The Audrey Kitchen + Bar
Crab cakes are full of crab and garnished with a tomato and pineapple relish.
There’s something elegant about hotel dining rooms, even if you’re dining in your hometown. The mind says — “Here I am in a hotel!” — tricking you into believing you’re on vacation. Maybe part of that excitement stems from my childhood, when Madison didn’t have so many restaurants. Then, a trip to the dining room at the Holiday Inn, where East Washington Avenue met the Interstate, was a Big Deal.
But Madison has a lot of restaurants now, and I’m not sure I’d choose The Audrey, the new all-day dining room in the Monona Terrace Hilton.
The Hilton previously operated the generally excellent Capitol Chophouse in the historic former chancery building of the Catholic Diocese of Madison, adjacent to the hotel. That’s been remade into private event space, while the hotel’s former Olive Lounge has been expanded to become The Audrey (named after Audrey Munson, the model for the figure atop the state Capitol). It’s decorated beautifully in bright blues and whites, with cheerful patterned upholstery on the booths and a bright white fireplace providing a homey touch in the otherwise contemporary room. The bar/lobby runs into the dining room, and it’s not uncommon to encounter guests trekking through on their way to the skyway shortcut to Monona Terrace.
The Audrey has two problems, and guests trailing luggage through the dining room isn’t one of them. Prices are high, and seasonings on the dishes too often go astray.
On my first lunch visit to the Audrey I hadn’t gotten around to scrutinizing the menu before the server came by to describe the soup of the day, a potato leek with root vegetable. I said, “Sounds great, I’ll have a cup.” When the check arrived and the cup of soup was billed at $7, I thought I’d been charged for a bowl — but a bowl is $9. This is not a cup that has been generously reconceived as more of a bowl-sized portion. It is definitely a cup. The potato leek was acceptable, but barely. The root vegetables in question were some underdone parsnips.
Not wanting to ding the $7 cup on the basis of just one soup, I tried again on a subsequent visit. A cup of tomato, kale and white bean was so salty I couldn’t discern any flavor other than salt.
The crab cake appetizer, happily, does not succumb to the classic Midwestern flaw of too much bready filling. Large chunks of crab are just barely held together by mayo — but again this dish was salty, blocking the sweetness of the crab. A neatly diced tomato and pineapple pico de gallo-style garnish is a welcome condiment, balancing the salt, but a second sauce the menu bills as avocado cilantro mayo (but seems like a mustard aioli) isn’t necessary, as this dish does not need more ways to mask the crab.
Fried cauliflower with preserved lemon, chilies, green olive and scallion would be hitting all the right flavors, if the flavors showed up — there was only a bare trace of lemon, no olives, and too-mild chilies.
A brisket sandwich could have been great, with tender beef and a caramelized onion relish, but the brisket was unforgivably salty, augmented by a salty rye bun. It’s the one sandwich that comes with a side of spicy Asian slaw instead of a heap of french fries. The slaw is quite good, with Napa cabbage, carrot and celery, but whoa, were there a lot of raw jalapenos in this. They hijack the flavor; fortunately it’s easy to pick them out. Shorn of its spice, the slaw clearly doesn’t have much Asian about it. How about a little toasted sesame oil in the dressing?
Other sandwiches include a reuben, grilled cheese, chicken flatbread and burgers.
The kitchen seems to have a surer hand with the entrees, available only after 5 p.m. These include a pork tenderloin, beef tenderloin, hanger steak, shrimp, halibut, and cavatappi with sweet corn sauce.
The best dish I had at The Audrey was the sauteed shrimp — the shrimp were fine, but it was the accompanying Thai-influenced green curry sauce and a fun coconut scallion rice cake that put the dish over the top. And the kitchen showed wisdom in its almost reverential treatment of wild-caught halibut, plated rather plainly with a broth and boiled new potatoes. It’s not a flashy dish, but satisfying. That said, I feel duty-bound to note that both of these entrees are very modest in size. My dining companion suggested that we stop at Culver’s on the way home.
The menu at The Audrey (which also includes breakfast and a weekend brunch buffet) has been put together thoughtfully, and has potential. But there needs to be more care in the execution for this to become a destination restaurant.
The Audrey Kitchen + Bar
9 E. Wilson St.; 608-255-0165; theaudreykitchenandbar.com
6:30 am-midnight Mon.-Thurs., 6:30 am- 2 am Fri.-Sat.,
6:30 am- 11 pm Sun.; $6-$42
