Jamie & The Wienermobile
Wisconsin Food Tour Day 2: Madison, New Glarus, Monroe
For Day 2 of my Memorial Day Weekend, Jodie and I headed west. But first, we needed breakfast. We went to the Original Pancake House and had two of their specialties: The Dutch Baby which was like a giant oven baked popover, and Danish Kijafa Cherry Crepes. Mmmmm. The next stop was the New Glarus Brewing Company, a small, popular microbrewery in a tiny town that probably has more cows than people. The brewery had free self guided tours. After the little tour, we went to the tasting room where we got to try 3 beers (a wheat beer, a coffee stout, and a cherry beer) for $3.50 and got to keep the souvenir glass. A cool place, but I don't understand why they only had three of their beers available for tasting. Next we headed south to Monroe, another small town known as "the Swiss Cheese Capital of the USA", where we stopped at Baumgartner's Cheese Store & Tavern, Wisconsin's oldest cheese store and also a bar where you can sit down and have a locally brewed beer with some of the best cheese sandwiches in the world. I had their specialty - limburger cheese sandwich with mustard on rye. Pretty tasty sandwich, although the limburger was not as strong as I was expecting. I guess it wasn't old and stinky enough. Next, we headed to Madison, an actual city of over 200,000 and the capital of Wisconsin, for the World's Largest Brat Fest, an annual bratwurst festival held every year since 1983. I had no idea how common bratwurst was in Wisconsin until this weekend. It's like tacos in LA. They're everywhere. The festival had rides, food, and music. I tried a brat, sampled some mustards, and some outstanding deep-fried cheese curds. Mmmmm. But, the real reason I went, was to see the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile! On the way out of the festival, I spotted the Budweiser Clydesdales hanging out in barn, so we went over visited them. Next, we drove into town and took a look at the State Capitol which is based on the U.S. Capitol dome, and then took a stroll down State Street which is full of shops, bars, restaurants, and coffeehouses, but was pretty dead on Memorial Day weekend. We stopped at the most happening place, State Street Brats, a sports bar filled with drunk college kids, and had a couple of Leinenkugel's beers. The beer was not that good. It was watery and very carbonated, and served in a giant plastic cup. We left our beers and the drunk kids and went to one of the local coffee shops for coffee before driving back to Milwaukee.
Photos from the trip are here.
