1st Place: Duncan Creek Wine Bar & Grille
2nd Place: The Livery
3rd Place: Water Street Deli

No matter your taste or how you slice it, the past year’s crop of new restaurants has been worth your weight in saliva (and that’s a delicacy in some places!). If you need reminding, there was Milwaukee Burger Co., Sonic, Secret Garden, Taverna Grill, and Asia Palace. Pretty dang good. But the cream of the crop was Chippewa Falls’ Duncan Creek Wine Bar & Grill, an excellent upscale eatery with reasonable prices, an intimate date night atmosphere, and fantastic food on a regularly changing menu. Continuing the development in Phoenix Park, John Mogensen opened the much-anticipated Livery over summer. Perhaps playing off the unique transformation of the building, The Livery strangely combines country and urban for the atmosphere, and its menu bends classic items like a monte cristo with French toast. Brilliant. Also worth noting is Water Street Deli, providing Mediterranean cuisine like gyros and hummus and a small specialty grocery store. – Trevor Kupfer