Field note
Ninety-four restaurants and none of them eaten
The spreadsheet is finished, which feels like an accomplishment until you look at what it says: ninety-four restaurants, thirteen zip codes, zero visited.
I built the list before I built the appetite. That’s probably backwards.
Why zip codes
Neighborhoods in Madison are a matter of opinion. Ask three people where Schenk-Atwood ends and you get four answers, one of which involves a bridge. Zip codes have the enormous advantage of not caring what anyone thinks. The post office drew them, the post office defends them, and I can finish one and know I finished it.
So: one zip at a time, in order, until each one is closed out.
The problem with 53703
Twenty-one of the ninety-four are downtown — nearly a quarter of the whole project inside the isthmus. Starting there means front-loading the biggest zip while I still have enthusiasm to spend, and it means the first stretch of this blog is going to be State Street, which is not exactly uncharted territory.
The alternative is to start somewhere small — 53717 has three — and buy myself an early completed square on the map.
I’m going to start with 53703 anyway. If the point is to eat everything, the point is not to arrange the schedule so it feels good early.
What counts
The list already contains an ice cream shop, several cafés, and a taco counter operating inside a coffee bar. Whether those are “restaurants” is a question I have been quietly avoiding since the second week of building the sheet.
That’s the next post. Somebody has to draw the line, and it turns out to be me.