Wisconsin's best pie, bars and breweries

By Chelsey Lewis of the Journal Sentinel

Didn't get your pie fix on Thanksgiving? Pick up a slice of apple, pecan or pumpkin cream cheese from Norske Nook Restaurant and Bakery, the best pie in Wisconsin according to Yahoo Travel. The website picked the best spots for grabbing pie in each state in the country.

The beloved Norwegian restaurant and bakery started in Osseo and now has three additional locations in Rice Lake, Hayward and DeForest.

■ Or you could head to Honeypie Cafe in Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood. Time Out magazine named the cafe's black bottom banana cream pie as the fourth best pie in America.

The pie is a mashup of two of the cafe's bestsellers, with layers of chocolate and banana custard on a graham cracker crust and topped with whipped cream.

■ Keep the comfort food train rolling with a bowl of mac & cheese from The Old Fashioned in Madison. The dish was included on USA Today's 10best list of favorite restaurant versions of the childhood classic.

Raf Miastkowski, a judge for Chicago's Mac & Cheese Fest, shared his favorite restaurant mac & cheeses with the list and said The Old Fashioned's version "is a no-brainer. It's like cheese central."

■ Nurse that food coma and Thanksgiving hangover with a little hair of the dog at Bryant's, Goodkind or Vanguard in Milwaukee or Greenbush Bar in Madison. They all made Liquor.com's "Drink Here Now" list, a collection of the country's 173 greatest, most distinct bars.

Bryant's — Milwaukee's oldest cocktail lounge — claimed the highest spot on the list, coming in at No. 21, while Goodkind was No. 64, Greenbush No. 66 and Vanguard No. 165.

■ If you have 20 days to spare, you could take the ultimate brewery road trip through the country. The website Flowing Data took the top 72 breweries in the country (based on a list by beer review site RateBeer) and created an optimal road trip route to visit each of them, based on algorithms and Google Maps data.

Central Waters Brewing Co. in Amherst was the only Wisconsin brewery to make the list and was the third stop behind Toppling Goliath in Decorah, Iowa, and Surly in Minneapolis.

About Chelsey Lewis

Chelsey Lewis writes about travel and things to do in Wisconsin for Wisconsin Trails and the Journal Sentinel.

• @chelseylew
• clewis@journalsentinel.com
• 414-224-2144