Pop's Custard

Friday was the first hot day of the year so I invited a friend to have supper at Pop's Custard, a 30-some year institution in Menomonee Falls. 

We got the last table outside. The service was not exactly fast, but it was a pleasant wait in the early evening sun.  My friend had a jumbo butter burger, I had a grilled cheese, and we shared cheese curds.  The grilled cheese sandwich consists of American cheese, on your choice of white or wheat bread, soaked in butter.  Pretty basic, but cooked perfectly and well worth its $2 price. However, the cheese curds were too greasy for my taste.

We followed up dinner with sundaes.  Then a food coma.

The Tipsy Cow, Sun Prairie

Longtime readers will know that The Tipsy Cow in downtown Madison serves what I consider the best grilled cheese ever.  (Newer readers can catch up by clicking here.)  The owners opened a second location in Sun Prairie a few months ago and I checked it out today with my mom as a belated Mother's Day lunch.

The menu and the grilled cheese recipe is the same as the downtown location, but the service and the atmosphere is not.  The Sun Prairie location is in the urban sprawl area of the city's west side, a former wetland that was paved and built up with roundabouts, big box stores, and strip malls surrounded by enormous parking lots which are always full.  The restaurant's decor includes high ceilings, beaded chandeliers, faux-antiqued mirrors, tufted-back booths, long rows of tables nearly right next to each other, and crisp off-white walls sparsely dotted with statement pieces of cow-related art, like they were trying for a hotel chic vibe ... but it really doesn't mesh with their pub food served in plastic baskets.  Of course the result of that design is that it is SO LOUD INSIDE that it gives you a tension headache.

And they didn't finish cooking my sandwich. There was no "optimal melty gooiness" this time.  Without this texture, I'd merely call it "fine."  If you want to go to The Tipsy Cow, go to the one in downtown Madison. 

Mackesey's Irish Pub (St. Patrick's Day Edition)

St. Patrick's Day is this weekend, so naturally my readers are looking for a great Irish pub to celebrate the holiday with a nice grilled cheese sandwich.  May I recommend Mackesey's Irish Pub?  In business for over 35 years, this is probably the last family-owned, authentic Wisconsin tavern left on State Street in Madison.

With that kind of history, you know what kind of sandwich to expect.  Sweet white bread, grilled to a golden hue, with melty, stringy cheddar inside.  This is the kind of grilled cheese sandwich my grandmother used to make.  Perfect.  You get your choice of cheese, and it comes with either chips or potato salad on the side, along with a pickle spear and a mini Milky Way. 
 

Ancora Coffee

To paraphrase Jake Blues, we're putting the blog back together!

The re-inaugural repast took place at Ancora Coffee's new location in the King Street Arcade building in downtown Madison.  In the former location of The Kitchen Gallery, it is an airy but quiet space, with seating extending into the building's atrium. Ancora's grilled cheese has local roots, being composed of Hook's pepperjack and muenster cheeses on Madison Sourdough Company's rosemary bread. 

This was a very flavorful sandwich.  The cheeses were melted perfectly. The bread was hard and crispy, with the perfect amount of greasiness. The defining characteristic of this sandwich was the grilled tomatoes.  I am not normally a fan of out of season tomatoes, and when raw I think they are disruptive to grilled cheese but grilling them enhanced their flavor and did not make the sandwich soggy.  The pepperjack, muenster, tomatoes and rosemary melded together wonderfully to create a mouth-warming taste.  A cup of tomato soup is included as a side.  It was a really thick and hearty soup, almost like pasta sauce.  It stood up to the flavors of the sandwich.  Overall, a first-rate grilled cheese and an excellent way to bring back the blog. 

Sunprint Cafe

Sunprint Cafe recently moved to 10 West Mifflin Street, Madison, Wisconsin, after a long residency at One South Pinckney Street.  Famous for breakfast, and a Capitol Square staple for lunch, their menu now includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, Sunday brunch, and drinks.

Their new space was previously occupied by Cameo Day Spa and is very elegant, but it seems like Sunprint isn’t quite settled in there yet.  The restaurant has multiple rooms and is arranged in a way that seems crowded and leaves little privacy for each table. 

Their lunch menu has a pretty good selection of soups, salads, and sandwiches - ranging from burgers to paninis, to vegan items, to grilled cheese.

The grilled cheese sandwich comes on your choice of wheat or rye bread (I chose wheat) and it includes sharp cheddar and jack cheeses on either side of tomatoes.  It comes with a side (I chose tabouli).  The bread was grilled very lightly and was not at all greasy. It was more toasted than grilled.  It was an uncomplicated wheat bread, with rolled oats on the crust.  The cheddar and jack cheese combination, along with the tomatoes, had a quite respectable flavor.  However, the cheese amount was skimpy -- the corners of the sandwich had no cheese coverage.  My side of tabouli was generously portioned and really fresh tasting.  Overall it was not a bad lunch, but not that special either. 

The Tipsy Cow

The Tipsy Cow, at 102 King Street in Madison, has the best grilled cheese.  Ever.  

The bread is Clasen's European Bakery's Artisan Multi Grain Wheat Sourdough, a robust bread containing flax, millet and sunflower seeds.  Sliced not too think and not too thin, it has a brawny texture and just the perfect amount of greasiness.  Between the bread is a munificent amount of 3-year cheddar and Widmer's brick cheese combined in some magical proportion to create optimal melty gooiness, and a tad of roasted garlic -- which isn't obvious as a flavor on its own, but rather amplifies the savory-ness of the sandwich as a whole.        

As if eating the best grilled cheese sandwich ever was not enough, I was able to enjoy it with two of the best former co-workers ever.  They ordered the BLT and the Griddled Turkey & Havarti sandwiches.  Both were works of art, assembled as if they were going to be in the centerfold of a sandwich magazine.  Both sandwiches featured Nueske's smoked bacon which, my friends said, was thick and delicious. 

The sandwiches at the Tipsy Cow are served with a couple really tangy homemade dill pickle slices.  There are multiple side-items offered on the menu (half orders are allowed), for around $6 or $8 each.  We didn't order any sides, but we should have because it seemed like something was missing from our meal.  I, anyway, just didn't want to stop eating. 

The service was good overall.  We were greeted right away and the food was brought out quickly.  Drink refills arrived without asking and before required.  There was a lag between the time we finished eating and the check was brought, but our change arrived quickly.  The restaurant was clean and the staff was friendly.  Also worth mentioning ... the dining room features a well executed chalkboard drawing of the cow catapult scene from Monty Python. 

This was my third visit to the Tipsy Cow, and I've recommended it several times already.  I will definitely return. 

Famous Dave's

We had a Pre-4th of July picnic lunch at work, catered by Famous Dave's.  Lunch included ribs, barbecued chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, corn muffins and mac & cheese.  I won't elaborate on the ribs since they are so famous and you probably already know all about them.  I'll just focus on the mac & cheese.

Dave's Cheesy Mac & Cheese is unique in that it includes corn and chopped jalapeño peppers with the noodles.  The cheese sauce is ample, but light and almost fluffy.  The main flavor of the dish comes from the jalapeños -- not that it's by any means too spicy, just that you can't taste subtle flavors imparted by the four cheeses that are purportedly used to create the sauce.  It's not the mac & cheese that makes Famous Dave's famous ... but it is definitely tasty.