Sometimes it takes recognition from a bigger city for locals in smaller cities, like Milwaukee, to truly take notice. This is the sad truth.

Local media, like OMC, can do stories all day on the cool attributes around us, but it isn't until the "big guys" notice that some people really perk up. This theory, if you will, came to light again recently when NYTimes.com wrote about the growth of fine dining in the Midwest.

Joe Drape wrote, "Excellent fine dining establishments are not new to the Midwest -- or, for that matter, the rest of America. In recent years, however, smaller cities such as Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and St. Louis have sustained not just good individual restaurants but packs of them, along with wine shops and stores selling the latest variety of sea salt."

Milwaukee's own, Sandy D'Amato, was featured:

"In 1989, when Sanford D'Amato turned a family grocery store in his native Milwaukee into a modern dining room with a small business loan and his own and his wife's life savings, he did not know what to expect. Nearly 20 years later, with reams of accolades, he still does not know. In the past six months, he said, he has watched as three upscale restaurants have closed."

D'Amato continued in the story saying," 'There is better food and a more passionate community," Mr. D'Amato said. "But this is a tough business. When you do not have the density in population of New York or Chicago -- where 40 percent or more of your business can be local -- and you do not have steady tourist or convention trade, it's really tough.'"

Read the entire piece titled "Far From the Big Cities, and Not Missing Them" at the link below, and get out and eat at all of Milwaukee's great fine dining establishments.

Similarly, Saveur magazine appears to have fallen in love with Milwaukee. A fish fry cover story a few months back focused on Milwaukee specifially, Historic Turner Restaurant and last month the magazine named The Five O'Clock Steakhouse one of the five best places for steak in the country. The new issue interviews Randy Sprecher for a story about artisanal root beers.