Your votes are in, Milwaukee, and you have selected the winners of OnMilwaukee's Best Dining 2011. We're announcing the results of this readers' poll, including our editors' pick, in a series of articles that run all October long during Dining Month on OnMilwaukee.com.
For the fifth straight year, October is Dining Month on OnMilwaukee.com, presented by Concordia University. All month, we're stuffed with restaurant reviews, delectable features, chef profiles and unique articles on everything food, as well as the winners of our "Best of Dining 2011."
From a less-than-flashy location on the corner of a mostly residential block at 1547 N. Jackson St., world-class chef/owner Sanford D'Amato created a culinary landmark out of what had been the family's corner grocery.
D'Amato has been voted best chef in the previous two OnMilwaukee Best Dining surveys, a mark of his importance in our culinary pantheon. He's a 1974 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and came home to Milwaukee in 1980 to go to work in the kitchen at John Byron's – opening Sanford in 1989. His wife, Angie, is general manager and co-owner of the restaurant, while Justin Aprahamian is the chef de cuisine.
The menu at Sanford changes with the seasons, and it's made up of the best ingredients, creating a pricey, special-occasion dining choice that was the clear choice among OnMilwaukee readers for the best in the city.
This is a serious dining choice for serious diners, and it's a salute to the sophistication of the Milwaukee dining crowd that it has made an upscale restaurant like Sanford its top pick.
OnMilwaukee.com editors' choice: Crazy Water
Runners-up:
2. Maxie's Southern Comfort
3. Lake Park Bistro
4. La Merenda
5. Bacchus
6. Crazy Water
7. Comet
8. Roots
9. Carnevor
10. Ryan Braun's Graffito
11. Beans & Barley
12. Pastiche
13. Ward's House of Prime
14. Coquette Cafe
15. Tess
