I was interested in going to this restaurant because when I was researching restaurants in Madison, this was basically described as the Chez Panisse of Madison. The restaurant was originally opened in 1976 (just 5 years after Chez Panisse) which is 49 years ago (or as Andrea says “it’s been open forever!”). I was looking forward to the farm to table cuisine and dishes making the best use of the local produce.
We dressed up just a little bit for dinner since that’s what we like to do. In general, we were dressier in comparison to most of the diners (or the other way we could probably say it was that we were a bit overdressed).
We went with the tasting menu (although Andrea was tempted to go a la carte since there was a chicken dish that looked interesting to her and she could also get the cheese course) and did one of the standard pairings ($85) and one of the reserve pairings ($150); there is also a Cellar Gems pairing for $225, but we didn’t want to go with that since we weren’t sure how good their pairings would be.
The first bite/amuse bouche was a fresh fruit tart. This was also followed by another bite of a mini taco with shiso leaf, local squash, hazelnut and had a nice fresh flavor from the ingredients.
The first true course was the Hamachi Crudo en Adobo. It featured corn from local producer Alsum Farms, some blue corn tostaditos, and a pico de gallo. It was ok, but I’m generally wary of crudos since I of course expect the fish to be very fresh and this was decent, although we’ve had our share of better hamachi.
Next came the Spaghetti Alla Chittarra which is a square cut spaghetti. This included some grilled zucchini from Roots Down Farm, a delightful lightly fried squash blossom, Pecorino Raomano, Big Sky Grana from Bleu Mont Dairy, and bit of basil sauce. Another nice dish with local ingredients.
Our next course was the Alaskan Halibut Char Siu. This dish came in two parts, one part Chinese inspired and one part Japanese. The fish was sprinkled with sesame and roasted and set atop some gai lan/Chinese broccoli, snap peas, and porcini mushroom-XO sauce fried rice. The Japanese part came in the for of the king crab chawanmushi with yuzu ponzu. We eat a lot of Asian food including char siu pork and chawanmushi and unfortunately, these seemed very bland renditions of a Chinese and Japanese (to be fair, we’ve also had plenty of meh chawanmushi here in SF too and this was not neccessarily any worse than any of those, but that didn’t make this very good).
Our first meat course was the Pinn-Oak Ridge Lamb Spare Rib Shawarma. This is was described as compressed lamb seasoned with shawarma seasoning. This was topped with a cucumber yogurt and some cilantro, fava beans halves, and some other red herb/flower. There was also a sumac-sweet onion salad and a Jones Valley Farm fava bean falafel. This was all set atop some fava bean tahini and a which made for a colorful plate. Again, I found this to be a weak and relatively bland rendition of another ethnic dish/cuisine.
The last savory course was the New York Strip from Son of a Beach Farm. This was also served with slices of Spanish Octopus, a sort of layered potato that they called patatas bravas (not like any patatas bravas I’ve ever had…), a red sauce that I assume was supposed to be a mojo sauce to go with the patatas bravas, a bit of sautéed escarole/endive from Squashington Farms, sungold tomato, and rosemary aioli. The octopus was chewy, so I didn’t care much for that, but the steak was cooked perfectly and with the aioli had a very strong rosemary flavor. Some might find that overpowering, but we are quite fond of rosemary and did enjoy the dish on the strength of the steak.
We were then given a sorbet as a palate cleanser. The fun thing with this is that it was topped with a bit of grated cheese. Very on-brand for Wisconsin and we enjoyed that.
The dessert course was the Door Country Sweet Cherry Fool. Andrea and I were married in Door County where her parents had lived and so we have a soft spot for Door County cherries. This dish was a sweet corn budino with Thai Basil (from the L’Etoile rooftop garden) shortbread, cherries of course, topped with a brown sugar corn cake. We absolutely loved this dessert (and we’re not always big dessert people) with the fresh ingredients thoughtfully combined and composed.
There were a few dishes that we really enjoyed, the ones that we felt delivered on letting the local ingredients speak for themselves. The ones that really fell flat were the Asian-inspired and Middle Eastern-inspired dishes since they just ended up being pale imitations of the real thing. Lastly, the meal was quite pricey (esp. with the wine pairings) and I would guess very pricey by Madison standards. I can appreciate their significance in the history of cuisine in Madison, but I can’t say I thought it was top tier cuisine by today’s standards.
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