notbatgirl

Hey Liam, thanks for the tip about La Querentana! We went tonight and had a positive experience overall. We got the tamales (one veggie, one chicken -- only OK, not great), a chicken quesedilla (excellent -- great texture and especially good with the salsa verde supplied to the table w/the chips), and two tacos -- one carnitas (excellent) and one carne asada (very good but a little tough). My husband also ordered horchata, which was not on the menu -- he said it was quite good. It's made in-house. Anyway, we recommend it! It was empty when we went, so clearly it needs customers. The decor is also sadly lacking, being of the ugly-strip-mall variety. Here is the link to the 3/22/07 Wisconsin State Journal review of both La Queretana (West Side) and Burrito Drive (East Side). The soft tacos and tamales from La Queretana were scrumptious. http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/entertainm...=125464&ntpid=7 For Vietnamese, Mekong at 600 Willy Street is also a decent choice if you're near downtown or on the East Side. The service there is very friendly. ←

That's interesting -- I really like Harvest, and found it especially good last time I went. They got a new chef in December, a guy from Sparta (WI, not Greece), and the menu is now more adventurous but still takes advantage of good local ingredients. An example: we had a sunchoke panna cotta for an appetizer, with a caremalized pistachio topping -- sounds like it could be overly ambitious, but it was actually very very good. We haven't been to Eno Vino yet but after reading everyone's raves it's clear we have to go!

Apparently there's a good new Mexican place on Willy Street, near the Bongo Video strip mall -- I hear they have great burritos and very good veggie options. It's not really authentic, but it's supposed to be muy tasty.

I'm with you on Magnus -- I've never been impressed with the food or ambiance. It is so LOUD in there!

Hi all, I've been on eGullet for years but only just started posting -- probably due to having a baby and thus being home (on the computer) all the time! Anyway, we've been in Madison for 2 1/2 years, and I also grew up here. We're from the Bay Area and definitely into food, and we have some favorites here -- similar to Sara's, actually: Greenbush for pizza Dottie's for burgers El Dorado Grill and Bon Appetit and Lazy Jane's for brunch Sardine and Cocoliquot and Osteria Papavaro (not mentioned in this forum, but truly wonderful -- chef is a member of the Madison Slow Food movement) and Harvest for non-ethnic dinner Lao Lan Xiang and Himal Chuli for ethnic dinner Barrique's for lunch sandwiches, wine, coffee, pastries, ambiance, free wireless...we're so happy the Monroe Barrique's is now giving us a good alternative to Ancora! I also recommend the new French bakery on the West side, Madeline's, for decent croissants and papillons. L'Etoile Cafe is good for those too. We have yet to find any decent Chinese food here and have given up searching. We'd also love Vietnamese food recommendations. Oh, and I work on campus and highly recommend Ingrid's Lunchbox, the red cart on library mall, for a wonderful lunch option. Her food makes you feel like you're eating a home-cooked meal on a farm in Iowa.

Just came across this string for the first time -- my husband and I eloped to Chicago in September 2005 and ate our elopement dinner at Alinea -- a truly amazing experience. We had the 12-course meal; pictures are up on our Flickr site, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginkat/sets/889944/

p.s. Sara and other Madisonians, maybe we should start some sort of foodie parent group so we can all go out to eat together and overwhelm the other diners....

Yes, please report back -- we just had a baby and are avid foodies, and have begun to worry about our restaurant experience getting severely downgraded because we're toting a child around. (Note that I would consider being relegated to steakhouses and pizza places as "severely downgraded.) BTW, for those in Madison, we took our 5 week old to Sardine and it was great -- loud enough that no one noticed any babbling, and the waiters were very friendly. We've also been with her to El Dorado Grill for Sunday brunch, twice, and had a very positive experience.