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| - So I really wanted to love this restaurant. Long term love. Always and forever love. The restaurant is owned by a great chef, the reservations are difficult to get for a weekend, the downtown atmosphere is right and the menu....wow it sounds amazing! The actual meal and experience though was like that first date that the online profile was a little different than meeting in person.
First let me say, it was good. There is nothing that stands out as "that's the last date" deal breaker. The service was excellent, provided by a server named Michael S. who knew the menu like he wrote it himself. Always helpful, insightful and descriptive with his answers, not to mention keeping the glasses full and the table clean without the invasive, annoying, in your business attitude you find in the service industry. We were seated in an area with a long bench and tables a little too close together, the kind where you can order based on what the next table over is having and possibly take a fork full of theirs to sample before you commit. This caused the wait staff to have to edge in between the tables to talk and I am now acutely aware of what type of jeans the waiter for the table next to us was wearing. These are little gripes, nothing that turns me off. The meal was where I started wondering if the relationship was going to work out.
I love tapas, and the idea of tasting as many things as you can. So we did. While we were looking at the menu the people at the table next to us warned us away from a couple of things they had, like the baked goat cheese they deemed "meh". So we tried other items. We had some amazing dishes, to be completely fair. The crab ceviche was so good that my wife ordered a second one. The oysters were very good, and the brie also. But then we tried the marinated tuna, which frankly was similar to canned Charlie the Tuna. The pot roast, which sounded amazing, was sliced like seared tuna and very dry and not what you would expect given the menu description. My octopus however, was so tender I would not have guessed that is what I was eating, in a pleasant way. We had the standard marinated olives which had a nice kiss of orange/citrus to them and the dates wrapped in prosciutto which were more savory than expected and worth ordering. To quote another person who reviewed this place "If it's a crostini, then say it's a crostini". If the Brie is actually a crostini, one bite, with brie then put that on the menu.
By the end I was wondering if we were just going to shake hands and go our separate ways, there were a lot of good flavors but not a lot of WOW. Then the Basque cake arrived. They had read my message on open table that it was my wife's birthday so there was a candle on top of the most amazing cake I have ever eaten. Soft and good on the inside with a firmer outside and served with the right tartness of cherries and sweetness of ice cream, for the win of best bite of the night. tonight.
So will we run off and elope? Probably not. But we may casually date and in a town like Madison with a ton of other choices it would be very difficult to commit to regular visits. Definitely worth trying, but I think it is still a work in progress.
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