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| - So, I've been stalking this place for months waiting for it to open. Seriously. And I'm so happy to see it finally open!! What a gorgeous restaurant! And great food! I can tell already that they will be a wonderful addition to the Madison food scene.
First up, the atmosphere: It's beautiful inside. It feels like a place you'd want to hang out. More tables than bar space, but that works considering their menu! Asian themed without being too in your face or stereotyping.
The drinks: I loved the Tokyo mule! Just the right amount of spice for me, with the fun choice of soju instead of vodka. I also got the mono no aware, which was good too, but perhaps a little too complex to have with dinner. Lots of good flavor layers. Andrew at the bar was very nice and checked in with me to make sure everything was good.
The food: Woo! All your favorites from Umami are here too! The classic pork buns, renamed the "o.g." pork buns here, accurately, are still on point. I tried to get the new and different options though, so I left the awesome ramen for another day and sampled the korean spicy wings (split with another), the chicken bun (split), the sashimi, and the beef noodle soup. Amazingly, it didn't end up being too much food... Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but definitely good for this trial experience!
The crispiness of wings was very good, but could have just a little more time in the marinade. The chicken bun was very yummy, but... I think I would choose the pork bun over it. How can you pass up those pork buns?!?!? Definitely worth getting though, and now I'm considering a future where I just get buns for dinner... The sashimi was good, but a little expensive for my tastes. 6 pieces for $16 is a hefty price tag, even though they were fresh and good sized pieces. Finally, the beef noodle soup. Pretty good! Udon noodles, to me, aren't exactly the right noodles to go with that soup (I prefer skinny noodles) but the broth was very good. I was hesitant since the menu mentioned some spices I don't normally associate with beef noodle soup, but it was very well balanced!
The service: The one drawback to our experience. Not that this was bad service at all (but my friends also tell me I'm too nice about this sort of thing, so be your own judge)! Seems like they've just got some kinks to work out. Our group of six first got seated at the sushi bar. Okay, cool view, but kind of odd because then we couldn't actually talk, so we requested to change to a table, which they were very nice about. The ordering was a bit hapazard--my side of the table ordered appetizers and the other side ordered their full meals, which we figured out after a little while and caught up on ordering, but that meant our food came out at weird times. There also was some confusion on what we ordered and who ordered what; one of my friends got served another table mates' order and proceeded to eat it, thinking he misordered, and we only discovered the mixup when his original entree showed up. Again, they were very nice about it and comped the meal of the poor guy without a dinner, but definitely unexpected!
First night jitters? Overall, TL;DR: we will be back! Good food, great atmosphere, they might just need a little time to settle into being open!
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