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| - Dotty's is not fantastic, but it is certainly good, as well as quirky and charming enough to separate it from the 1,383 other burger joints within a mile of the U. of Wisconsin.
Like every other place in Madison, Dotty's claims to have the best fried cheese curds in town. They may all be right, of course, because deep-fried cheese is hardly a delicacy that lends itself to easy shades of distinction. But these are a fine representation of the genre.
To my legion of fans who all know that I have weird, not-quite-vegetarian views on animal treatment, I must confess: I got a burger. It was not made of vegetables. I was assured that the cow grazed on pasture land, that her name was Sandra, and that she thanked them for her kind life and good death in her own inimitable cow idiom. Her heroic sacrifice brought me a damn good sandwich, as all of Dotty's are, and some guilt that I will now drown with PBR. It is not my fault: there is nothing else to eat here, as you may suspect by the average star rating of the non-burger places on this list as given by me or anyone else. State Street is a food desert if you refuse to eat cow.
But I digress: in two visits to Dotty's, I saw solid food, friendly service, old woody pub ethos, a great beer selection,1950's live action Disney movies on the TV, many happy locals, a few happy tourists, and enough vintage sci-fi kitsch on the walls and shelves to fill a very nerdy old lady's antique shop. And that's more than enough, in the end, to say that I'm a fan.
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