cc  >> Welcome again to another  installment of History  Sandwiched In, here at the  Wisconsin Historical Museum.  Today, Mary Bergin will be  speaking on taste in Wisconsin.  She has two books out.  We have her book,  "Hungry for Wisconsin:  A Tasty Guide for Travelers,"  and, "Sidetracked in Wisconsin:  A Guide for Thoughtful  Travelers."  She's a UW Oshkosh grad who is a  writer, writing books and also  magazine and newspaper articles.  And she has a weekly syndicated  column about travel.  I guess, without further ado,  Ms. Mary Bergin.  Come on up.  >> Mary Bergin: Hi, everybody,  thanks for taking part of your  lunch hour to share some time  with me.  I really appreciate your  interest in the topics and my  work.  I think I'll start out by  letting you know that I was  almost a teenager before I first  stepped outside of Wisconsin,  and that was for a 4-H Club  trip to Chicago. 

 I was not a well-traveled kid.  I grew up on a dairy farm in  Sheboygan County, and we  considered a vacation to really  be a Sunday drive to Horicon  Marsh, or something like that,  when the crops were planted  or the corn was picked.  I was a college student before  taking my first airplane ride.  And that was to California where  my grandmother made me root beer  floats after lunch and brandy  Manhattans after dinner.  [LAUGHTER]  She was trying quite  successfully to make up for our  inability to visit more  frequently.  And I mention these types of  things because it partly  explains my love and  appreciation for traveling.  It, in part, sprouted from my  lack of early exposure to what  the world had to offer,  and my curiosity about what life  was like far away from home.  Far away used to mean any place  I couldn't drive to in a day.  This year it has meant visits to  Egypt, Spain and Canada,  Nova Scotia and Quebec.  But I'm proud to say that most  of my writing is about places  very close to home, and close  means in and near Wisconsin's  borders. 

 What I've learned along the way  is that we have a lot of learn  about each other.  We tend to take for granted what  is special and unusual about our  home towns, and sometimes it  takes an outsider to define  something as unique and then  spread the word about it.  That's what I try to do with my  writing.  I just sent my editors from  Wausau to Kenosha and Green Bay  to Eau Claire the next  installment of Roads Traveled.  That's a weekly column that  I've been writing since 2002.  And if you can't see it  in newsprint, you can go online  to roadstraveled.com  to see each week's installments.  Anyway, the next topic is  holiday spirit and I decided to  concentrate on Madison.  So part of that meant stepping  back and trying to figure out  what makes our city stand out  during that time of year.  It might not be a tough question  for those you of who have  lived here for a while.  But I guarantee you that some of  this will be news to people  in Green Bay, Marshfield,  and Fond du Lac. 

 What do we have?  We have a 40-foot balsam fir  in the Capitol Rotunda, and  an abundance of free holiday  concerts there during this time  of year.  We have free tours of the  Governor's mansion, with  six decorated and themed trees  indoors.  We have the Holiday  Fantasy in Lights at Olin Park  in its 21st year.  We have 228 brilliant arborvitae  on University Avenue, known as  the University Avenue Lights  in its 16th year, thanks to the  generosity of a retired dentist.  Then there's Quivey's Grove,  which I also include.  It's the stone house and former  livery stable, connected  by an underground tunnel on the  southwest side of Madison.  The restaurant and bar have been  open since 1980, and these  buildings are from the 1850s  and on the National Register  of Historic Places.  The holiday decorations at  Quivey's are simple  but plentiful.  The mood is warm and friendly.  The menu pays tribute to notable  Wisconsin people and places. 

 The food is all about comfort,  but with a gourmet flair.  I always want to visit Quivey's  at this time of year.  It makes me feel at peace and  festive at the same time.  It's a one-of-a-kind place  to dine.  Independently owned and the type  of place that gives us depth of  character in Wisconsin.  No matter where we live I think  we tend to take our food  personally.  When we make decisions about  food, we're making statements  about our own authenticity,  our values, our quirks, our  obsessions, our ethnic pride.  And our culinary work does have  depth in Wisconsin, but  sometimes it's hard to get  beyond the great beer, cheese,  sausage, because that's how  others tend to limit us.  Travel books about food tend to  be all encompassing, which can  be overwhelming to the average  vacationer, because you want  to know more than just all the  choices available, you want to  know what stands out as being  worth your time and money.  Books about restaurants tend to  be high end, which is fine for  one part of the demographic,  or one part of a getaway. 

 But a lot of us have blue collar  roots and sensibilities.  We know hard work and ingenuity  when we see it, but it always  doesn't come dressed as a  five-course meal with matching  wines.  So I mention these things  because my books, "Hungry for  Wisconsin" and "Sidetracked in  Wisconsin," tend to be an  eclectic mix of menus and  enterprises that fly under the  radar a lot of times.  They are extremes in some cases,  and I love the extremes  of what we call Wisconsin.  This is a state where we will  buy bags of "belly flops,"  misshapen jelly beans at the  Jelly Belly center near Kenosha.  And we will also pay $3 or $4  for one garden ganache  at the Cravery in Kohler.  One-of-a-kind efforts like the  cranberry science class  at Pittsville high school,  which is the geographic center  of Wisconsin.  And to-die-for cookie dough  made at River Falls  for Midwest Airlines.  Both of these enterprises  earn national attention.  But then we have a lot of other  endeavors that also define who  we are, in much smaller places. 

 For example, meat eaters here  likely have eaten a Johnsonville  brat, but you might not have  tasted a funeral wiener from  the Berge Sausage Company in  Whitelaw in Manitowoc County.  They're good enough to eat raw  like a piece of sausage,  a sausage snack stick, and  they're called funeral wieners  because the catholic church  is just across the road and  everybody seems to serve these  things after a burial for lunch.  [LAUGHTER]  In Oshkosh at this time of year,  chocolate lovers are lining up  at a little bungalow in a  residential area a couple of  blocks from Lake Winnebago.  Since 1940, Hughes' Home Maid  Chocolates has been in business,  never advertising, always  producing boxes of candy that  are jumbled into plain white  boxes then stamped in red or  black to separate the light  chocolates from the darks.  There are no neat rows in these  boxes, no candy identification  charts and yet they are in very  high demand.  The chocolates are made and sold  in the bungalow's basement.  You pay about $10 a pound and  stand in line sometimes for  quite a long time while waiting  for your order to be filled.  But in that time you'll be close  enough to watch the candymakers  at work, producing snow on the  mountain, pecans, caramel, milk  chocolate and a topping of  vanilla cream or pudding, which  is their term for a double  chocolate candy, or dozens of  other confections.  You pay with cash or personal  check.  No Internet sales, no credit  cards and that's the beauty of  the whole enterprise. 

 It's a part of what makes  Hughes unique.  And there are many, many other  Wisconsin businesses that  operate in a similar manner.  They are hard at work with some  type of endeavor that may be  unusual or has stood the test  the time.  They're often in business  because they know what they're  doing, they do it well,  but often with little fanfare.  So again that's what I try to  include in the books that I've  done, and I have a little  PowerPoint presentation to  introduce some of these places  to you in the time that we have.  For Green Bay Packer fans,  a couple of specialty places.  This is Chives in Suamico,  which is near Green Bay.  The place is run by  JD Schoenfeld, who is a former  executive chef for the Green Bay  Packers.  He was working in that capacity  until 2003.  And now he has his own place,  a little bistro,  in a little town near Green Bay. 

 He pays attention to cheese,  not just what's good in  Wisconsin but the world's best.  And he pays attention  to fine wine.  So it's not a shot and a beer  place to go before a football  game.  But there also are not a lot of  pretensions.  The food is good.  And JD has in front of him  a Chives Ho-Ho,  which is amaretto cake,  whip cream, a layer of fudge,  raspberry sauce.  It's real good.  In Green Bay, Chili John's.  This is a real bare bones  kind of place, as the picture  suggests.  It is a favorite of John Madden,  the NFL broadcaster. 

 You order chili here.  You order chili mild to extra  hot, beans or no beans,  spaghetti or no spaghetti.  And if you want an order to go,  they'll take a little shovel and  throw those oyster crackers in a  brown paper bag.  It's not fancy at all,  yet very popular.  And it's been around  for a long time.  Titletown Brewing Company, also  in Green Bay, is one of the  great brew pubs that we have  in the state.  But what distinguishes it  is its location.  It's in a former old railroad  depot.  Its beer names are something  that the brew master has a  little fun with.  Things like Canadeo Gold named  after Tony Canadeo which some  hard core football fans probably  recognize. 

 And then on the outside of the  building is a huge 22-foot tall  statue of a football player,  the same statue that used to be  in front of the Green Bay Packer  Hall of Fame.  So it's hard to miss.  In Appleton  is Lombardi's Steakhouse.  And it is in the Radisson  Paper Valley Hotel  downtown on College Avenue.  On the walls are display cases  with more than 400 artifacts  from Vince Lombardi's estate.  It's really a nifty museum  to the legendary football coach.  You'll see his high school  yearbook, different awards, game  plays, football jerseys, it's a  real unusual mix of things.  Our next category, wild game.  Not a lot of places in Wisconsin  make a point of incorporating  wild game on their menus.  And of course wild game we don't  mean you shot it in the woods  yesterday and it's on the table  tomorrow. 

 It's farmed wild game,  but still.  This photo was taken at Pine  Ridge of Wautoma which is a  little resort that includes  Buck Rub Restaurant.  And the chef, Jeremy Thoren,  loves to hunt and he loves to  cook, and he's found a way to  incorporate both at this  business.  On the menu, on the dinner menu,  you'll see things like pheasant,  wild boar, ostrich,  venison of course.  And he also has a spot on TV,  a hunting network.  He cooks on that network and the  episodes are shown nationwide.  In Milwaukee at Potawatomi  Casino is Dream Dance restaurant  where the chef Jason Gorman  likes experimenting with local  foods and sometimes wild game  including venison that's  marinated in Sprecher Root Beer.  He also has come up with  something called lobsterwurst.  Which is kind of like,  well, it's lobster,  but with brat-like seasonings.  It's a very unusual treatment. 

 And you can tell it's more of an  upper end type of place to dine.  A lot of good places in small  towns including Christian's  Bistro.  In Plover, right off  of Highway 51 on the way  to Stevens Point and Wausau.  I think his place is of note  because Christian Czerwonka,  the chef who's in charge,  he used to work for Emeril  for 15 years helping him open  restaurants across the country.  So he knows what's it's like to  work with a celebrity chef but  prefers to be in Plover, because  he and his wife have young  children and they consider this  a quality of life issue.  They want to plant their roots  in Plover and do their own thing  in a quiet way there.  You can see from the previous  photo that there's traditional  restaurant seating, but you can  also sit at a counter  to watch the chefs at work,  which is kind of fun.  In Bayfield is the Wild Rice  Restaurant.  I'll guess that a lot of you  have been there.  It tends to be open  just seasonally, but it's  a very dramatic place, because  of its location near the  Lake Superior's shore  in a wooden area. 

 And the architecture is  very artistic, and so is the  decor and the food presentation,  as you can gather from these  photos.  On the right is a private dining  room that overlooks the kitchen  so a little bit of an insider's  view that way.  Downsville is one of the  smallest towns I've been to  with a fine dining restaurant.  And it's near Menomonie,  as in the home to UW-Stout.  It's about a half hour south  of Menomonie.  The Creamery is a former dairy  creamery.  The menu is full of local  ingredients.  And it is also near  a bike trail in the area.  I can't remember the name,  I think it's like,  is there a Red Oak?   Anyway there's a bike trail  that goes right up to, almost  right up to the restaurant.  It's a place that's known  for its breads, as well as its  meals. 

 Chocolate cherry sourdough,  sweet potato spice pecan,  honey brioche.  Not the kind of place you would  tend to find in small town  Wisconsin.  And at the tip of Door County  is Washington Hotel.  Leah Caplan  no longer is there.  She is back in Madison, but when  she was at the helm of the  Washington Restaurant, she  really made it her priority  to include local ingredients  in every aspect of her menu.  And that would go down to the  flour that she used for muffins  and pizza crust.  It came from wheat grown on the  island, and that wheat also is  what gives us Island Wheat beer  made by the Capital Brewing  Company and the Death's Door  line of liquors that was  introduced a couple of years  ago.  On the left is a whitefish pizza  which is maybe a lot better than  it sounds, I mean it is a lot  better than what it sounds.  Real creative fare which  continues even though Leah  no longer is there.  Right outside of Hayward on  Highway 63, is Turk's Inn, which  has been around since 1934. 

 It's an amazing place.  I mean, look at the decor.  You have these rich reds and  pinks and Persian textiles  on the walls.  And then on the menu, kabobs,  pilaf, burek which is a phyllo  dough with a cheese filling,  baklava.  I know no place like this  in Wisconsin.  Over on the western side of the  state facing Lake Pepin Harbor  is the Harbor View Cafe.  It makes a big deal about  cooking with local ingredients.  You can see the menu on the  blackboard.  It changes every day depending  on the whims of the chef and the  ingredients at hand.  They have fish but no fish  fries. 

 Deep frying is not something  that they include in their  culinary repertoire.  Genesee Depot, Waukesha County,  is known best for the Ten  Chimneys, a national historic  site, which you can tour.  It used to be a summer resort  for many actors, owned by  Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.  But the area also has a nifty  little lunch spot  called the CornerStone.  A mix of comfort foods, like  pot roast sandwiches, ethnic  entrees like Mexican fondue  for dipping in tortillas  with sausage.  Okay, we can get smaller than  that though, than these  restaurants and these places.  Mickey-Lu's Bar-B-Q in Marinette  is just a box of a place.  It's been in operation since  1942.  The menu is pretty abbreviated.  I think there's something like  eight kinds of sandwiches that  you can order, and most people  come in for a burger. 

 It's under $2,  made on an open flame.  It's the kind of place where  you sit down and you'll see  the old time jukeboxes  on the counter.  Three songs for a quarter.  Ice cream sundaes.  Generous in portion  and cheap in price.  In Menasha it's an even more  abbreviated menu.  People really come for the steak  sandwiches.  This is a place that's been  around since 1958.  When you order a steak sandwich,  you get a scoop of onions,  and a scoop of pickles,  as an ice cream scoop.  So you should know that ahead of  time. 

 They're also known for their  malts, butterscotch malts  especially, made extra creamy.  I like Skipper's in Merrill,  downtown.  They make a great  chicken dumpling soup.  A lot of people buy it  by the quart.  Chicken salad was really good.  Nobody wants to give recipes and  I kind of like that too.  Some things should remain a  secret.  Wilson's Cafe in Pound.  You know a place is good when  people come in and not just eat  but they want to linger because  they feel at home, they feel  comfortable, they feel like the  food is one part of a reason to  go, but like a lot of the  choices we make in life,  it's a matter of connection.  At Wilson's Cafe they make  doughnuts every day. 

 They make doughnuts that are  just cake doughnuts  but very good, fresh.  They'll sell them for maybe  15-cents plain.  If you want frosting  it's another nickel.  Sprinkles, another nickel  after that.  This is pretty close to us in  Madison, the Roxbury Tavern.  It's in Dane County.  And the place has no oven  but it's about much more  than burgers and fries.  This is a place where you can  have fajitas, ethnic stews.  Not your typical bar fare.  And the little touches are also  pretty good. 

 Things like ice cubes made of  iced tea so that when you order  iced tea it doesn't get watered  down.  Or sugar rim goblets  for unusual coffees.  The place is also known  for its pancake sundaes.  And that middle picture with the  fish is there to let you know  that the decor is a little bit  unusual, quirky.  Perry's Cherry Diner,  Sturgeon Bay.  It's been for sale for a while  but the owner tells me that he  doesn't want to sell it to just  anybody.  There's a sense of, I don't  know, connection there too,  I guess.  Three or four pies are made  daily, but the bigger draw is  really the milk shakes, thick  milk shakes, which I'm told  75% of the customers order.  And I tend to believe that  because when you unwrap your  napkin at your place setting  there's a spoon, one of those  long spoons that you use for  milk shakes, everybody gets one.  Greek food is also part of the  menu here. 

 In Bloomer, it's a Czech bakery  that does business and goes  over well with the locals  in particular.  Kolache, sourdough rye,  beef dumplings, are all a part  of what is sold.  And the proprietor  has a good sense of humor.  He sells t-shirts that say  "I knead it daily," K-N-E-A-D.  Kind of corny.  I didn't know about this place  until I visited Red Wing,  Minnesota, which is right across  the river from Hager City.  Hager City is really no more  than this little restaurant and  bar.  But it's real popular  with people in the Twin Cities.  Boaters come right up to the  place in summer to hang out and  to have authentic Jamaican food.  The place has been featured  on the Food Network. 

 The proprietor takes the  authenticity of his cuisine  seriously.  Also hires seasonal employees  from Jamaica.  This is in Waukesha County too.  And I just love the way it  looks.  It looks just like a creamsicle.  It's a friendly place.  Its food is, there are little  touches like breakfast parfaits  and the marbled,  good marbled bread  to come with your breakfast.  Some family recipes that go back  quite a way.  But I like it, because  it's such a happy place.  And there's a little gift shop  upstairs that's worth visiting. 

 I'm from Sheboygan County and  Majerle's is on the outskirts  near the Kohler-Andrae  State Park and the James Tellen  Woodland Sculpture Garden.  That latter deal, the Sculpture  Garden, is an outsider art  installment that is not  highly publicized  but pretty interesting.  Outsider art is kind of like,  well in the same group would be  the Fred Smith concrete  sculptures near Phillips  and things like that.  So when you're in the area this  is a great little place to stop  for lunch.  That's a perch sandwich,  a special on Fridays,  and it's served on  a good Sheboygan hard roll.  Sheboygan.  It's near Kohler-Andrae  State Park, so it would be  a little bit south.  And I really like this place,  Picadilly Lilly Diner.  I like the name.  I like the idea. 

 It's popular with people who  have airplanes and want to get  out for a little spin.  You can taxi pretty much  almost right up to the door  of the restaurant.  It's not fancy.  It's where pancakes are, they  take pride in serving pancakes  that are bigger than the plate  that you'll eat on.  And the last time I checked,  it was $2.50 for one-fourth of  an order of biscuits and gravy.  Unusual food businesses.  Michael Fields Ag Institute  is a business that specializes  in ag research and instruction,  especially when it comes  to issues of sustainability.  Nearby the research area is a  little retail space where you  can buy produce that's grown  at the Ag Institute, and  there's also an organic bakery.  This is on Lake Michigan,  north of Manitowoc,  but not quite into Door County.  Algoma Farm Market Kitchen  is a business incubator. 

 A place that lets people  who have an idea about a food  product that they'd like to  develop and market, but not the  resources to come up with their  own commercial kitchen space.  Here they can rent that kitchen  space by the hour and get help,  advice, about food safety,  how to produce and market  whatever they come up with.  And there's a little shop that  is a retail space that sells  the products that are made here.  Things from jams to salsas,  to fruit and nut confections,  all kinds of things.  Sometimes on Saturdays  they have sampling hours.  So you can sample  the products, too.  In Door County, Janice Thomas  makes a point of offering  cooking classes, which  that's fine, but she also offers  is kitchen christenings,  which I think is unusual.  If you move into a big house and  you don't know how to use the  appliances, can you call Janice  who will come over, teach you  how to use them but camouflage  the whole thing as a party,  a cooking party.  And in Two Rivers at Susie Q's,  Paul LeClair is in the fourth  generation of a family business  that began in the mid-1800s.  It's one of the few family run  commercial fishing businesses  left on this side  of Lake Michigan. 

 And there's a little  retail shop.  I think he's holding  smoked chubs.  In for the long run,  the Red Circle Inn considers  itself the oldest restaurant  in Wisconsin.  Around since 1848.  It's decorated for the holidays  here, and you can see it's kind  of like a Quivey's Grove  where it's a mix of just kind of  a country feel, but a little bit  more than a traditional  supper club.  And I shouldn't suggest that  the building is as old either,  because it's a newer building.  Millie's at the Wisconsin State  Fair is the oldest food vendor  at the Wisconsin State Fair.  It's been around since 1932.  This is a family that also says  it opened Milwaukee's  first pizza parlor.  That was in 1947. 

 You've probably seen this if  you've been to the State Fair,  but all they sell is the Italian  sausage, it's a family recipe.  And it comes on an Italian roll.  You have hot peppers  or sweet peppers.  And really that's about it.  The manner of cooking the  sausage is something that they  came up with.  There's less smoke and grease,  because of the grill being  vertical instead of horizontal.  Three Brothers in Milwaukee,  also a wonderful place.  In its third generation  of ownership.  Herb Kohl happened to be there  when I visited.  It's one of his favorite places. 

 It gets a James Beard  Classics Award.  It's the only Wisconsin  restaurant to have that  distinction.  I compare it to a Lifetime  Achievement Award,  that type of thing.  If you were getting an Oscar  for lifetime achievement, that's  what a James Beard Classic is    for a restaurateur.  Bronco, the owner, is in his 80s  but he still trims his meat,  buys his produce, and he lives  above the restaurant  with some of his family.  The specialties are Serbian.  Phyllo dough pies, burek,  a lot of use of saffron,  pickled cabbage leaves with  meat, their own kind of sausage.  Also in Milwaukee,  Watts Tea Room.  It's become a one-of-a-kind  place.  When I was a little girl, you'd  see these places relatively  frequently, but I don't know of  any other place that is devoted  to the mid-afternoon tea and the  little dainty finger sandwiches,  sunshine cake on the left  is a wonderful thing. 

 It has this old-time  boiled white frosting.  Just a very elegant setting.  A place where like the ladies  used to have lunch, take a  little break from the shopping.  It's been around  since the 1870s.  Okay, and then just a couple  more.  In case anyone cares to guess.  And if you don't, because  I never do, what's that?  No?  [INAUDIBLE]  There may be more than what  I know about, but one is  Ardy and Ed's in Oshkosh.  A place that started as an A&W.  It's been around since 1948.  And Rudy's Drive-In  in La Crosse. 

 It started as a root beer stand  in 1933.  Has a real kind of '50s  kind of feel.  The answer is?  Baker Cheese Factory.  It's where our family  hauled their milk.  It didn't turn into string  cheese though, because  that was a little earlier.  They started making string  cheese here in the late 1970s.  And that product got  a First Place in the 2007  American Cheese Society Awards.  It's not a big operation.  They have the milk from about  100 farms going there now.  It used to be a lot smaller  than that. 

 And also, since we're talking  about my part of the state,  Sheboygan County,  Country Crafts Barn  is a cute little place.  It's only open during the  summer, maybe into the fall  just a little bit.  But it's on a farm that is  off of Highway 67  in Sheboygan County.  Just a real pleasant place.  A huge screened-in porch  where people go for lunch.  A big gift shop area.  And just simple fare, done well.  Whispering Orchards is on,  what's it near?  Like Highway 48 maybe,  near Howards Grove.  And it's open all year.  It's a second story restaurant. 

 And the servers are running  up and down, up and down with  the food, because the cooking  is done on the first floor,  if I remember right.  Really down-home cooking.  Things like apple pancakes,  apple dumplings, potato kugel,  plum bread French toast.  They try to be creative with  their fare and they do it well.  Also a little taxidermy.  That's a black bear sitting  there.  And if you look far enough,  not in these pictures, but if  you visit, you'll see peacock,  red fox, a beaver.  That's it.  I think the last thing I want  you to know is that I couldn't  wait to get out of Wisconsin  when I was in my early 20s.  And I wanted to see what else  there was in the world. 

 And I lived in Kentucky and  Oklahoma for two years in the  1980s before heading back to the  state.  Going away for a while  was a real good way  to appreciate what I left.  I think I'll always call this  home, even if for some reason  I would happen to move away.  But I don't plan to.  And I just really appreciate the  attention and time that you've  given to let me explain to you  some of the things that I think  are interesting and worthy  in this state.  I think we have five minutes  left, if we go right until 1:00,  so if you have questions,  I'm glad to answer them.  And if you prefer to talk  privately later, I'm sitting at  that little chair.  Yes?  >> What was the name of the one  in Marinette?  >> Mickey-Lu's Bar-B-Q.  Yeah, it's just a little box  of a burger joint.  In the summer, I think it's open  until midnight. 

 Yes?  >> Are these places you've  talked about in your book?  >> Yes.  Yes, they all are.  And then there are more.  Actually, I think Hughes'  Chocolates, which I mentioned  early, is in "Sidetracked for  Wisconsin" instead of "Hungry."  Yes?  >> How do you get your leads  for these unique places?  >> Many ways, many ways.  I try to just be observant  on my own.  I listen to what other people  tell me is good  that's close to home.  A lot of times, during events  like this, I'll get ideas  from people about places  I've not heard of.  I'm always learning.  And people are always  starting new things too.  So that makes it real  interesting. 

 But a lot of the places that are  in small towns in particular,  these are not places with  big advertising budgets or  marketing plans to come to me.  There are some exceptions.  Some people are real savvy  that way.  But a lot of them are just out  there, and when I can find them  I'm delighted to let other  people know.  Yeah?  >> Do you try to remain  anonymous?  >> It also depends.  Sometimes, I prefer to  for different reasons.  One being, let's say someone  suggests a place that they just  love, and I visit and I think  well, I don't want to get  somebody's hopes up.  Sometimes people get kind of  excited.  It's like you're going to visit,  you're going to write about us.  And maybe yes and maybe no. 

 I like the idea of being treated  like the average person.  But there are exceptions.  Especially sometimes  with the high end places.  If they offer me a meal, or  ask me to visit, I'll say yes.  That's fine.  I'm not a rich woman.  [LAUGHTER]  But neither do I guarantee  that I'll write something.  I'm not a food critic.  So it's not like I would  be there to critique the food.  And I think that in a lot of  these places, what makes them  special is the atmosphere,  or the story about the place,  or its longevity. 

 Some little quirk, the roller  skates or what have you.  Sometimes the food is not  necessarily incidental,  but it's just one part  of why you would want to visit.  So anyway I do all of it.  And then I've been on  press tours, too.  And that can be a very efficient  way of finding about many places  in a short amount of time.  And for me this work,  it is a business.  It's not a hobby, so I need  to proceed in that manner,  too, sometimes.  Other questions?  Okay, well, thank you.  Thank you, very much.  (applause)