"Check, Please!" has been checking out Chicago area restaurants for years. But for the first time, host Alpana Singh and a crew of amateur eaters headed north of the state line to sample the culinary delights of Milwaukee.
And wine expert Singh, along with this week's crew on the show from Chicago's WTTW-TV – Des Plaines Ald. Dick Sayad, marketing coordinator Denise Hibbard and musician/educator Erick Deshaun Dorris – made some very good choices, starting with lunch at Kopp's Frozen Custard.
Other stops on their two-day agenda included the Harbor House (where they particularly enjoyed their view of the Milwaukee Art Museum), Blue's Egg, Comet Cafe, and, a more traditional Milwaukee dining spot, Karl Ratzsch's.
Here's a group of Chicago-area residents genuinely surprised by what they find here in Milwaukee.
Although the show normally doesn't air here, Milwaukee Public TV has scheduled an airing of the Brew City "Check, Please! On the Road" episode at 9 p.m. Saturday on Channel 36.
Here's an appetizing promo from WTTW-TV for the Milwaukee episode of "Check, Please!"
On TV: Bravo is going ahead with the 8 p.m. Monday second season premiere of "The Housewives of Beverly Hills," despite the continuing controversy over the suicide of Russell Armstrong, the estranged husband of one of those wives. The episode will open with interviews with the cast about what happened.
- AOLTV.com reports that Marquette grad Danny Pudi of "Community" will have a cameo in another NBC show, "Chuck," in the new season's fifth episode.
- There's a "Blues Brothers" TV show in the works, pushed by John Belushi's widow.
- The president's decision to speak to Congress at 7 p.m. Thursday on his plan to create jobs, rather than his original Wednesday date will create an interesting conflict with the NFL season opener which features our very own Green Bay Packers.
- Apple's iTunes Store has announced plans to stop renting out TV show episodes. It will continue selling the episodes.
Don't assume anything: There's no official word on who will replace Steve Carell's Michael Scott as the boss on the office. James Spader's Robert California is supposed to replace Kathy Bates, who's going to concentrate on her "Harry's Law."
But there are hints that Spader's going to take over the boss' chair, like this video from NBC:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
