How far would you travel on a fairly regular basis for a certain food that you like?  I pondered this question while enjoying a pretzel bagel from a place about 30 miles from my home.  Obviously, although the bagel is delicious, I will not be making the trip just for another one.

What about other favorite foods though?  Fortunately for me, my favorite turkey burger happens to be served at Village Inn, about a mile from my house, although my second-favorite one comes from Just Turkey, about 10 miles away.

I love the goat cheese and chicken pizza at Graziano’s, about four miles from my home.  That is a reasonable distance, especially for the pizza, which I described as “fabulous” in a GT review a few years back.

Cannoli is my dessert weakness.  While many Italian restaurants serve cannoli, most are simply adequate.  DiMaggio Café has eliminated all other places from my radar.  I make the eight-mile trip fairly regularly.

I am not much of a cookie eater, but when I want cookies (or if I am buying for others), I make the 30-mile trek to my childhood neighborhood to buy them from Calumet Bakery.  You might question my sanity in driving that far for cookies, but you wouldn’t if you ever had them.

Along the same lines, I just had the best macaroni and cheese of my life at Kuma’s Corner.  My friends say the same about its burgers.  It is a pub a few miles away, but the wait to get in can be three hours.  That’s a long wait, even for incredibly good mac and cheese.

Getting back to my original pondering, the bagel situation could have been a real dilemma, but I devised a plan, and it worked.  I brought a couple to my local bagel place, and they have reproduced it quite well.  Don’t worry.  This will not lead me to bring other foods to more local places for replication.

I’d love to hear your stories about how far you have traveled or how long you have waited for any of your favorite foods.

— John Wroblewski, online contributor