| rev:text
| - I love the way the bar looks. If you haven't seen it, come see it. Hundreds of wine bottles stacked together underneath a smooth light wood bar. Subdued art deco and that shiny backbar. It's beautiful.
I sit in the middle of the bar and order a warm rum drink, a lobster bisque, and a carpetbagger. I've met a lot of the staff here, so they were fairly casual with me, but I wish they had steered me in a better direction with my orders.
The warm rum cocktail was totally fine with the horrible weather we've been having, but the bisque was pretty moderate. Bisques are heavily seasoned creamy crustacean soups, and while the bisque wasn't as hot or seasoned as I'd have liked (I want my bisque to be heavily salted and seasoned and gluttonous in general), the real offenders were the burnt capers and overdone bits of lobster. Now, I get that Wisconsin folks can be scared of seafood, but they're lobster! Figure out just how much to cook them before throwing them in hot soup and it's amazing.
A hip mixed couple sat down next to me at the bar. The man was a berret wearing Jewish gentlemen that kept company with a Japanese woman wearing legwarmers. We had a really good conversation.
The steak arrived mid conversation. I was kind of stunned with the presentation. Carpetbag steaks are oysters and steaks put together. Tldr carpetbag steaks are opulence for your mouth. What was on the plate was a 12 inch kabob through my 8oz tenderloin on top of a thin brown sauce. It didn't look rich which is a problem especially when it doesn't taste rich. I immediately tried ordering the scalloped potatoes (which I know are amazing), but I was told they were out. Hilariously when my chef buddy showed me the kitchen, there they were. I tried ordering anything *fast* so I could keep my meal going, but neither bartender knew what was quick. I ended up with hash browns.
Jazz starts. Dim yellow lights and shadows bounce around the contours of the giant sea shell at the end of the bar. Of course it's Wisconsin and they end their set with a birthday shout out.
My friends came and we sat and talked. Chef buddy from before is interested in food and we chatted a lot - especially about that carpetbagger. He agreed with me on p much all points. I probably could have complained my way to something else on the menu, but that wasn't really my goal. My other friend came and she ordered an Awniker and a smoke stack. Along with the Oyster Burger, those two are my go tos.
What's really funny is that while this review sounds pretty negative, I still like the place. It's really easy to discredit the ambiance, and conversation, and music. It's really easy to focus on my bad experience even though that Oyster Burger is maybe my favorite in Madison. To be honest, this review is just a long writeup about the small things that keep this place from being great.
|
![[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)