National Mustard Museum

That's a lot of mustard. Ann Althouse/Used with permission

For many years the highlight of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, was the famous Mustard Museum, run by a local celebrity (Barry Levenson, famous for the mustard museum, naturally) and home to a huge collection of both new and “antique” mustards from all over the world. The museum was small, but delightful, and the collection of antique-mustard serving sets was particularly charming. There was also a stream of movies, such as Mustard: The Spice of Nations, shown throughout the day on a big television in a little seating area known as the “Mustard Piece Theatre.”

When the growing collection strained the location, the mustard museum moved 18 miles to Middleton. Now dubbed the National Mustard Museum, it houses an extensive collection devoted to what staff call “the king of condiments, the “collegiate “Poupon U,” and a gift shop that offers hundreds of mustards ranging from fruity to super hot, all of which can be sampled on request. If one is really serious about mustard, the first Saturday of August is National Mustard Day, and cause for a full-on festival at the museum.