Mad City Eats

• Restaurant:  Salvatore’s Tomato Pies
• 503 W. Main St. Sun Prairie, WI

2 reviews in about 2 weeks?  How ambitious of me, right?  Not really.  Just finally checking out the newest pizza joint in Sun Prairie, and wanted to let you all in on it.

So here’s the story.  I got up extra early on Saturday to go participate in the 2012 Crazylegs Walk…yes, walk, because I am too out of shape to run (for now anyway).  I did the walk with a few co-workers in less than an hour, then walked back to the Monona Terrace to get to my car and head home.  While on the way home, I decided that I really didn’t want to cook, and that pizza would kick ass for dinner.  I remembered Sal’s here in Sun Prairie, and that I hadn’t tried it yet…ding ding ding…winner!

My wife thought it was a great idea too….brick oven pizza, and no dishes to clean up.  We called and ordered the “Nine” – which is The Mediterranean Pie.  Their hand made crust, olive oil, kalamata olives, feta cheese, whole milk mozzarella, roasted red peppers, heirloom garlic, and my favorite cured meat, Prosciutto.  We also ordered their house-made bread with rosemary infused olive oil.  We were told it would take about 30 minutes, and instantly I got more hungry and began to salivate, as I waited to leave to pick up the pie.

I watched the clock, anxiously as my stomach continued to yell at me more and more.  I continued to check out what other people had to say about Sal’s, trying my best to remain objective for the review, yet wanting to find a time machine to go 30 minutes ahead and get the pizza.

I finally left, and drove the 5 minutes to Sal’s from my house.  When I got there, I noticed something interesting…the parking lot was PACKED.  Now in case you don’t know where this is located exactly, let me ‘splain. The restaurant is located in a small mall-like area on Main Street, minutes west of downtown Sun Prairie.  The building that Sal’s is in also houses another business, so the joint isn’t super spacious in the way of seating, and parking is pretty minimal.  That really didn’t matter to me because I was taking mine home with me.  However, I will take the time and immerse myself and family in the entire experience one day.

I got in to the store, and the place was packed.  All but 2 smaller tables were occupied, and the place buzzed with happy conversation…the smell of fresh-baked pizza and delicious toppings tantalizing my sniffer.

I walked up to the counter to pick-up my dinner, and I was instantly greeted by a gracious woman (who was also on the phone taking an order), and waited only a few seconds as she completed taking the phone order.  I mentioned my wife’s name, and out of a delivery pizza bag right there on the counter, arrived the dinner I had been waiting for all day.  During this time, the phone rang again (not a surprise at all), and she expertly handled my credit card and the phone call in tandem, not dropping a beat on either.  That’s talent…If you have never had kids or worked in a restaurant (I have both), then you don’t understand the talent it took to do that.   Signed my card slip, and was virtually skipping down the yellow brick road to flavor town (good thing Guy Fieri doesn’t read this blog).

On the drive home, I couldn’t help but feel like I was teasing myself.  Such wonderful smells, and I could do nothing about it…the longest 5 minutes of my life, I swear.  I walked in the door to my house, and proceeded to grab plates and pizza and hit it.

This sauceless pizza, was adorned with toppings.  A good sized piece of Prosciutto adorned each piece.   Artichoke hearts, placed nicely around the entire pizza, and just the right amount of roasted red pepper.  I couldn’t wait…I took a bite as I walked to my seat.  Instantly, the tanginess of the feta cheese hit me…mmmmm.  The crust provides the perfect canvas for the fresh toppings that are generously added to the pizza.  I couldn’t wait to get to the end of the piece to get to that plain crust…and I am glad I didn’t. You can really taste the homemade freshness in this crust, with the right amount of crunch and chew to it.  If there ws one complaint on the pizza, it would be that the feta cheese didn’t seem to be disbursed throughout the pizza, and was concentrated more in the middle.  The bread and olive oil…for $3, AWESOME.  The bread is crusty,chewy, and coated with sesame seeds and parmesean cheese.  Combine that with the flavored oil, and that’s a great starter!

Sun Prairie has desperately needed a pizza place  that gets back to square one.  The freshness of the local ingredients, the generous amount of toppings, and, dude, there is a personal message on every box.  I will be ordering from Sal’s again, and again.  I can’t wait to share this place with my mother and father in-law…they’ve been dying for a good pizza place when they watch the kids.

• 
• Restaurant : Great Dane East
• Location: 876 Jupiter Drive Madison WI

Hello!

It’s nice to see ya checking in and actually reading my nonsensical babbling on the interwebz…I appreciate your taking the time to make me feel special, if only for a moment!

So my beautiful wife and I decided that it was time for a date night again, after not really going out for about a month…and we were right!

It was my wife’s turn to decide…and Great Dane’s east side location was her choice.  Now, to be honest, we have checked out the west side location and I wasn’t terribly impressed by the level of service or the food there, but this was her choice, and I went along with it and decided to go in to it with an open mind.

We came in the back way, through Cottage Grove, which is faster than trying to drive on E. Washington Ave. right now…while the drive may have been faster, we drove right past it…yes, I failed as the navigator, and led us astray down Cottage Grove Rd by a couple of blocks.  We did manage to turn around and make it to Jupiter Drive…the parking for this location, I have to say…is not user friendly.  We had to park 2 blocks away…I still maintained an open mind while I had a good conversation with my wife as we walked.

We arrived, and the joint is packed…I mean busy as hell packed.  We got on the list to start our 45 minute wait and headed to the bar for a much needed beer.  Needless to say, the bar was packed with people relaxing after a long work day/week and waiting for their tables as well.

After we received our beers, we ventured back to the “game room” – for lack of a better term.  The area housed the pool table, one shotgun based video game, dual dart board setup, and a shuffleboard…yes, an actual shuffleboard game.  I was impressed with the layout, and the variety of bar games.

A cocktail table opened up very shortly after we went back there, and if you know me, i was on that like flies on _____ (fill in the blank with your own word).  We decided it would be nice to sit and chill while we waited for our turn at dinner.  Before we could even sit down, there was w wonderful ray of light named Nina who wiped the table down for us.

We sat at the table for a few minutes, and I was pretty close to finishing my first beer already.  If you know me at all, you know there are 2 things that have no chance around me…bacon and beer.  Nina was kind enough to ask if I needed another, and also said “If you guys want to, you can eat here so you don’t have to wait for your table”.  SCORE!  I felt like I won the lottery!  We said “hell yeah”, and got our menus.

We decided on our appetizer, the Nakoma Nachos.  We were warned…Nina told us that it’s a huge order of nacho-ee goodness, that would be too much for us, and let us know we could make it a 1/2 order instead.  Done deal.  In case you’re wondering, the Nakoma Nachos are Tri-colored tortilla chips topped with cheese, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, jalapeños and black olives, with the tortillas made fresh throughout the day.  We got our with some chicken, because we are just adventurous like that.  Lemme tell ya….damn good nachos…even without the uber-tender tasty tasty chicken.  I would get those again and again.

While we grubbbed and stuffed our faces on the nachos, Nina was perfectly attentive with a great sense of humor…not overbearing, in our face and not ignoring us at all….this perfect balance of attention and leaving-us-alone-ness was excellent.  Plus she laughed at my idiocy, so instant winner winner chicken dinner right there.

For dinner my wife decided on the “Smothered and Covered Fried Chicken…A hand-breaded fried chicken breast topped with shrimp, andouille sausage, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and tomatoes in a Cajun butter sauce. Served with jalapeño cheddar mashed potatoes and market vegetables.  When asked what “market vegetables” were…green beans was the good answer.  I got to taste this dish of tasty chickeny yumminess.  I was actually pretty impressed at how all of those toppings worked with this fried chicken breast.  Tender chicken, well seasoned veggies, and a little bite from the sausage and cajun butter sauce.  The jalapeno cheddar mashed…I need the recipe.  That shiz was tasty and I will make those on my own one day…but I will include the meat candy (aka bacon).  The green beans were ok…nothing special, but they are just green beans after all.

I ordered the Flat Iron Chef Steak.  An eight-ounce  Choice Flat Iron steak char-grilled to specification. Served with “Delmonico” mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus and bacon steak sauce.  The steak was cooked just right, but silly me, I forgot that flat iron steak tends to have a fair amount of connective tissue in it.  The overall flavor of the steak was good, but not astounding.  The grilled asparagus was good…once you got beyond the woody stem portions of it.  The “Delmonico” potatoes…genious.  Cheddar mashed with bacon and panko…crisped under the salamander.  They rocked!

I am a pig, and decided on dessert before I even checked the dinner menu.  Black and Tan brownie.  Fan-freakin-tastic. Nice and tender brownie with vanilla bean ice cream, a touch of caramel, and a stout fudge sauce.  If you happen to do the weight watchers point thing, you might be able to eat again around Christmas.  Rich, creamy, chocolaty decadence in a bowl.

I am happy with the decision to go to the Great Dane East, and we will absolutely be back again.  If you happen to go, and she’s working, ask for Nina…she’ll treat ya right!

• Restaurant: Wasabi
• Location: 449 State St Madison, WI

I am really a lover of Japanese food, including the raw tastiness that is sushi.  My wife, who adores sushi even more than myself, spent the better part of the last 3 years either knocked- up, or dealing with the kids.  I asked where she wanted to go this time out, and she immediately blurted “Wasabi”…no hesitation, and no second thoughts.  So because she has sacrificed so much over the last few years, and has largely been unable to eat sushi, not to mention the fact that I love it myself, I happily obliged.

I brought home a Topper’s pizza (a damn good pizza…you have to try their stix too), for Grandpa and Grandma to enjoy while we went and enjoyed highly priced raw fish and rice.

We left the house, highly anticipating the fresh delicacies awaiting our order.  We drove quickly…not illegally mind you, to try and beat the dinner rush that was sure to happen in downtown Madison.  We found parking right around the corner from the upper level restaurant, and walked right in.  I am glad we got there when we did, any later and we would have had a semi-long wait for a table.  Fortunately, we got one of the last 2-tops available and were seated immediately by a less than personable hostess…maybe she was pissed that she had to work on a Friday night.

As I began to get lost in the menu (I had never been there before), our waitress greeted us with 1.5 glasses of ice water…yes, ny wife got a 1/2 glass of water.  Maybe they were trying to make sure she would have enough room for the rolls that we were about to order.  My wife perused the wine list and settled on her favorite, plum wine.  I was a bit disappointed in the beer list, offering ONLY the Japanese Bud Light equivalent, Sapporo.  I really wanted a beer, but I got Sapporo anyway.

We ordered our starters for the evening.  I don’t care who you are, you can’t go to a sushi joint and not get edamame…it’s not allowed, period.  The in-the-shell edamame was cooked perfectly, with just the right amount of sea salty tastiness.  We ordered our edamame along with Hibachi Scallops — Scallops sauteed in a buttery, soy hibachi sauce to perfect done-ness.  The scallops were really quite delicious, except for the fact that a couple were still a little sandy…that unexpected/unwelcome grainy crunch can put a damper on even the best-prepared scallops.

Now I am always a fan of getting an Hibachi steak of some kind…always.  This time, however, I felt the need to eat lots and lots of rolls.  So that’s what we did.  We ordered 6…yes, 6 rolls.

First we decided on the regular roll - Negihama Maki (scallions & yellowtail).  Regular rolls involve having the rice on the inside of the wrap, as opposed to the reversed roll with the rice on the outside.  This roll was very simple, with no frills.  Yellowtail with scallions rolled in sushi rice, and seaweed to hold it all together.  This was absolutely one of my favorites.  The beautiful simplicity of the clean, fresh flavors were simply delectable.  This roll really highlights the few ingredients and their own separate flavors.

We also ordered the Rock & Roll (eel & yellowtail ).  This was also very tasty…the eel as done just right, and the freshness of the yellowtail really complimented it.  If I have a complaint, it is about this roll.  While the roll itself was very tasty, the actual rolling process failed horribly.  I was 100% completely unable to get pick up 1 piece without it falling apart.  Disappointing when a good chunk of one fell in to my water.

My wife ordered the Spicy Ken.  With spicy tuna and shrimp tempura on the inside; and avocado,green onions,fish eggs on the outside, this roll did not last long.  This is one of my wife’s faves.  The heat from the spicy tuna is mellowed nicely with the avocado on the outside of the roll.  Very well balanced and tasty as hell.

Because I really enjoy spice, and generally a lot of it, I ordered the “Double Trouble” roll.  Consisting of spicy shrimp on the inside, and spicy tuna on the outside, I was in sushi heaven.  Delicately balanced heat and flavor make this one of my favorite rolls ever.

I traditionally save the best for last, and, well, this is no exception.  We ordered 2, yes 2 of the best freakin sushi roll I have ever, ever, ever had.  The name resembles what you might think of as a drug-laden cereal from the late 1960′s; “The Magic Crunch”.  Made with salmon, super-white tuna, and shishitou (Shishitou are small green peppers that can be eaten whole, seeds and all) on the inside, the outside consisting of tam yum sauce and green onions…how could this roll get any better?  You tempura batter this bad-boy and lightly fry it!  I think I have found the Japanese version of food heaven in this roll.  If you go there, and I sincerely hope you do, try this roll…you won’t be disappointed!

The food in this place, with the exception of the sandy scallops and the poorly wrapped sushi roll is stupendous, fresh, and a real Madison delicacy.  I was less than impressed with the service that we received from our server…I know busy can mean stressful, but never let your customers feel your stress or be neglected because of it.  After our order was delivered to us, we were re-visited once, and were never asked if we wanted to refresh our drinks.  Instead, we were brought our check, and I felt rather hurried out the door.  Did that ruin the night?  No, but it did sour my palate a little on the overall experience.  For the check being 85 bucks, I would expect better treatment…just sayin’.

Overall, I would give it a 4 star rating out of 5…based on the less than stellar service, the crunchy scallops, and the fall-apart-roll that went for a swim in my water glass.

Don’t let this lead you to believe that we won’t be back, because, we will.  The food is that damn good!