In 1903, childhood friends William S Harley and Arthur Davidson decided to strap a 116cc motor to a bicycle and see how quickly they could throw it down the Wisconsin back roads. The first bike could go straight, even take a gentle bend, but couldn’t make the pull out of a short grade. Not a complete failure, but a chance to go back to the drawing board. Classics – whether literary, culinary or a piece of machinery – take time to ripen. For evolutions and innovations to occur, relationships must first be formed. Naturally, since the Harley-Davidson is a native of Wisconsin, there had to be a few Germans involved in kickstarting greatness (think the Flying Merkel).
As the first of these bikes were being rolled out in the Wisconsin cold, their builders – many of whom were German – were eating plates of Bratwurst, thick pork chops, potatoes and solid, fresh-bread bowls of goulash soup. Such plates fuelled the graft, helping stave off the winter cold, and were delivered by women who had left Germany for the farmlands and factories of the American Midwest. Women whose daughters married the boys next door, before those boys were sent off to war.
Returning from the battlefields, these boys – now hardened men – struggled to survive in Eisenhower’s bland tranquility. So instead they sought out freedom and adventure on the ever-expanding interstate highways, riding cheap surplus motorcycles and rekindling the camaraderie of the front lines. The rebellion began as a quiet one, but it would ultimately bring about a new universal order.
If you see cops or bikers eating at a place, you can count on the food. This particular rule is paramount at Lone Bros, a cosy roadhouse with a live-and-let-live streak of stubbornness. Claus, the German owner, is a quiet man, quick with a pour and meticulous with placing your drink on a folded towel. His tattooed arms are efficient, his motorcycle enormous and his moustache second to none. Outside the bar stand two huge and beautifully shellacked picnic tables, with long benches that offer a good-humoured rowdy space and uninterrupted views of the picnic of lost souls that is Street 51.
The food, as with the chrome-clad 1500cc motorcycle poised outside, is quality: built for comfort and power, not speed. Bone-sucking pork chops; chunky potato salad with apple; intense sauerkraut with grilled brats that pop when cut; hearty chunks of fresh bread (expect change from a $5 note). Friday night is specials night, when the tables groan beneath vast servings of schnitzel or Flemish stew: hale-and-hearty recipes passed down by crazy aunts dragging unruly kids across post-World War II Europe. Good for the stomach and good for the soul, for as Dan Aykroyd once put it: “You don’t need a therapist if you own a motorcycle.”
Lone Bros, Street 51 & 174 (from 6pm)