Sweet Willie

An associate from Madison recommends: Takara Japanese Restaurant at 315 State St. is one of my favorite Japanese restaurants in the world. The sushi is delicious and beautiful, and the hibachi chefs are highly talented. My order almost always includes the rainbow roll, and if I’m at the hibachi table I go for whatever seafood strikes my fancy since it’s always all good! I usually spend about $50 for a huge meal of hibachi and sushi. Reservations recommended for dinner, 608 268 0188. Ginza of Tokyo 6734 Odana Rd. is my second choice for Japanese food, since they serve a few items that Takara doesn’t have. My favorite of these is the kogani lobster. kogani is a buttery sauce similar to hollandaise, and the lobster tails are cooked in the shell on the hibachi, covered in the kogani mixture. It is one of the richest foods you will find in a Japanese restaurant, so be prepared. They also have a spicy mustard sauce for dipping, but you have to ask for it since it’s not on the menu. Prices are similar to Takara, costing about $50 for a fabulous dinner. Reservations recommended 608 833 8282. I have not visited Ginza’s new location at 4802 E. Washington Avenue, but I have heard that it’s pretty much the same, 608 661 8890. Maharaja restaurant at 6713 Odana Rd. is a fabulously delicious Indian restaurant. I love Indian food and I seek it out everywhere I go. Maharaja is one of the finest anywhere. Better than anything I’ve had in any of the big U.S. cities. Their lunch buffet (11-3 weekdays) is my favorite lunch anywhere. Their fish vindaloo is spicy and robust, the chicken tikka masala is perfectly balanced, and the tandoori mixed grill is wonderful. Maharaja has a second location at 1707 Thierer rd. and one in milwaukee which are equal in every way. Ella's Deli at 2902 E. Washington Av. is a must see Madison institution. Their kosher style deli foods are legendary, and almost as interesting as their collection of mechanical toys and music machines. They also have world famous ice cream. Bring the kids for a ride on the carousel! (In season) Wah Kee Noodle Co. at 600 Williamson St. is Madison’s finest Chinese restaurant. Famous for their tong mein and lo mein, they serve Cantonese as well as Hunan and Szechwan specialties. I frequently order the Kung pao tofu, shrimp in lobster sauce, or the yeung chow fried rice. Wah kee is an excellent value with most entrees under $10. Michaels Frozen Custard is a Madison tradition. The custard itself is richer and creamier than any ice cream. They also serve great burgers and sandwiches in the tradition of the old American roadside drive-ins. There are three Madison locations including 2531 Monroe St, 3826 Atwood Ave., and 5602 Schroeder Rd. Lazy Jane's Cafe at 1358 Williamson St. is my favorite breakfast place in the Mad City (since Bev’s diner and the original Cleveland’s Lunch closed ). Egg specials, juices, teas and homemade scones anchor the menu. My standard order is ‘the works’ which consists of eggs any style, potatoes, toast and their thick smoky bacon. The service is wait your own and bus your own, with the cook yelling out your name when your order is done. Deelishus! American Table is located at 1201N. Sherman Ave. in the Madison East shopping center. This is a fine American family style restaurant, with all the usual amenities thereof. Kid’s menu, senior citizen specials, grilled sandwiches, daily dinner specials and pasta specialties all come together for the perfect Midwestern family restaurant experience. Jamerica is a small Jamaican restaurant at 1236 Williamson St. More like a mom & pop grocery store with a kitchen and a few tables, Jamerica is small on choice, but BIG on flavor. The home style Jerk chicken is almost always my choice, with rice, beans, vegetables and gravy, I rarely finish it all. Mediterranean Café at 625 State St. is my favorite place for falafel or hummus, and their chicken kofta is perfectly spiced. ‘The Med’ is small and inexpensive, but rich in flavor and value. The Avenue Bar at 1128 E. Washington Ave. is a favorite hangout of local politicians and celebrities (I have had dinner next to senators, U.S. rep’s, the governor, TV news anchors, etc.) More a restaurant than a bar, they serve great steaks and prime rib, daily dinner and lunch specials, and the best fish boil (a Wisconsin tradition) outside of Door County. On weekends they serve a great brunch with egg specials, and the finest waffles in town. Note: the brunch service is slow, so don’t go if you’re in a hurry, or better yet, bring grandma and the kids and spend some quality time with the family. Reservations recommended for dinner, 608 257 6877 Essen Haus is Madison’s favorite German beer hall. Complete with polka bands, dirndls and boots of beer. All the standard German fare is present, including spaetzle, sauerbraten, Wiener schnitzel, and fresh pretzels & mustard, and it’s all fabulous. Essen Haus is at 514 E. Wilson St. 608 255 4674. Reservations suggested. El Pastor Mexican restaurant, located at 2010 S. Park St. is my favorite Madison Taqueria. With excellent tacos, tortas, enchiladas, burritos, chimichangas, and wonderful fajitas, it can be hard to choose. Also available are mexican beers and sodas, plus their recently opened full bar. Lao Laan Xang, at 1146 Williamson St. serves Asian food with a Laotian flavor. Madison’s most interesting curry dish IMHO is their Gang Galli, with elements of Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian cooking coming together in one dish. White Horse Inn at 202 N. Henry St. serves some of Madison’s best steaks, chops, and game meats, and they are perpetually in Idine. I prefer their prime rib over any other in Mad Town. Reservations recommended, 608 255 9933 Monty's Blue Plate Diner at 2089 Atwood Ave. serves traditional diner favorites with a twist. My favorite was always the T.L.T. (tempeh, lettuce and tomato) sandwich with waffle fries and a cup of soup. The desert case here is possibly the best in Madison, with cakes, pies, tarts, cheesecakes, brownies, and a ‘Death by Chocolate’ that nearly lives up to it’s name! Fyfe's Corner Bistro at 1344 E Washington Ave. is an upscale, eclectic restaurant and bar, serving Wisconsin favorites, with a style bordering on ‘California cuisine’. I love the broiled sea scallops, and the lobster with pasta and cream sauce. The steaks and chops are excellent too. Reservations recommended, 608 251 8700 Mother Fools Coffee House at 1101 Williamson St. is a funky coffeehouse in the tradition of beat poets and bohemian artists. Also an art gallery with changing monthly exhibits, including a graffiti mural on an outside wall, and a music venue attracting local to international artists, but the coffee’s the thing here. Their Mother Fools House Blend was once judged the ‘best brewed coffee in the known world’. Try the cold brewed iced coffee, and the vegan pastries! Jenifer Street Market at 2038 Jenifer St. is a neighborhood grocery store, with great produce (much of it organic and locally grown), excellent butcher counter and deli, and a small hot lunch counter with soups salads and homestyle entrees made from ingredients in the store. I often go there for things like roast pork with mashed potatoes or rice, gravy, green beans, and a roll with butter, or sliced beef with scalloped potatoes, peas and pearl onions, and Italian bread with butter. Their bin of imported cheeses is also fantastic. Wisconsin Farmer's Market happens every Saturday morning at the state capitol. You can find everything from small farm meats and cheeses to homegrown honey, from baked goods to edible plants, and it’s all made and grown in Wisconsin. Fantastic home made pies, sausages, jerky, and jams are just a few of the one of a kind, hand crafted food items I have found here. La Paella, a great Spanish restaurant on Fish Hatchery Rd heading south of Madison. They have a very nice wine bar with a ton of hot and cold tapss to choose from. Very good atmosphere and the paella is served with a nice portion of seafood. If you order one of their trademark dishes (such as the paella), then it's personally dished to your plate by the owner--great touch! Prices are reasonable $15 to $30 for what's considered upscale dining. You could easily make a meal just at the wine bar with the tapas, something I'm going to do on my next visit. a potential place in Madison I read about: quote: ...self-described Indonesian restaurant is in Madison, Wisconsin, the Bandung Restaurant. I've never been, but I have read a lot of reviews of the place in Wisconsin papers, and it sounds pretty good. They seem to offer a rijsttafel about once a month, and appear to be an average $10-a-plate Indonesian restaurant otherwise. Check their website for details: http://www.bandungrestaurant.com

for pizza or ?????

for sure!!! or any single malt or a fine bourbon. I leave it in the bottle and pack carefully, on countless Boundry Waters hiking/canoe trips I've yet to have a broken bottle. That first night when we hike in have a dinner of steak, then sit around and drink a single malt while watching the northern lights, just great.

When my wife was young, she every once in awhile was treated to her own drink (no judgements please as it was a kiddie cocktail in a thimball). She can not remember the name of the alcohol but it was in a bottle that the glass was molded to form a woman (heavy set) with breasts and all. She believes the alcohol was a gold color. Ringing a bell with anyone as to what this may be?

just had one of the finest soups I've ever had yesterday for lunch. a dark, smoky, pork and vegetable chunked soup with fried strips of potato and lots of spice. It was the last bowl from the pot so I'm guessing it simmered for awhile thus really concentrating the flavors. Had the vaca frita sandwich as well. Client had the chicken sandwich which was terrific.

A friend of ours drove out from LA to join us. We waited for him at a place called The Beer Hunter on the corner of Washington Avenue and Highway 111 in La Quinta, not too far from the Renaissance. He showed up about 9:30 and we closed the place down. Man it sure was nice that CA has the no smoking rule. It was a pleasure to be in a bar and not stink when we got back to the hotel. There are two other Beer Hunter locations, one each in Rancho Cucamonga and Catherdral City. We are not really sports bar type people but I wanted to recommend it for those who like the ciders that one finds on tap in Europe, The Beer Hunter serves a cider on tap called BlackThorn. Quite delicious, it was my drink of choice the whole evening.

Duc Le’s – Vietnamese – Rancho Mirage Duc Le’s I believe used to be called Le Basil as the bill holder still had this title on it and some of the smaller direction signage in the parking lot still mentioned Le Basil. The large red neon proclaims that this place is now called Duc Le’s. Thankfully we were with a friend who likes to try new cuisine and he was not really familiar with Vietnamese. We started out slowly with shrimp spring rolls with peanut sauce, for those not familiar with the term spring roll, think unfried rice paper stuffed with vermicelli noodles, mint, shrimp, and some bean sprouts, SOOOOO much better than an eggroll Seeing as he dug into those and was ready for more, we ordered the Bahn Xeo. This was the finest Bahn Xeo I have ever had bar none. Just incredible. It is a large pan fried Vietnamese crepe with pork, shrimp, cilantro and bean sprouts. For main courses I had Bo Goi a beef salad over thinly sliced onion, celery, bean sprouts, cilantro and peanuts. Beef could have been not grilled for as long as it was as it was semi tough to chew, but still a good dish. Buddy had a chicken curry. Again, low on the heat scale but still wonderfly full flavored. Wife had wide rice noodles with chicken and mushrooms, another very good dish. While I can find better Vietnamese, it rarely is in such a nice setting, and I doubt there is better Vietnamese in Palm Springs. As stated the Bahn Xeo is the finest I’ve ever had, a must order for sure. Duc Le’s 69-620 Highway 111 Rancho Mirage 760.324.4120

ummm... I'm in my 50's, and let me assure you that I can still engage in serious physical pursuits... I'm sure that is the case, the average person I observed there seemed good for 18 holes of golf in a cart, not much more activity than that. I did not mean to imply a blanket statement, just an average of what I've observed my few times there.

Finally made it to St. James on the Vineyard. Very unique atmosphere. A local artist created curved, molded areas in various parts of the restaurant. There are also numerous Asian artifacts. If warm enough there is a small outdoor seating area with a couple fountains to drown out the possible traffic noise from the nearby Palm Canyon Drive. We started out ordering a bottle of Saint Magherita a Pinot Grigio. At $42 a nice crisp white that went well with the dining choices we made. Wife started with the Ahi Tartare. A little heavy on the wonton crisps that sat atop the circular mold of small cube Ahi. Fresh and good. I had the eggplant enchiladas. Italian eggplant sauteed and rolled into three small corn tortillas with Italian Cheeses and surrounded by a nice marianara sauce. Good, not great. For the entrée, my wife had the duck breast medium rare with a fois gras reduction. Duck was terrific but the fois gras was not really present in flavor. I had a lamb curry one of a few “famous” curry dishes. Plenty of raisins, sliced bananas, cashews, a mango chutney with succulent lamb cubes made for a wonderful dish, I had asked for medium spice level and was only dissappointed that it did not have enough kick. My own fault really as the average diner in Palm Springs I’m assuming is not very gung ho when it comes to spice. St. James was a very good restaurant, perhaps overly ambitious at times but our dishes were well executed. As one might expect in Palm Springs, if the restaurant has a nice atmosphere the bill goes up. Our dinner for two plus one bottle of wine was $125 without tip. St. James has a wonderful bar area that opens 30 minutes before the restaurant does. St. James on the Vineyard 265 S. Palm Canyon Drive Palm Springs 619.320.8041 menu & additional detail: http://stjamesrestaurant.com/home.html

Just my observation but the average age of the people I see in Palm Springs has got to be in the 50's at least. Makes for quite private hikes on the canyon trails as not many of the old folk come out doing some serious hiking. SiseFromm, "As for the dismissal of the possibility of Tyler's, one doesn't have to eat at a French Laundry hopeful every night of the week. Sometimes you just want to tuck into a good bit of fast food served properly, which is what you'll get there."

did you have time to check any places out?

sliders are slang for White Castle burgers in Chicago, to clarify by sliders you mean burgers?

after just getting back to Chicago and the snow (for me) but I do miss already the various poke we had almost every day. In a few weeks when in PSP, we will for sure stop by Haleiwa Joe's.

Showed up at 6am before an interisland flight to Molokai. Champion was only serving "plain" malasadas. They were warm almost hot and wonderful. Language was a barrier and I'm not sure if I understood correctly that Champion only serves plain malasadas. If so, I have to give the nod to Leonard's due to the delicious variety of filling possibilities.

thanks skchai for pointing this one out, food was great, so was the service, they put up with my many questions. Wife and I met/had lunch with a local Korean woman who eats here once a week she said.

Kimo, any new news?

thanks alot skchai just one more place to visit while in HNL.

please do. We have not been to Carlos for awhile, but have always been very pleased, sometimes wowed at Carlos. nice tip on the Monday byob

What would be included on a traditional luau menu?

good, I hope to visit Hamura's in a week.

same here, but not because of the reasons you stated. For me the boredom/disappointment lay in the fact that most items that we tasted just never came close to being as "fancy" or tasty as I thought they should be. Just because something is wrapped nice/has neat packaging does not mean it will taste good. But I sure look forward to hearing if people that are going do discover a "hit" item.

do various pokes count as snacks. my wife and I snack on pokes all the time, I make a killer ahi one at home too.

Not much in the way of Palm Springs and its surrounding area on eG so here goes. Here are places I've enjoyed: Well, we had two breakfasts in the Palm Springs area: One was at Don and Sweet Sue’s Café in Cathedral City. I had the chorizo, eggs and cheese burritos, while the wife had poached eggs over corned beef hash. First the positive, the staff is one of the most friendly I’ve seen and there were many regulars dining here when we went who the staff all knew on a first name basis. The bacon was cooked fresh, not the typical reheated kind at most breakfast joints. Now for the negative news, corned beef hash was from a can and therefore was the normal salty junk, the salsa served w/my burritos was Heinz brand and was served in the plastic individual serving container like the jellies are and finally, the guacamole was the guacamole from a tube (that weird green color and the strange flavor that tastes nothing like real guac). This certainly makes for an overall negative dining experience IMO. Don and Sweet Sue’s Café 68-955 Ramon Road Cathedral City, CA Phone: 760.770.2760 The second place we dined was at Elmer’s. Elmer’s is a chain that originated in OR if I’m not mistaken. Wife had an incredible breakfast of potato pancakes. These were not the latkes that your mother made! These were VERY light pancakes that contained potato and onion, quite a delight. Wife and I devoured them and almost ordered a second helping. I had the Prime time skillet. A breakfast skillet of prime rib, onions, potatoes, red pepper with cheddar scrambled eggs on top. A nice breakfast strictly because of the prime rib but I’ve had better skillets. Service was very attentive. There are multiple locations of Elmer’s in the Palm Spring / Palm Desert area. We dined at the 1030 E. Palm Canyon location. Phone 760.327.8419 For Lunch/Dinner: Had a great meal at El Mirasol, located 140 East Palm Canyon Drive (HWY 111) , Palm Springs, CA. Phone: 760.323.0721 Started out w/the Guacamole and Chile Relleno. Guacamole was velvety w/small chunks of avocado (EXCELLENT). The Chile Relleno had a very thin coating and peppers were great. Then had a dish I have never had before and I of course have forgotten the name. The dish was cubes of pork that have been fried so they are very crispy, the cubes are then served in a rich sauce of tomatoes, peppers and onions. Of course served w/the obligatory refried beans and rice. TREMENDOUS!!!!! I put this on warm flour tortillas that they make at the restaurant w/a little of the guacamole I had left over (heaven). Found a second location for El Mirasol Restaurant. El Mirasol, 149 E. Palm Canyon, Palm Springs, Ca. (760) 323-0721; El Mirasol, 73325 Highway III, Palm Desert, CA. (760) 836-9028. Both have been good. This time I had the carnitas and they were stellar. Wife had the carne asada which was just OK. I must admit that in Chicago which has the 3rd largest Hispanic population in the US, a good carne asada is easy to find, so El Mirasol had some tough competition. In Rancho Mirage we ate lunch at the Desert Deli, located 69930 Hwy 111. Desert Deli is a deli restaurant, not a deli where they are slicing your order in front of you, looks like a venue out of Vegas. I had a combination corned beef/pastrami sandwich, both meats were quite good. Wife had the egg salad / chicken liver served open faced. Egg salad so-so, chicken liver was very good. We split the latkes, wife really liked them, just so-so IMO. ... I've heard good things about St. James at the Vineyard & Riccio's on north palm canyon. Anyone been the above or have any other suggestions for Palm Springs, Indigo, Palm Desert, etc?

my training has been pushed back to the last full week of Feb. I'll post if I am cut free from the group during the evenings, because I would love to go to dinner with some CA eG'ers.

Was aware of the first part of your statement, but not the second. If that is true, I was lied to at Sushi Samba recently. They served a Kobe "sashimi". I asked the mgr if it was Kobe from Japan, he said yes.