Restaurant Review: Oakcrest Tavern

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Kelly

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.

Oh, Madison. Your restaurant choices are fantastic….but often times overwhelming, especially when really all that I want to do is go to the same delicious place over and over again rather than trying somewhere new. But sometimes location is key. The Urbanspoon app does wonders for trying to find somewhere to eat when you can’t make up your mind: sort by distance. And this time we even had a type of food in mind, so that narrows it down ever more. American Food + Near our house = Oakcrest Tavern. (they don’t seem to have a website, so the link is to their Yelp page)

Last week I was majorly craving a chicken sandwich and in no mood to make one myself. We haven’t been going out to eat very often, so we decided that this would be a good break from cooking and a chance to try a new restaurant.

To start our meal, in true Wisconsin fashion, we ordered some cheese curds. Deep fried balls of cheese = win. The curds were very good, fresh, and not super greasy tasting.

I opted for a salad instead of fries with my sandwich. The salad was actually more than I expected for a side salad at a restaurant that clearly is more about the frying and grilling than the greens. Although the lettuce wasn’t anything super special, the portion was good sized and I liked that it came with carrot sticks!

I got my grilled chicken with Swiss cheese. It was delicious as I had hoped. Soft buttery bun, real grilled chicken (not just reheated chicken with faked grill marks) and of course a delicious pickle to top it all off.

The husband had a cheeseburger and fries for his meal. I didn’t realize this going in, but Oakcrest actually uses Knoches local beef! It makes sense since they are right across the street!

I snuck a few of his fries too. They were good, but not as delicious as the cheese curds. Oh, and the portion above is the small size. If I wasn’t feeling like a salad I think we could have gotten away with just getting the cheese curds and splitting the order of fries, since everything is ordered a la carte. It would have been plenty of food.

I should also mention that this place is small. It doesn’t seem super cramped while you are sitting and eating, but it fills up quickly. We went pretty early and were fine getting a table, but when we were leaving about 45 minutes later, there were people waiting for a table. I would definitely recommend getting there early if you have a group of more than two. Oh, and I’ve heard it gets crazy busy for their Friday night fish fry.

Taste: A, delicious, fresh, and local
Cost: A, I believe the meal was around $25. Even though we didn’t get a ton of food, we did get an appetizer, and it was local meat at a small local establishment. I’d say it was worth it.

Would I go there again? I’m not sure. Although, I’d say that it is a good candidate for when I’m craving a chicken sandwich again and we don’t want to drive too far to get one!