Service with a sneer

I admit that the reason I generally won't go to an Italian restaurant (Sotto Sotto being an exception), it that I associate Italian-American food too much with Olive Garden. Olive Garden, in my pretentious Viognier swigging foie gras eating mind, is the epitome of staid suburban mediocrity in food and in life. I blame the Will and Grace episode "I never promised you an Olive Garden" for entrenching this in my imagination. I am an unabashed foodie, snob, geek, whatever and since I'm not Italian and have never had grandmother's lasagna, I don't get the big deal. Again, I have had "snooty" Italian and find it very good but since most of the places calling themselves Italian have the spaghetti and meatballs line-up- I simply don't care.

We tried Tutto Pasta on State Street for lunch one day having not heard anything bad about it. Let's start my rant with the fact that as soon as we walked in, we felt like we had interrupted some extremely important standing around time of the staff. After being ignored at our table for close to 10 minutes with Drew getting more and more pissed, we were brought water with ice (no I don't like ice in my water when it 15F outside) in plastic glasses. The cheap local beer was $5 on draft, for Atlanta thats high-end but for Madison its nuts to pay that much for Spotted Cow. Bud was $3.50. Mediocre wines like Ecco was about $8 a glass. So no booze today.

The best part comes when our bread is literally tossed on the table without a word. I giggled and resigned myself at that point to a $30 object lesson.

At least the food didn't suck...entirely. The bruschetta may have been cold, but at least the ingredients tasted fresh. We ordered specials; a cheese ravioli in a tomato sauce, and a chicken in an alfredo-ish sauce with veggies, pistachios, cranberries. The ravioli, chicken, and veggies in cheese sauce were all either canned or frozen. The tomato sauce was homemade with fresh garlic, basil, and tomatoes- it was quite nice. The flavor combination of the pistachio, cheese, and cranberries was nice as well. Immediately after eating, we did get garlic burps since you MUST have a ton of garlic in Italian food right?

I never leave crappy tips. But getting ignored, being made to feel like I was putting out the staff, and the bread-tossing all added up to a small tip. Lesson learned.

Old Fashions are always in fashion

Every once and a while that popular place in the tourist section of town can be judged well worth the hype. Visitors may scoff at the notion of “Wisconsin cuisine” but the OF pulls off this niche so well that there’s an hour plus wait some evenings and most weekends. This food is comforting, filling, and exciting enough to make me come back at least once a month. To add to the all Wisconsin all the time theme, they are now serving all Wisconsin beer that can be bottled or tapped. From the usual suspects of Spotted Cow and Tyranena, to nouveau ghetto (Old Style? Really?), to small brewpubs as far as Lake Superior (Thirsty Pagan coming soon).

Food first: A little something for everyone: veggies, salads, fried food, and tons of meat. The ingredients are fresh and quality enough that even the fried coatings of the awesome cheese curds can’t hide. The roast beef is superb, tangy and a little bloody but full of flavor- the tiger blue sauce makes a great foil to the meaty sandwich. The pulled pork is sumptuous and greasy; toasted bread and a great sauce pull it together to fill up for the day. The veggie sandwich is savory and filling, I am pretty much a sucker for anything with warm goat cheese and roasted veggies that aren’t from a can. Very good burger and the fries are thin and crisp. A really cool touch for dinner are the lazy susans, a selection of finger foods to share. From the great WI cheeses (of which there are many), to the local inspired fish plates (still not sold on walleye), to the great dips; these lazy susans are a great way to introduce people to the spirit of the Old Fashioned. And of course they have brats, you betcha.

I'll get back to the beer in a second. Let's talk booze. If you choose, you may look at the large book o booze, listing cocktails to and exhaustive bottled beer list, to local non-alcoholic drinks- people really go for local brewed root beers here. Go ahead and try the signature drink the Old Fashioned. This is made with brandy in the great white north here which is the subject of much speculation and did get the hairy eyeball from this Southerner who is pretty damn sure that anything other than bourbon in an OF is high blasphemy. There's even an editorial about this, ironically, in the latest issue of Imbibe. I'm sure the bartenders do a great whatever-tini too when the chicks come in to drink at night, but the beer is really worth exploring here.

Not only are there tons of bottled beers, but over 20 taps including a monthly "cheap" beer that generally isn't cheap- right now its Tyranena scotch ale and when I first ate here it was the very drinkable Fattybombalatty by Furthermore. So far in the every brewery initiative, I've tried a couple. Red Eye brewery in Wausau put out a Belgian style called Scarlett 7 that I just had to try because I'm a sucker for Belgian style. Not a big smell coming off of this ruby colored beauty. Slightly floral, figgy and malty. A sweet medium mouthfeel gives way to rich fig, raisin, cinnamon, and spices. The hops are noted at the finish, balancing the sweet and malty taste in a crisp way that American brewed Belgian styles are great for. Wausau is now on my WI beer list.

Tyranena Rocky's Revenge: Bourbon aged brown ale, poured medium brown with a lacy tan head. Good bourbon smell to it. Drinkable and smooth, I could taste the bourbon and wood but only as a finish. It did not slap me over the head with it. Kinda fizzy mouthfeel, overall it was nice but I feel like the bourbon aging was the difference between a boring beer and an ok beer.

Calumet rye! I do miss rye beer, Terrapin was a good go-to beer in Atlanta suitable for all weather. This rye was not as hoppy or crisp, it is more of a go-to beer for a place that has seasons. Muted, smooth, floral, and very drinkable; I felt this rye to be less hoppy and more like an ESB than an IPA- I'm very very fine with that. I want to try this again, more of it than a taste.

So that's the Old Fashioned. I actually did talk about food in this entry. Go me.

On the road- land of rain and coffee

Back in June, the family vacation landed us as far west as we can go in the lower 48: Orcas island off the coast of Washington. Six hour flight followed by tow hours drive, then a 90 minute ferry ride- I'm not sure if a less accessible place could have been picked without backpacking involved. But damn the food was good.



Highlights and beer-lights:

Rose’s Kitchen and Bakery: Small café atmosphere with very fresh local ingredients. King salmon, halibut, and mussels chowder. The mussels tasted of the sea, salty and wild floating in the light creamy soup. There was no skimping on the fish, no potato overload in this chowder. The bread was made in the adjacent bakery, it was crispy and a perfect match to soak up the chowder. Drew ordered a sandwich with local ham, gruyere, and butter on a baguette. The flavors melded together very well, the slightly sweet ham, fatty butter, tart cheese all on the crusty baguette. The Washington state white was a fresh, citrusy summer wine that went well with all of the dishes. In addition to baked goods including a wonderful flaky almond tart, the bakery also carried gourmet cheeses, gourmet snacks, meats, wines, and local pate. We all sampled the local pork, then rabbit pates later on in the house we rented.

Café Olga- OMG awesome oysters! I actually drool while thinking of these Judd island oysters- perfectly briny and mineral tasting- if you can put a conch to your ear and hear the ocean, you taste these and taste the ocean. Seafood plate had smoked trout, local sockeye lox with cream cheese, pickled things (capers, onions, peppers), and oysters! Dungeness crab quesadilla was ok. Not crazy great but tasty. Cream of broccoli soup that was basically fresh pureed broccoli and maybe a tiny bit of stock and cream.

No chains on this island, it would have probably cost too much and the local food was just fine. The local pub carried the usual suspects, the Alaskan on-tap was the only interesting thing as there isn't much of it in the South or Midwest. The local hippie grocery carried a tiny but fresh fish selection and fresh baked cod was on the menu for one of our evenings.

Seattle: Elysian Fields brew pub. The beers I did try were tasty, but not incredible. The farmhouse saison was very drinkable; mead, malty, slightly tart fruitiness, sweet and lighter in taste than it looked. A good example of the style and one of these beers that tasted considerably more complex than it smelled. The stout poured black with a tan lacy head. Coffee, chocolate, yeasty bread, and burnt sugar were the main flavors. It was malty and nice with a good mouthfeel, a good stout with few bells and whistles but a little high on the abv than I would have liked for a drink all night stout.

The food was the suck. Seriously? At first the veggie-patty type sandwich with goat cheese and various veggies was tasty, then as I continued to eat it fell victim to one of the vegetarian food classic blunders: too much frickin garlic, If I am burping it up, its too much. Especially if I am burping it up for the next 10 hours. The tomato soup had a pretty green pesto swirl on it, but it was pretty amateur and not terribly interesting,