Last month I had the pleasure of visiting Door County, Wis., my first visit to the Midwest. With a large Scandinavian population, Door County was also the perfect place to try Swedish cuisine for the first time, taking us to Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik, located on the main street of Sister Bay. Before being seated, we took the time to look around the restaurant’s butik gift shop, filled with a plethora of Scandinavian products ranging from jewelry to books on Swedish history to traditional clothing handknit in Sweden. A video playing in the lobby explains the quirky history of the restaurant. The dining room is designed as traditional as possible, with the building renovated with logs imported from Norway. Waitresses dressed in traditional dirndls served us the restaurant’s own locally roasted coffee, available in the online store, alongside their pancake mix and lingonberries. Though I’m not familiar with the cuisine, I quite enjoyed the Swedish meatballs, which were nice and dense yet juicy, covered in a rich gravy. The pancakes and lingonberry jam were even more phenomenal: light and thin with just the right amount of sweet to go with the lingonberries and Wisconsin butter. Our meal was capped off with an interesting sight outside the restaurant. Shortly after their renovations in 1973, Al was gifted a goat named Oscar as a joke, which Al placed on the roof for a laugh. Attracting the attention of pedestrians, Al thus started the daily ritual of having goats graze the sod roof of the restaurant. Taken off every night and brought back in the morning, Al Johnson’s goats can be seen live on the restaurant’s Goat Cam. — Akhil Kalepu, digital coordinator, Trazee Travel