| rev:text
| - Teetering on a 4-star, but just shy...
Tempted by a glowing review on madison.com, we headed over to MadisonTap Saturday night with lofty expectations. I'll give them high marks for the beer selection and atmosphere--this is a great venue to sample a range of beers from rotating local breweries, and you can spend hours on the excellent outdoor patio relaxing and finding your new favorite microbrew (be sure to ask for a sample if you're not sure). The indoor bar also had a great vibe, so it's worth a stop for a drink or two if the weather isn't great. Kudos to the staff, very knowledgable with the beverage part of the menu. I'd say the prices for both beer and food were just right. Portion size was good, each dish was about perfect for two people to share.
But what lured me here was the promise of great food, and here's where things fell short. We ordered the lamb sliders, duck confit taco, fried mushrooms and the pad thai. The winner in this batch was the duck confit taco, great flavors and very juicy. The lamb sliders came in a close second--not too gamey, moist patties, but needing some seasoning. The fried mushrooms were about as expected--way better than the Sysco fried mushrooms you'd expect at a bar, just the right amount of salt, but an average dish. The real disappointment was the pad thai salad. I was told it was a cold salad, and yes it came that way, but it wasn't a great riff on pad thai like I'd hoped: the flavors weren't really "Thai" (think cold Asian noodle salad) and parsley made an odd appearance when cilantro might have been the better choice. Lots of folks were ordering the poutine, might go back here when the beers rotate to give that dish a try.
The staff did a nice job of serving the dishes at a nice even pace, but the dishes didn't get sent out in the order that I was told initially--not a huge deal, but it would be nice to know the actual order in case you want to pair a style of beer with a particular dish.
There were a few little hiccups that I'd normally overlook but altogether they just dampened the overall experience (one dish I ordered didn't make it into the system, my bill showed two beers I didn't order and it missed one beer I did order, a lot of the high top tables were wobbly, etc.). Hopefully these will improve over time, and with a menu refresh (and a website where I can check the menu) I can see myself coming back to give the place another try.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)