Brownies and Zucchini

Full Disclosure:  I paid for this meal with my own money and I was in no way reimbursed for this blog post.  The opinions are completely my own.

Madison seems to be quite a brewery haven.  I mean Capital Brewery, Great Dane, Granite City…..I’m sure there are others that I am missing…

One of the new brewery’s in town is Vintage Brewing Co. (It happens to be in the location of a brewery that closed a few years ago: JT Whitneys)  I had been wanting to try it for a while, but we always just thought it was another burger and fries brew pub type restaurant so it wasn’t ever really on the top of our list.

But, sometimes the list doesn’t matter whats on the list, and you just go because you cant think of anywhere else.

This was one of those times.

Generally when you walk into a restaurant that was a different restaurant it seems like the new restaurant just changed the logos and paintings on the walls.  Luckily, Vintage did a bit more than that.  They changed some of the seating arrangements and definitely changed up the typical “pub” decor and gave it a definite vintage feel.

They have more than 10 (depending on the day) different beers that they brew.  I don’t know a whole lot about beer, but I do know that that is a large variety of beer!  They even have really cool names like Mclovin, Palindrome and Wheaty Peaty.  Along with the beer, they also brew some of their own soda! These include rootbeer, cream soda, (one other one that I can’t remember) and mint soda. We were intregued by the mint soda so we decided to try it!

It was VERY minty.  Not even really sweet like soda.  More like mint soda water.  We were not fans.  Luckily, the nice waitress let us switch it out for a rootbeer.

Not only do they have a ton of their own beers but – unlike most other local breweries that I’ve seen – they also have brews from some other local breweries!  They have 6 other local beers on tap including the ever popular New Glarus’ Spotted Cow, and (one of my personal favorites) New Glarus Raspberry Tart!!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Raspberry Tart on tap!  (If you know somewhere else that it is on tap please let me know!!)  So, obviously I had to get some Raspberry Tart.

Yum yum!  Raspberry Tart is the closest thing to beer that I’ll drink.  Well, I guess technically hard cider is classified as a beer too.

The menu is very different than a typical brew pub menu.  They do still have a lot of the standard dishes – but there are others that are a lot more unique.  For instance: Grilled Cheese Cheeseburger – “Burger topped with ham, double cheese, and fried onions, all nestled between two grilled cheese sandwiches in place of a standard bun”  Um, yeah we saw someone else eating one and it looked giant.  Also this: Creole Ravioli – “RP’s four cheese ravioli and grilled portabello mushrooms in a zesty creole tomato sauce, with garlic toast, served as a vegetarian option OR add chicken and Andouille sausage.”

I should also point out that they use lots of local ingredients!  RP’s Pasta, Cedar Grove Cheese, Knoche’s Beef, and house made salad dressings and sauces.

The meal started with warm fresh bread and butter – always a good way to start off in my book!

For the husband’s main course, he had the BBQ Pork Baked Mac N Cheese – “Our BBQ pulled pork and RP’s pasta’s fresh rigatoni, layered with our 4 cheese sauce and seasoned bread crumbs, then baked.”  It looked good, and I was told it tasted good as well!

For my dinner I had the Fish and Chips – “Vintage Weiss Blau fried cod with cole slaw, lemon, tartar, and pub chips.” Except instead of chips I had fries.  (See Mom I DO eat fish fry sometimes!)   It was actually really good!  The fish wasn’t super greasy deep-fried tasting and the fries were just how I like them – they actually had potato in them, not just deep fried air!

Overall the meal was good, the waitstaff was friendly and the atmosphere was very vintage – definitely fitting the name of the restaurant.  Did I mention that they had a TV that played old ( like 50’s and 60’s old) sitcoms?  Some may not like that kind of vibe, but I really enjoyed it!

Taste: A, everything was very good and fresh tasting.  The bread especially was really good!
Cost: B, depending on what you order, it could be more or less expensive.  Some of the more generic sandwiches are in the $8-9 range, but the specialty entree’s are more around the $11-15 range.

Would I go there again?  Yeah I think so! There are definitely some other things that I would like to try.  …..and I could definitely be swayed by the fact that they have Raspberry Tart on tap.  🙂

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Filed under: Restaurant Review Tagged: | beer, madison, restaurant review, vintage brewing