On the Yahara A-Z

"The Year Began with lunch. We have always found that New Year's Eve, with its eleventh-hour excesses and doomed resolutions, is a dismal occasion for all the forced jollity and midnight toasts and kisses.  And so, when we heard that over in the village of Lacoste, a few miles away, the proprietor of Le Simiane was offering a six-course lunch with pink champagne to his amiable clientele, it seemed like a much more cheerful way to start the next twelve months." Peter Mayle, from A Year in Provence



A.

To be new but not really new to a city is a fascinating state of mind when in a foodie capital like Madison.  We have been to Madison many many times, lived here for two summers and completed an undergrad at UW.  But to experience the food renaissance here in the city anew is the foodie's dream.  Avenue Club and Bubble Up Room fits right into this very well, having been one of those restaurants that we might very well have driven by a hundred times when younger but that now, when you realize you live only a couple of miles away from it – that it's basically walkable, and that it's been transformed into a reconceived retro-modern supper club – it becomes a mainstay in the mind almost upon walking in the door.

We wanted to spend time in a great Madison joint late afternoon, somewhere off Capital, and even away from East, where we knew we might be later that night.  The restaurant was wide open to us, post lunch crowd and just before dinner.  We were able to soak up the Bubble Up for a couple of hours sitting on tall round booths. The Spotted Cow tap was poured into tall ale glasses and the oysters and Nicoise salads were well handled and prepared.

What we felt most, though, was a perfect blend of the old and the new; it's true, we're not life-longers here in the city, but we have spent many an hour in many a restaurant, pub, joint, club and cafe here....the Avenue is a blend of clean corners and old style, but not too kitschy.  If we had more time, the scene might well have played out how the old supper club played: happy hour drinks, family, friends, the traffic rolling past one of the old thoroughfares of the city, as the sun dims and city neon takes over.  On the way home, some light chatter between neighbors along the riverside.