a glass Mason jar.
2. The Diplomat, Milwaukee
Dane Baldwin debuted The Diplomat as a fine-dining, farm-to-table restaurant along Brady Street in Milwaukee’s East Side in 2017. Five years later, he earned major acclaim as a James Beard Award “Best Chef: Midwest” winner. Best described as modern-American cuisine, the dinner-only menu celebrates seasonal influences (in other words, items change often).
Starters are designed for sharing, such as pickled deviled eggs, chicken-liver mousse, blue-cheese panna cotta, and signature triple-blanched fries with garlic mayo. The handful of entrees span fish and meat, from a New York strip or “knife and fork chicken” to trout with a side of smoked tomatoes. Then, for dessert, a recent menu published three options: banana bread, peanut-butter pie, and chocolate mousse.
3. Les Delices de Awa, Madison
While Les Delices de Awa opened two years ago on the East Side, tucked along Atwood Avenue, it actually began as a catering company. Chef-owner Awa Sibi hails from West Africa’s Ivory Coast and initially came to the U.S. as an international student. Highlighting culinary traditions in West Africa, grilled halal meat is a focus, but so are vegan and meat-free dishes (including vegan okra stew, fried yucca sticks, and fried sweet plantains), making this a great place for a group dining together, particularly for its platters folding in entrees and side dishes.
Weekend hours expand to include lunch, where you can order sandwiches, protein and vegan bowls, stews, soups, and a traditional dish from Senegal (thiebou guinar, grilled chicken and rice infused with spices and vegetables). Even the drinks menu is a love letter from West Africa: Sip ginger or hibiscus tea, café aboki (coffee, condensed milk and cocoa powder), or kinkleba tea, brewed from a native flowering plant.
4. Ashley’s Bar-B-Que, Milwaukee
Now in its second generation of ownership, Ashley’s Bar-B-Que is the story of Darnell continuing his father Thomas Ashley Jr.’s legacy. The location, at 15th and West Center Streets in Milwaukee, hasn’t changed since the restaurant’s 1961 opening.
Whether it’s one of the lighter options—like a sandwich (from a Philly cheese steak to a shrimp po boy), wings, or catfish pieces—or one of the 13 BBQ dinners or a “half & half” dinner—such as chicken and pork—Darnell proudly uses his father’s original recipes. Fans of deep-fried foods won’t want to miss the deep-fried perch, chicken wings, and pork chops. Sides are in perfect pitch with soul-food staples, such as baked beans, okra, corn on the cob, greens, coleslaw, and banana pudding.
5. Fya Syde Kitchen, Madison
Nicollette Beckford’s restaurant on Madison’s Monroe Street strives to serve what’s commonly eaten in a Jamaican home. Her first food business popped up in 2022 as Grateful Melt, within a food truck parked at Grateful Shed, an indoor food-truck park in Wisconsin Dells. While smashburgers and grilled-cheese sandwiches were on the menu, so were jerk chicken and curried goat, as a nod to her home country of Jamaica.
Then, alongside business partner Xavier Fuller, Beckford opened Fya Side Kitchen in 2025, continuing to serve jerk chicken prepared with spices from Jamaica. The menu also brings Caribbean flavors to Madison, especially apparent with the cocktails. For the “Fya Side Old Fashion,” Wisconsin’s official cocktail (Old Fashioned) is made with rum, and “One Love” is a rasta-colored drink that’s inspired by the late reggae singer Bob Marley.
6. Twisted Plants, Milwaukee and West Allis
Twisted Plants—which continues to operate in Milwaukee and West Allis, despite recently closing its Cudahy location—offers meat-free cuisine that’s not what you’d expect. Try the “Up in Smoke” burger, a plant-based patty piled high with smoky plant-based bacon and grilled onions, and is slathered in BBQ sauce.
The “Big Lebowski” sandwich features jackfruit that is shredded and prepared like meat, mingling with onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms, along with mayo and provolone cheese. Many of the appetizers are fried options akin to what you’d find in a pub or bar, such as cauliflower bites with a side of ranch sauce, mozzarella sticks, or an eight-piece order of “chik’n nuggets.”
7. Delicious Bites, Wauwatosa
This café in the Milwaukee near-west suburb of Wauwatosa—at 68th Street and West North Avenue—blends owner Tamira White’s love for baking (from cheesecakes in a jar to peach-cobbler poundcake) with a passion for preparing fresh salads, wraps, sandwiches, and soups.
The menu includes a variety of sandwiches, including the Untuna Sandwich, which swaps out tuna for chickpeas, then adds onions and plant-based mayo between slices of sourdough bread, and a grilled-chicken pita. Wash it all down with lavender lemonade, courtesy of Fit4YouMke, another Black-owned Milwaukee business.
This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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