rev:text
| - Don't be fooled as you pull up to Umami. The restaurant looks like an normal house on the outside, but inside there is a small bar and about a dozen tables inside.
Umami's bar has a nice selection of sake, sake mixed drinks, and a good selections of beer. It's not too big, but it's big enough to mingle and make some new friends. One thing I didn't understand is how you could not take your bar tab to your table. The bartender made me close out and pay before sitting down to order food.
The food was decent. Nothing to write home and tell everyone to fly out to Madison to try their food. The best thing we had were the steam pork buns. Pretty traditional. Nice steamed bun, with a nice slice of pork belly served with scallions, cucumbers and hoisin sauce. The dumplings weren't anything special. Tasted like frozen pot stickers from the store. We had an order of pork and shrimp, and I probably had a total of 3 whole shrimps in 4 potstickers. The ramen was decent. I'm glad we ordered the other food because this is probably the smallest bowl of ramen I've ever had. Noodles were cooked well, but I think i had two strips of bamboo shoots and half a cup of noodles. The tonkatsu soup was lacking on the pork flavor. It had a good color, but was really light on the fatty pork flavor.
Overall, Umami was delicious for the area and it could be a lot worse. If I am ever back in Madison and I need a bowl of ramen, Umami is the place to go.
|