Today we launched our 11th annual Best of Dining survey, and like every year, we expect it to be a big success. But 11 years is a long time, and to keep it fresh, we work on evolving the list each time we roll it out.
Over the years, we’ve added questions, dabbled with new, fun and sometimes weird categories, and we’ve even broken down the list down by location.
But this year, we cut 20 questions. It wasn’t easy to go from 50 to 30, but there’s a method to our madness.
First, the list was becoming redundant and dated. "Best Patio" made sense before every restaurant in Milwaukee had one. Or "Best Hot Dogs" – some 1,050 of you skipped that question last year. Apparently sausage wasn’t something you feel strongly about.
In some cases, we combined categories, especially where there was too much overlap. Now "Best Bar Food" and "Best Comfort Food" are one. We’ll see how it plays out.
But there were other reasons we shrunk the list from 50 to 30. Even though votes were at a record high in 2012, we figured that making the list shorter and easier to complete would strengthen each category. And when we reveal the results in October, during OnMilwaukee.com Dining Month, we can now do so one category at a time, each and every day.
We hope you like the new, slimmer list, and hope you take a few minutes to vote. If you don’t see your favorite restaurant on the list, please write it in as an "other." And yes, we looked at last year’s write in votes and included them whenever the bested our curated list of top 15.
May the best Milwaukee restaurants win!
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
