By Dennis R. Getto
Journal Sentinel dining critic

Sitting at a table at the South Woods of Cudahy on a Friday night, a friend and I faced tough decisions.

This was the southeast side of Milwaukee County, a place where good fish fries are part of the fabric of life on Friday night, especially during Lent. But this menu offered four alternatives. Which one should we try?

My friends went first and picked the standard fish fry ($6.95), which the menu described as "the chef's secret recipe for his batter-dipped cod." My eyes passed over broiled cod ($7.50) and breaded lake perch ($9.95) and landed on something I hadn't seen featured on a Milwaukee menu before - sauger pike ($6.95), available breaded or broiled.

A smaller cousin of the walleye, sauger isn't really a pike, but a member of the perch family. I'd never caught one, but I knew the fish were highly prized by sportsmen. So I ordered it.

I'll admit to a little trepidation. Lots of my favorite fish fry haunts offer walleye on Friday but it's not always good. Sometimes, I'm stuck with fishy-tasting fillets while my dining companions crunch better-tasting cod.

I didn't have to worry this time. The two fillets of breaded fish, which I later learned were from Ontario, had been dipped in bread crumbs, then fried to a perfect golden brown. They made for one of the better fish fries I'd had in recent years.

I traded a chunk of the sauger for a piece of my friend's cod and liked that, too, because of its tasty beer batter. But this time, taking a chance had paid off. My fish was more delicate and just a bit sweeter.

Both fish fries were pretty close to perfect. In addition to the fish, South Woods serves excellent homemade potato pancakes (baked potatoes are available for those watching their calories), and a respectable cole slaw. The only thing I would have liked was a slice of dark rye bread instead of the Italian bread that's standard with South Woods' meals.

Owned by Sue and Larry Burss, the South Woods is one of those neighborhood landmarks that's open daily and offers a pretty standard menu of steaks, ribs and chops along with several Italian specialties.

It's also a place where you know you're in Wisconsin: there's lots of cheese.

Take the South Woods version of the popular blooming onion ($5.50) as an example. At most places I've visited, this appetizer, which is made by slicing an onion with a special cutter, dipping it and frying it crisp so its pieces break off like little onion rings, is served with a spicy remoulade sauce.

Not at the South Woods. The onion here comes with bright orange cheese sauce that looks a lot like the kind they serve with nachos.

Some of the best appetizers on the menu, provided you're willing to forget your cholesterol intake for the night) are homemade bacon and cheddar sticks ($4.95), which are wrapped in egg roll skins, deep-fried and delivered to your table so hot that their rich fillings oozed out after the first bite.

Unfortunately, not all the cheese was as good. One of the soups offered with dinners at the South Woods, french onion, is baked beneath a canopy of melted mozzarella instead of the more appropriate Swiss. It was so stringy that we found no graceful way to eat it.

One of the other South Woods specialties is veal, and two versions impressed me.

The first, traditional Veal Oscar ($15.95), delivered crisp, freshly sauteed cutlets with the appropriate asparagus spears, hollandaise sauce and real crab meat. Even better was a simpler dish called Veal alla Susan - two perfectly breaded and pan-fried veal cutlets seasoned only with lemon-garlic butter and served with fresh green beans amandine on the side. At $11.95, this meal was a delicious bargain.

Two other Italian specialties weren't as good. Cod alla Fiorentina ($11.95) had been sauteed without breading, then covered with a fresh tomato sauce that had very little flavor. The problem here was the fresh tomatoes used in the sauce.

Market tomatoes at this time of year usually lack flavor, so many chefs will resort to canned, which capture much of the tomato's flavor at the peak of its ripeness. In this case, such tomatoes would have given the sauce a livelier taste and would have made the side of linguine noodles served with it much more interesting.

And while the 6-ounce tenderloin that formed the basis of steak pizzola ($14.95) was a good cut of meat, the fresh tomato sauce did little for it. To make matters worse, the eggplant Parmesan that rounded out the dish was mostly undercooked slices of the vegetable that lacked flavor.

Other details disappointed as well. House salads were boring blends of mostly iceberg with little to distinguish them and a clam chowder that we sampled on Friday was gravy thick.

Desserts ($3 each) were something of a bright spot. A chilled chocolate truffle was filled with cookies-and-cream ice cream while a larger chocolate-shelled creation held vanilla. The problem was that both of the plates were decorated with dollops of artificial topping instead of real whipped cream.

It was only after my visit to the South Woods that I looked on the restaurant's Web page (www.foodspot.com/southwoods) and realized I'd missed a house specialty: ribs.

I'm just hoping they're as good as that sauger pike.

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 10, 2000.