This was my second time at this restaurant. Last time I had the steak and lobster, which was pretty good. It does have a nice ambiance and if you get an earlier seating the view is nice along the lake. I remembered the experience with some fondness and had wanted to come back.
My second visit though was a culinary fail. The service was friendly but the food service was slow. The seafood platter for two seemed the way to go but was largely disappointing. The lobster bisque was good. They were out of the pork chops so I ordered the seafood pasta. They were also out of the black squid ink noodles. (In full disclosure, to their credit, they attempted to make it up to us at the end of the night by covering our first round of drinks.) Quite honestly that's all fine but the noodles came out undercooked and the mussels... eh. We also had ordered the chicken breast. This was disappointingly cold. Brussels sprouts and sweet potato were good. I would have just opted for a steak but I had just had a meal at a local steakhouse the previous night. For dessert the ice cream came out melting and the caramel corn ice cream tasted more like vanilla with the occasional wisp of caramel corn while the vanilla had very little flavor. If the run on sentence is confusing, just think of how confused my tastebuds felt. To cap off the night, the coffee required a reminder before it trailed in at the end and the requested boxed leftover chicken and brussels sprouts played hide and seek.
Maybe they were having difficulty with the higher than normal crowd, but the competition in Madison is too high at this level to make this a serious dining option.
I'll average my two experiences and give two stars.