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Reader question: Please explain this headline: Wine museum is toast of the town. My comments: Toast of the town? That means the wine museum is a favorite place to go to, attracting lots of visitors – wine buffs and everyone else alike. We know round the dining table that if you propose a toast you mean to offer to have a drink in honor of a person. So here, you can see the wine museum as a person to whom everyone raises a glass because they like it, the museum, so much. Toast, originally is, well, burned bread and, surprise, not for eating directly but for dipping into beer. Well, apparently in the past (18th Century), beer drinkers used to dip a piece of newly roasted bread into their beer to get that burned-wheat flavor, which, surprise, surprise is considered particularly palatable by many. If you have ever tasted the Irish Guinness beer, you know what I mean. Anyways, suffice to know that once upon a time, beer and roasted bread (toast) were de rigueur and they went hand in hand. And, back then drinkers liked to raise a toast every time they buy a drink, as the Phrase Finder explains (Phrases.org.uk): As to the phrase ‘the toast of the town’, this came about at the exclusively male drinking clubs of the early 18th century. The ‘toast’ was the woman who was regarded as the reigning belle of the season. The chaps were invited to flavour and heat their wine with hot spiced toasts and drink to ‘the toast of the town’. The English Poet Laureate Colley Cibber wrote about ‘toasting’ in the comic play Careless Husband, 1705: | 
