To Mr. Jonathan Gold

An open letter.

Dear Mr. Gold,

We're so glad you'll be speaking in Madison in April 2011. We read Counter Intelligence and it inspired, motivated and educated us like nothing else has. We've been eating our way through Madison's restaurants in alphabetical order since 2004 (why?) and, based on that slice of experience, here are some eats we think you'd enjoy investigating.

• Bars/beer
  
  • Ale Asylum
  • Malt House
  • Paradise
  • Slice's
• Diners
  • Cottage Cafe
  • Curve
  • Mickies Dairy Bar 
  • Pat O'Malley's Jet Room
• Farm-to-table
  • Bradbury's
  • Gail Ambrosius chocolates via Fromagination
  • Graze
  • Underground Kitchen
• Fish frys
  • Seafood Center
  • Toby's
  • Wilson's
• Food carts
  • Fresh Cool Drinks
  • Ingrid's Lunchbox
  • Kakilima
• Ice cream/custard
  • Babcock Hall Dairy Store
  • Chocolate Shoppe
  • Michael's
• Locals' favorites
  • Cafe Porta Alba
  • Old Fashioned
  • Lao Laan-Xang [Edit: Whoops - we didn't know you'd been there already.]
• Supper clubs
  • Luedtke's Wonder Bar
  • Quivey's Grove
  • Smoky's Club

What's missing: We're proud of our Mexican and Asian restaurants, but we didn't put many on the list because we bet they can't hold a candle to LA's. And we left off the most famous places, which you've probably heard of.

We hope you have a wonderful visit!

Sincerely yours,
Nichole and JM

 

With thanks to Keith Burrows, Lindsay Christians, Elizabeth Curran, Jordan Ellenberg, Jia Luo, Jesse Lyons, Becky Meyer Pourchot, and Madison Fish Fry.com for their suggestions and Marcelle Richards and Skip for the inspiration.

Posted December 17, 2010 | Revised December 18