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| - If pressed, I'd have to say that Mickey's is my favorite bar in Madison, which, as you know, is a town full of great bars. I come to Mickey's for three reasons, in ascending order of awesomeness-of-experience: typical bar-going; my Wednesday knitting group; and their weekend brunch.
Mickey's as a bar is fun and homey. It's a collection of different rooms, plus an outdoor patio, which on summer evenings is a divine place to have a beer with friends. The beer selection itself isn't huge, but it's definitely more than adequate. The bartenders are friendly and don't play favorites. There's lots of seating and standing room. The crowd is local, pleasant, and hip, but not too hip -- the "swivel factor" is pretty low here. And they host cool stuff like April '10's Karaoke Underground, which was one of the funnest nights of my life!
Mickey's has been incredibly accommodating to our fairly rowdy, 10- to 20-person knitting group as well; while they couldn't reserve a space for us for our Wednesday evening meetings (we generally gather from 5-ish to 9-ish), the back room is usually available, and the wait staff is always gracious as we clamor for booze, soda and food. They're responsive to our requests and frequently check on us. Jane herself even dropped by once to welcome us!
But my favorite reason to come to Mickey's is their weekend brunch, which I adore so much that my boyf and I have made it a Saturday-morning ritual. The World's Greatest Sandwich (a BLT with a fried egg and Swiss cheese) is, indeed, the world's greatest sandwich, and their bloodies are always topped with a delicious assortment of pickled vegetables (my favorite is the Brussels sprout). The coffee is serve-yourself (yes!!) and FREE (YES!!!!). The waiters and bartenders are very sweet and always smile politely when I give them my Sally Albright-style sandwich specifications. The food in general is actually really good -- everything I've tried has been tasty -- although, as a creature of habit, I do tend to stick to the WSG.
So, Mickey's is really more than just a bar -- it's a restaurant, a meeting place, and the kind of cozy, quirky establishment that makes me thank my lucky stars I live in the Wil-Mar neighborhood.
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