Wasabi - 449 State Street

Back on State Street, asking the question: "Can I find great sushi in the Midwest?" Maybe it's the raw fish, the high price tags or the sheer possibilities for Japanese goodness, but stakes are very high when I go out for sushi. There is always average sushi around. Just pop into any Whole Foods, or other high-end grocery store, and you can walk away with a California in the time it takes to spell sashimi. But if I'm going out for sushi, I have pretty high expectations. My tastes are very singular: I'm looking for fantastic rolls. Originally, I looked down on sushi rolls, thinking they masked the true taste of marvelous fish flesh. However, unless you've got just way to much money to spend, the array of nigiri available is just too small and grows very tiresome. However, endless supplies of rolls are available and each restaurant will have a selection of at least three or more house specialties, making each new restaurant a chance to find that perfect package, wrapped up in seaweed and rice.

Rating: ***** (oh-so-average)

Food: We started with a seaweed salad with "real crab". Bad news before the crab even hit my mouth: very fishy smelling. Once chewed upon it was confirmed, none of the beautiful flavor you expect when you pay extra for crustations. The rest of the salad was limp. Seaweed, cucumbers, and sesame seeds, in a very bland soy sauce/vinegar dressing. Not a winner. For the main course, we skipped the usual Japanese Restaurant offerings and went straight for the sushi menu. There are a handful of specialty rolls to choose from, and an average selection of other rolls and nigri pieces. The clear winner was the Badger Roll with fish (sorry I forgot what kinds), a tempura coating and a spicy sauce on top. We all loved it. A eye-pleasing entry was the Geisha roll, a pretty-in-pink package featuring tuna, spicy greens, and a special sauce. While it looked great, this geisha did not take any one at the table to new levels of pleasure. Other rolls were very average, though the fish tasted quite fresh. Fellow diners who tried the Nigiri thought it was quite good. Service: Our waitress was uber-friendly up front, but quickly fell flat. We had so much trouble flagging her down on multiple occasions, and she didn't even hear us when we yelled to get her attention. A good wait staff should at least send their eyes over to your table once every few minutes, to visually see if you are okay.

Atmosphere: Wasabi has much more of a lunch-place feel, than an actual dining room. While there's a lot of natural light, tables are very ordinary, and fairly cramped together. Some outside seating is available along a walkway. Semi-noisy.

Cost: ($$) Rolls and nigiri were fairly priced, soups and salads were perhaps a bit high.

Maza Restaurant- 558 State St

My first big foray into State Street is a quiet, Afghani/Persian food restaurant. Serves lunch and dinner, with vegetarian, chicken, beef, lamb and seafood making up the focus areas.

Rating: *****(Solid, if lacking pizazz)

Food: Persian-type cuisine always excites you right away with amazing smells that tantalize up until the moment they hit your mouth, then seem to mostly fall flat, rattling around in the mix of taste buds, saliva, and nose nerves that decides what tastes good to me. The food at Maza started out very strong. An appetizer sampler came out featuring hummus, a yogurt sauce, and cilantro chutney, pakowra (which is a mix of lightly fried vegetables) and bulani (a fried potato and leak dumpling). No complaints here. All three sauces were wonderful: The hummus was strong (full-bodied, if you will) and had the perfect amount of seasoning, while the cilantro chutney and yogurt sauce combined for a nice mix of spicy and mild. Both fried items were not overdone, but highlighted their respective ingredients, and the nahn served with it all was warm and tasted freshly made. Those were the definite high notes. Dinner started with a pleasing salad with a mild dressing of Persian spices (soup was also an option). For the main course, I chose Lamb Kabuli Palow- with chunks of roasted lamb, basmati rice and carrots, raisins and almonds. I have no doubt it was well prepared. The lamb was well cooked, and tender, the rice was aromatic, and the added ingredients had a nice coating of sweet spices, featuring coriander. However, the end result is.. kinda boring. Like many other middle-eastern restaurants, the final course seems too dry, lacking in a big finish. While sampling friends dishes, the reviews are the same: interesting flavors, but something is missing for a western audience.
(Side note: sharing my leftovers with Jen the next day, they were better than the night before. The flavor of the lamb seemed to soak into the rice more, and vice versa.

Service: We arrived at the end of the dinner hour, to a mostly empty restaurant, and a sleepy-looking waitress. Not a lot of attentiveness, but we most definitely not pressured to hustle out so they could close up.

Atmosphere: There are chairs and tables lining each wall of this long rectangular dining area, which goes perpendicular to the street. Lighting is soft and low, and it is definitely not noisy. I would call it medium romantic.

Cost: $$ 1/2. No entrees under $8, but all come with soup or salad and nahn.

Website: None

Pizza Extreme - 605 E Washington Ave

Pizza is life. For most of us, it is as perfect as food comes. It combines the best food to ever come out of an oven(fresh bread), with a dizzying array of variety that encompasses nearly all food groups and can suit tastes from the most hardcore vegan, to a butcher's son. Unlike many foods (steak, hamburgers, broccoli, oranges, for example) even the worst pizza is edible, and even dirt cheap frozen pizzas provide a hint of the best aspects of the cuisine.


Rating: ***** (Totally Sinful)

Food: I ended my Chicago-Style Pizza virginity by gorging myself an 11" The Extreme, featuring a straight-forward showing of pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, onions & mushrooms. It arrives covered in cheese, which is obscured by the generous and mandatory coating of red sauce capping off this Midwestern marvel. I'm going to need help for this one- fortunately she's ready with a fork. We cut in, and sauce goes spilling into the cardboard box. Seconds later, we're enveloped in this avalanche of toppings, running into the large bowls, which are the perfect containers for eating of this kind. Unlike it's New York cousins, with which we've grown so accustomed, crust is not the star of this show. It's the beautiful sauce, in generous quantities, which steals the scene. I'm not easily impressed with sauces, which can be too peppery or too sweet, but this has the perfect mix of both. Beneath the red sea, sticky cheese is masking generous amounts of all the above-mentioned toppings. What can I say? It's rich, it's terrible for you, it's divine. The end finishes with a crispy, tall crust, which is too grease soaked for my taste, but I'm too drunk on sauce and sausage to really care about health right now. I've finished one piece, which feels like one piece too many, yet seconds are in the front of my mind.

Service: A motley crew is behind the counter, complaining about their various problems, but all I care about is the final result.

Atmosphere: No inside seating, for anything other than a quick lunch slice.

Cost: $$. The stuffed-pizzas are not cheap, though we luck out, and take advantage of a Thursday-nite special. Still, an 11" could easily be split among 3-4 people, assuming no one was starving, or one of the kinds of people who can eat a whole pizza by themselves anyway.

Website: http://www.pizzaextreme.biz/

Java Cat- 3918 Monona Dr

A moderately-funky coffee house, with a bigger-than-average bakery section and a huge gelato case. We were there for the gelato, so I can't tell you about the coffee.

Review: ***** (Heavenly!)


Food: It's hard to be impartial, since any kind of ice cream is a beautiful thing, especially on a beautiful day in July, but the gelato at Java Cat makes you want to want to run to the capitol and back, just so you can burn enough calories to justify more. There were at least 14 flavors (I forgot to count) and each looked progressively more delicious. Rather than making the "monumental disaster" of choosing the wrong flavor (I don't think that's even possible), our group was allowed to taste multiple gateways to gelato bliss, before settling on that perfect one. Even then, most people chose two flavors, to put in their small cup.

I sampled 5 flavors, all which were good, a few were other-worldly. Cinnamon Cheesecake literally took the cake as my personal favorite, edging out other tasty treats like Cake Batter, Coffee-Toffee and Key Lime Pie. All of the flavors had small amounts of mix-ins, like pie crusts, berries, or (as in the case of Coffee-Toffee) even espresso bean pieces. I'm told varieties change regularly, so who knows what frozen goodness is there now, as we speak. They also make gelato cakes, which is enough to make anyone wish their birthday was a little closer than it is.

I didn't sample, but the items in the bakery case looked just as good- especially the brownies!

Service: The servers very-politely put up with our requests for multiple samples, and multiple flavors per dish.

Atmosphere: A small range of tables, from tall to regular, and even a child's size table. There are comfy chairs too, and a good-sized patio with chairs and tables. Decor, as the name suggests, is centered around cats.

Cost: $. Small dishes start at more than $3, with large dishes hitting over $6. Still, that's about the going rate at high end ice cream chains like Cold Stone or Ben & Jerry's.

Website: http://www.javacatcoffee.com/

Fork and Spoon- 1133 E Wilson St

A small Italian cafe, just off Willy St. They make their own pasta, and offer whole wheat and gluten-free varieties. Menu is heavy on vegetarian options. We went for lunch.

Rating: ***** (Just Okay)

Food: With Italian, it's seemingly hard to go wrong. Tomatoes, pasta, olive oil and bread are always a winning combination aren't they? However, Fork and Spoon's offerings fall into the trap where so many other pasta places seem to reside: they're simply too boring.

I shared a Chicken Panini and a Mac 'n Cheese order with my partner. Our friends had Ravioli and a leek and fennel soup. No one around the table was wowed. The chicken panini was just fair, with white breast meat, red peppers and cheese on focaccia bread. Nothing else on the plate, save two pepperoncini. Simply put, there was nothing exciting going on there in terms of flavor.
The mac and cheese was large, home-made macaroni, with a very subtle white cheese sauce and breadcrumbs. I will say, the macaroni was well-cooked and yummy, but the cheese sauce was much too bland. Reviews from our friends were similar, with everyone agreeing the meal was just, okay. I think the chef used much too simple a mix of ingredients.

It's fair to point out that none of us ordered the whole wheat pastas, and it was a holiday, so perhaps we didn't get their best effort.

Service: We were waited on promptly, and our table was looked after often. We were also allowed to continue our conversations for about 30 minutes after the meal, without any hassles.

Atmosphere: We chose outside seating. Not a lot to see, but pleasant.

Cost: $. Most items are very reasonable, though they come with no sides, so ordering a full meal will add to your bill.

Website: http://www.forkandspooncafe.com/