Letters: Long Live the Plaza

My husband and I so enjoyed your article on Plazaburgers [Traditions, Winter 2010]. As graduate students, we would frequent the Plaza several times a week and fell in love with Plazaburgers. After graduating and moving to the Boston area, we spent many hours in the kitchen trying to re-create the famous sauce — to no avail.

Then our daughter had a boyfriend from Minneapolis who would make a pre-arranged nighttime stop in Madison to pick up a shipment of Plaza sauce and bring it east. That worked until she moved to California, but then a fortuitous professional encounter led us to someone who knew someone still living in Madison who shipped another container out, and we had a big Plazaburger party.

Alas, all our sources dried up until we returned to Wisconsin for my husband’s fortieth college reunion in Appleton. We couldn’t resist — we made a Madison run — and everything was just the same as we remembered it — right down to the duct tape on the seats. Who says you can’t go home again? May the Plaza live on forever!

(Barbara) Sue Phillips Snyder MA’66 and Dick Snyder MA’66 Southborough, Massachusetts

Published in the Spring 2011 issue