Restaurants

Madison often boasts of having the most restaurants per capita. If that claim isn’t always exactly true in the topsy turvy world of the restaurant business, it is always reliably somewhere very close to the top of that list.

For a small Midwestern city—some would say “town”—Madison has an impressive variety of restaurants. Ethnic fare crosses a broader spectrum than you might see in a much larger city let alone in one of around 200,000 people. How many cities have one Nepali restaurant let alone three?

Madison is fortunate to be surrounded by farmland. Vegetables, meats, and dairy products are in abundance, making it easy for restaurants to build their menus around local and often organic ingredients. From the fine dining at Harvest to a tavern hamburger at the Caribou, the buy-local ethic has really taken hold. For those being strict about it, a change in season means a change in menu as the tomatoes don’t do well under a foot of snow.

Check out the Best Burgers category for truly the finest hamburgers you’ll ever find. The eateries listed there range from bar and grills to more eclectic dining and are likely to even have some vegetarian specialties on their menu.

There is little in the way of a dress code and restaurants might seat university students in shorts and flip flops just one table over from a couple dressed sharply for an evening at the Overture Center for the Arts. Fish fries are a long-standing Wisconsin tradition, and a variety of restaurants offers them from fine dining and supper clubs to the neighborhood tavern or even a church basement.

The City of Madison banned smoking in restaurants and other workplaces, and soon after the state followed suit with a ban taking effect as of July 5, 2010, so all dining experiences are now smoke-free. Some establishments may offer outdoor seating smoking areas.

What may come as a shock to some is that the typical restaurant may stop serving around 8:30 or 9 p.m. Late-night meals can be limited to bars, and even then you might find grills closing by 11 p.m. Unless otherwise indicated, restaurants take major credit cards, and by “major” you can be guaranteed it means at least MasterCard and Visa. Other cards can be hit or miss such as Discover cards and especially the high-fee American Express card.

Establishments are arranged by cuisine but it is worth paging through to see the categories as Brazilian and Peruvian fall under South American, for example, and Contemporary Fine Dining covers some rather diverse menus. Notable bakeries are also worked into the restaurant list. Food carts are popular around campus and the Capitol Square, and a couple good take-out-only shops were musts to mention. Madison is not your ordinary town so expect a few odd arrangements such as Greek food served at a gas station, Thai in a convenience store, or first-rate sushi in a landlocked state. Anything can happen.

Many of the local publications such as Isthmus, 77 Square, Madison Magazine, and the A. V. Club section of the Onion publish restaurant reviews in print and online, and a great local Web site/blog is Eating in Madison A to Z (www.madisonatoz.com) which chronicles an alphabetically-ordered attempt by Nichole and J. M. to try every eatery in town.