Mack’s to be featured on ‘America’s Best Restaurants’

Matthew Day

Staff

August 10, 2026

DE PERE – A late-night scroll through TikTok led Mack’s Pub & Grill to an unexpected opportunity – a chance to share its story with a national audience. 

Owner Wendy Alvarez said it all started when she happened across a post on TikTok seeking applications to be featured on the YouTube show “America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow.” 

Per its channel, the show’s hosts travel the nation as part of the roadshow, tasting “interesting dishes, learning recipes and hearing the stories of mom-and-pop restaurants from coast to coast.” 

After she decided to apply, Alvarez said neither she nor her son, Manager Jordan Schmitz, expected the “basement bar” at 2983 Lawrence Drive to get a response – but it did. 

“We were both shocked,” she said. 

After completing one, and then another video interview with representatives from the show, Alvarez said she and Schmitz received an even bigger surprise: Mack’s was selected and would be featured in an upcoming episode. 

“We were very excited,” she said. “I really didn’t expect to get in, because there are thousands of bars and restaurants. Especially in Wisconsin, [there’s one on] every corner almost, so we were really, really surprised.” 

Alvarez said she could only guess why “America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow” – with its more than 19,000 YouTube subscribers – considered Mack’s a good fit. 

Being in “a smaller town” like De Pere, she said, may have been a factor, as is the bar’s unique basement setup. 

“They don’t do any franchises or anything – it has to be a single restaurant/bar,” she said. “That was part of it. They also like that it’s female-owned, minority-owned and family-owned.” 

As was the case with other regional establishments featured on the show in recent years – including Redwood Inn, Copper State Brewing Co. and The Booyah Shed – Alvarez said she was tasked with selecting a limited number of menu items to represent Mack’s at its best. 

For the July 14 taping, she said she chose three dishes: a 12-inch supreme pizza, traditional bone-in wings with garlic-parmesan sauce and wonton-rolled mozzarella logs. 

“Those are the three that are made almost completely in-house,” she said. “The wings are brined for 48 hours in our own brine.” 

For the pizza – which Alvarez said is a top seller – everything but the crust is freshly prepared at Mack’s, including the sauce, vegetables and Wisconsin cheese. 

She said she and Schmitz are “hands-on managers” dedicated to serving the many regular customers, families and local amateur sports teams who come to Mack’s. 

Comparatively, they said being on camera and/or interviewed is well out of their comfort zones. 

“We’re not really out there talking with everybody and in the spotlight, [saying], ‘Hey, I’m the boss’ or ‘I’m the owner,’” she said. “We’re not like that, so this is putting us out there, which is kind of unique for us.” 

The road to showtime 

Alvarez said she and Schmitz established roots at Mack’s before she bought it in early 2025. 

“I was a bartender there for about six years, and he was a cook for about four years before I bought it,” she said. 

When the previous owner decided to sell the business, Alvarez said buying it was not something she had initially considered.

However, after several prospective buyers fell through, she said she began to talk to the owner about it.

“It just kind of happened…,” she said. “We talked about it one night, and I said, ‘Ah, let’s try it – let’s see what happens.’” 

Once she took over, Alvarez said very little changed at the place where “everybody knows your name,” with almost all of the staff still on board from the previous owner’s tenure. 

That reliable consistency extends to the food at Mack’s as well as the cleanliness of the establishment – all of which she said is appreciated by its regular customers. 

Alvarez said neither she nor her customers were overly familiar with “America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow” before she began her application/interview process. 

“I just thought it was going to be a quick little shot, like a one-minute type of thing,” she said. “I didn’t realize how in-depth it was until we got into it.” 

Alvarez said the process began back in January when the show’s team began promoting the filming by posting on the restaurant’s Facebook page, encouraging engagement and in-person attendance for the taping. 

Meanwhile, preparing Mack’s Pub & Grill for its national spotlight, Alvarez said, was no small task, 

“We kind of approached it from the perspective of, ‘Hey, we have company coming to visit,’” she said. 

For the big day, roughly 40 enthusiastic customers showed up for the filming – all of whom, Alvarez laughed, were “surprisingly” well behaved. 

She said having so many good-spirited attendees made for an enjoyable atmosphere for the show’s hosts and crew. 

“They thought it was really comfortable,” she said. “The people were happy, employees were happy and everybody was having a good time.” 

Alvarez and Schmitz said the filming went off without a hitch, and in a matter of hours, the “America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow” van packed up and left, leaving them in a combined state of relief and disbelief. 

“I don’t know how to feel about it yet,” Schmitz laughed. “To be honest, I don’t know if it’s fully sunk in yet.” 

The next step, the two said, is for them to have an advanced viewing of the episode before it’s posted. 

Though it ultimately “went really well,” Alvarez said she doesn’t know what to expect of the final product.  

Until then, following an experience that was “a little awkward and uncomfortable for us,” she said she and Schmitz have enjoyed resuming their more familiar roles. 

“I’m excited to be back to work,” she laughed. “We like to be the support crew, to make sure [the employees] have everything they need to do their jobs.” 

More on Mack’s 

Alvarez said she’s already seen “a little bit of an influx of business” for Mack’s, including with its online food orders (limited to pizza, wings and garlic bread) via mackspubandgrill.com. 

She said she anticipates even more attention once the episode is posted on YouTube, which the producers have told her to expect in mid-August. 

Regulars at Mack’s, Alvarez said, have already begun joking about how packed the place is going to be after it airs. 

“We’ve already heard, ‘Oh, people are going to take my bar stool – I have to reserve it in advance,’ and silly stuff like that,” she said. 

Jokes aside, Alvarez said she assures customers Mack’s will uphold the service and quality they’ve come to expect regardless of how many customers walk through the door. 

“We want to remain consistent with what we’re doing, because that’s what got us here,” she said. “We don’t want to change that.” 

If anything, Alvarez said she considers the attention from “America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow” to be confirmation that she and Schmitz are running the place well and building on what customers have long appreciated about Mack’s. 

“I feel like we’re on the right track because we really didn’t change a whole lot when we took over,” she said. “[The previous owner] had great recipes, great customers, a great location – everything was in line. We really just fine-tuned everything. We put some procedures in place and cleaned up a little bit, but the structure was there already.” 

For the encouragement and spotlight, Alvarez said she’s grateful to “America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow” for choosing Mack’s. 

“We were very humbled by the whole experience in general…,” she said. “They were great to work with, very nice, easygoing and kind of guided us through the process.” 

Alvarez said she’s thankful for the hard work of the pub/grill’s team – “we wouldn’t be here without them” – and to the customers “for being regulars and being with us through this whole process.” 

Follow Mack’s Pub & Grill on Facebook for announcements regarding the upcoming episode.