Frankies, a restaurant serving African, Caribbean and American menu items, is coming to Milwaukee’s east side.
Owner Donna Aboagye said she plans to open the restaurant in January or February at 1815 E. Kenilworth Place, after redecorating the space. The address most recently was the site of painting bar Splash Studio.
Frankies, which operates as a seasonal food truck and caterer, also had been in the food court in Southridge Mall in Greendale.
Coincidentally, after looking at a number of locations, the one Aboagye settled on is near where the Frankies tent previously stood for the annual Summer Solstice festival.
The restaurant will serve Caribbean dishes such as jerk chicken, oxtail stew and Jamaican beef patties; African menu items such as fataya, the savory pastries, and suya, the spiced chicken or beef skewers; and Aboagye’s Hawaiian barbecue ribs, so called because she uses pineapple juice in the sauce.
Aboagye, a native of Ghana, came to Milwaukee in 2004 to study at Cardinal Stritch University. “I used to be a chemist by profession, but I did have a desire to cook for people and their families,” she said.
She started her catering business in 2016, naming it for her husband, Franklin. Aboagye wanted to make West African dishes since Milwaukee has few African restaurants, but also Caribbean since many of her friends in Milwaukee were from Jamaica and other islands and because the two regions share a number of ingredients in their cuisines.
“And I’m in America. I need to do something that will attract people from all areas,” she said.
“We picked items from all these three areas so anyone who comes to the restaurant will have at least one thing on the menu that will attract them, and (they) say, hey, let me try this for the first time,” she said.
Since then, Frankies has grown.
“It’s exciting. I’m doing what I love to do,” Aboagye said.
Customers will order at the counter and have the food brought to their tables; Aboagye said she is beginning with counter service because of the labor crunch but might switch to full service later.
The space already has a bar, where Aboagye hopes to serve Caribbean and African cocktails as well as milkshakes and smoothies.
Half of the space will be for private events but also serve as overflow seating for the restaurant, which will offer takeout, as well.
Aboagye said she decided on the east side location for her restaurant because a large number of her catering clients live in the area. They told her, “come to Milwaukee,” she said.
“Catering is a very big aspect of our business,” Aboagye said, including corporate events, weddings and funerals.
Frankies will take international recipes from customers who want a taste of home at their wedding or other events because “the couple would love to have something from their country” and have no restaurant that specializes in their cuisine or can cook on a large enough scale, Aboagye said.
Frankies even traveled to Arizona for the 250-guest wedding of a couple who wanted food from West Africa but couldn’t find a caterer there who could help them. A friend of theirs told them about Frankies, and Aboagye took the job. She rented a kitchen, arranged for licensing and made the trip, bringing along some ingredients and buying the rest in Arizona.
“It was worth the trip,” Aboagye said. “Everybody has a wish, and that’s something that we were able to do for them.”
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Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 224-2841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.
