Add these food and drink destinations to your culinary bucket list.

We sat down with Daniel Bonanno, a James Beard Award semifinalist for Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2013 and owner of Madison-based restaurant A Pig in a Fur Coat and the Alimentari deli.

Dan Jacobs and Dan Van Rite own DanDan, EsterEv (an intimate dining experience located inside of DanDan with a guest-chef series) and Fauntleroy, all located in Milwaukee’s Third Ward.

Running the kitchen at Black Forest Pub & Grille in Three Lakes is Marcel Biró, whose career began as one of Germany’s youngest master chefs. By age 24, he already had worked for then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

When FSR (a trade magazine for the fullservice restaurant industry) came up with a list of 40 rising-star chefs in 2017, almost all of them were working in the nation’s largest cities. Tyler Sailsbery was an exception.

Two-time nominee Lisa Carlson and partner Carrie Summer, (who are both Kansas City Barbeque Society Certified judges; Summer’s also a pastry chef), co-own the cozy Chef Shack in Bay City, within a block of the Mississippi River. Their weathered clapboard building, a former tavern, is open—at most—three days and 14 hours per week.

Milwaukee chef Justin Carlisle spreads the locavore love. Carlisle found his groove in his home state of Wisconsin when he opened Ardent in Milwaukee the fall of 2013.