The Old Fashioned seems to be a Madisonian staple and yesterday was the second time I've been there. I kept waiting to be blown away but it didn't seem to pan out. We arrived around 3:30 on a Sunday afternoon and were surprised at how busy it was. The host seated us at a table near the front windows. After sitting in blinding sunshine and swatting flies for five minutes (apparently the blinds were broken) we asked our waitress to seat us somewhere else. She turned around and left and we sat there wondering what to do. Then she motioned us from across the room to follow her. So the three of us picked up our water glasses, menus, silverware and napkins (the waitress really should have accommodated a bit more) and reseated us.
A new waiter greeted us and dropped off an order of cheese curds before running to another table. We all looked at each other... free cheese curds? Well, no. It turned out the waiter confused our table # with another so the other table got their (now cold) cheese curds.
We ordered a cheese plate. They were out of the Camembert... the one cheese we were all dying to try.
I mean, seriously. Seriously?
We sub'd a blue cheese on the cheese plate and two out of the three cheeses were great. The wine selection was not great but they carry Cupcake wines, which I love and have a hard time finding commercially. The cheese curds we eventually did order were hot and greasy and chewy, so we knew they were fresh. The tossed green salad I ordered was enormous and unimpressive... like they had dumped a bag of lettuce onto a plate.
The best part of our early dinner? The prostitute and her john sitting at the bar in front of us. It was a lot like dinner theater, only much more uncomfortable.
Bottom line: Solid three star dining which makes me sad since it could be a wonderful five star kind of a place with a few tweaks.