Holy Hill Cafe

Thirty miles north of Milwaukee, the Holy Hill Cafe (aka Old Monastery Inn Cafe) is known for homemade soups, breads and muffins, wallet-friendly sandwiches and Sunday brunch. About a dozen pies are baked each day, star of the show: Fruits of the Forest. This one contains slices of sweet apple that are tender but not mushy and a scarlet mélange of spring rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries. Wonderful filling … and what a crust! Press down on it with a knife and you can hear it shatter. Crisp but not overly brittle, the pie’s wavy top crust glistens with sugar and a few veins of the fruits’ juice that have seeped up through the cracks and around the edge. The bottom crust remains flaky under its lode of fruit and adds a faint hint of cinnamon to the mix. In our never-ending quest to determine which state deserves the crown as King of America’s pies, this one helps keep Wisconsin among the front-runners.