Both chefs/restaurateurs came to Milwaukee for jobs – Dan Jacobs, when he took a cooking position at the old Brewers Hill restaurant Roots, and Dan Van Rite, when he moved here from Green Bay to open the Third Ward’s former Hinterland. Their staying and planting their feet in the ground was a huge boon to our culinary scene. Now, they’ve got two restaurants and a couple of James Beard nominations on their curriculum vitae.

They’ve been here long enough to understand some key things. Says Jacobs: “As a Midwest native, it's the passion and love that goes into each dish that really speaks to the Milwaukee sensibility. I grew up in Chicago, where you can taste the love in someone’s cooking, and those Midwest roots have really defined my style. We cook food that makes people happy.”

For Van Rite, the “super tight-knit and supportive” MKE chef community is a big advantage, allowing them to “maintain those relationships with our local farmers without any competition or exclusivity. Milwaukee chefs are good about sourcing responsibly and using different farms to make sure our agriculture community continues to thrive.”

The business partners offer Chinese-American and globally inspired, tasting-menu cuisines all under one roof, and their influences most certainly come from the past. Jacobs’ pierogi recipe is one you’ll want to have for those comfort food cravings. If you’ve been to any of his restaurants, you might have eaten them, as far back as 2011, when he was at Roots. Pierogi were also featured on the menu at Fool’s Errand – the Third Ward restaurant the Dans briefly owned – and they pop up sometimes at EsterEv, as well. 

The Dans named EsterEv after two influential women in their lives. For Jacobs, that was his grandmother, Ester. His pierogi are an homage to her. When he was a kid growing up in Chicago, his parents both worked. It was his grandmother who was home to greet him and his brother after school and often cooked dinner for them. And one of the things she cooked? Pierogi. She’d pick up fresh ones from the local Polish grocery store and cook them at home. “She was incredibly kind and incredibly sweet, and these things kind of remind me of her,” he says.

Twelve years of making pierogi brought him to this conclusion. “I think the basic one is actually my favorite, just like potatoes and onion with some really good sour cream [which you can] amp up with the addition of liquid koji and chives, so just kind of give it a little bit of a pop, some pickled onions on top and then some herbs and it just kind of sets the whole thing off.”

When you’ve got the pierogi-making urge, take advantage. “Make a bunch, like spend the day making them so that way, you have them in the freezer, because I'm telling you, they'll keep six months in the freezer in a Ziploc bag and you can just pull them out and throw them in boiling water.”