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.

Graze

Graze is the kind of Madison restaurant that is so popular now -- the kind with locally sourced food and hipster waitstaff.  But even though it only opened a few years ago, at One South Pinckney Street, Graze has an established lineage as the sister restaurant to Madison fixture, L'Etoile, and the successor to the former Café Soliel.

My friend Cathy and I went to Graze for lunch today.  We have both been there on several occasions but never together.  I usually get their Farmer John's sandwich with apple slices, provolone, and a delicious homemade mayo on a sourdough baguette, and Cathy's favorite is their Beet & Walnut Burger.  This time, we mixed it up.  She ordered the Smoked Tofu Eggroll Wrap with fries, and I ordered the Grilled Cheese, with mixed greens.

Graze's menu describes their grilled cheese as "Hook's cheddar, tomato, and caramelized onions on pullman loaf with whole-grain mustard."  ("Pullman loaf" is a fancy way to say "white bread.")  The sandwich was well-balanced and pretty good overall.  There was a sufficient amount of cheese but I would have preferred just a tad more.  The tomatoes were very juicy and the onions were sweet and not overpowering.  The bread was quite crispy and quite greasy, a little too greasy actually.  A pretty good sandwich but honestly it didn't quite live up to its $10 price tag. 

I would like to add that I really like Graze's mixed green salad.  It is always so fresh, full of very thinly sliced vegetables and a lot of flavor.  Their home brewed iced tea is also very good. 

Cathy liked her Tofu Eggroll Wrap, but she thought it could have had more flavor.  The fries were excellent though!  They are homemade fries cut to just the right thickness and fried to perfection, served with garlic aioli. 




 

Buck & Badger Northwoods Lodge - #2

Boyfriend took me to see Nonpoint at the Orpheum Theater on State Street in Madison, so I suggested we have dinner at Buck & Badger Northwoods Lodge beforehand.  Based on my previous experience there, I was excited to share this restaurant with him.

This time, I ordered the Baked Mac and Cheese, which was served in a little cast iron cauldron.  The cheese sauce was made with Gruyere and Cheddar cheeses and was delectably creamy and tasty.  It was topped with blue cheese crumbles and bread crumbs, which added a perfect amount of tang and crunch.  This is definitely one of the top Mac and Cheese dinners that I've eaten.

Boyfriend wasn't sure what to get, but ended up with Flank Steak Meatloaf, due in part to my encouragement, "Where else will you be able to get meatloaf made of fresh ground steak?"  He wasn't too impressed with it but he said the bread was good.  Fortunately, hockey was on the TV above the fireplace, so the meal wasn't a total loss for him.

The Coopers Tavern

I have been assisting my friend and co-worker, Jennifer, with a goal to spend the occasional lunch hour enjoying a meal and conversation rather sitting in the office in front of a computer.  Yesterday we were both able to gain a short reprieve from our workload and, being a gloriously perfect Spring day, we decided to have lunch at The Coopers Tavern at 20 West Mifflin Street in Madison, because of their sidewalk seating. 

Jennifer ordered a humbly named but artistically crafted Ham sandwich - locally raised Uphoff Farms ham, stout grained mustard, caramelized onions, gouda cheese and red pepper mayo on Stella's Bakery Spicy Cheesy Bread - with house-made chips.  She shared the chips with me and, in my opinion, they were the best homemade potato chips I have ever eaten, very crispy and light.

I, of course, went with the Grilled Cheese.  Coopers Tavern's version is made of cheddar, gouda, and gruyere on sourdough, and comes with a shot glass of roasted red pepper and tomato soup.  The cheese blend was perfectly melty and flavorful.  The bread was grilled to that ideal point that can only be achieved with sourdough - right between hard and chewy, so you really have to think about each bite and can, therefore, reap the most pleasure from it.  It was a faultless sandwich.  The accompanying soup was probably meant for dipping, but it was also good for sipping.  It tasted very fresh and zesty.

We achieved the goal with this lunch:  good food, good conversation, and on top of that, good weather.

The Cheese Factory Restaurant

The Cheese Factory Restaurant, at 521 Wisconsin Dells Parkway South, in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, is a unique gem.  It is an elegant restaurant housed in an former cheese factory, with a soda fountain, espresso bar, and a ballroom, that serves only vegetarian and vegan food, and is run by 5-star quality staff from all over the world. 

I have been to The Cheese Factory several times.  Their menu has so many great choices I have never eaten the same entrée twice.  Besides the familiar meatless meals that might hide on many typical restaurant menus (veggie burrito, pizza, etc.), they have seitan and tofu dishes that are works of art.  Last Friday I went specifically to try their famous "The Big Cheese" grilled cheese sandwich which has been lauded in the November 2009 issue of Every Day With Rachel Ray, as one of four over the top grilled cheese sandwiches in the nation.

Though I have never had the same dinner, I almost always start with The Cheese Factory's Wisconsin Beer Cheese Soup.  It is a lighter variety than most beer cheese soups, but quite flavorful.  It's base is Old Milwaukee beer and it includes very finely grated carrots.

The Big Cheese is made of three slices of very thinly sliced sourdough bread, sharp cheddar, Swiss, and Romano cheeses, and Roma tomatoes.  The sandwich's assembly and presentation was immaculate.  Despite being a double decker, the bread didn't overwhelm the sandwich as a whole.  It was lightly seasoned, perfectly grilled, and not too crisp.  The three cheeses complemented each other.  They were melted but semi-solid and not gooey.  This was a very well done grilled cheese sandwich.