Eric Anders
The polenta cake at The Deliciouser.
Fun pops of fruit dress up the polenta cake.
Unlike the well-worn “farm-to-table” or “American tavern” labels driving the fare at restaurants the last couple of decades, a spice-driven menu is rare.
From the cocktail menu that, in its current iteration, names nearly all of its concoctions after the signature spice in the recipe, to the detailed Spice Bible tucked under each menu, seasoning is front and center at The Deliciouser, a spice shop turned buzzy restaurant. I can’t see anyone asking for the salt here.
And the focus seems to be working. This summer the restaurant added lunch hours Wednesday-Friday, with a new sandwich menu, distinct from dinner fare.
The dinner menu is divided into “For the Table,” “Small Plates” and “Large Plates,” and finishes with a handful of desserts.
Many dishes wear their seasoning on their titular sleeves, like the large plate Hot and Numbing Sichuan Five Spice Noodles. You will feel the signature tingle of Sichuan peppercorn, sometimes distracting from the umami brought to the dish by mushrooms (or, in an earlier version, ground pork) but always with a fun trick of the senses. The Baharat roasted butternut squash, also a large plate, is a similarly wild dish, highlighting not just the rich caramelized squash and nutty wild rice, but bright acid from olives as well as an invisibly-blended-in spicy zhoug sauce.
Eric Anders
The Berbere spiced beef at The Deliciouser.
The Berbere spiced beef sits on top of a swirl of Bunky’s hummus.
The Berbere spiced beef from the For the Table section is an unqualified success, layering crisp bits of beef (seasoned with the North African blend of peppers, paprika, ginger and more) atop locally beloved Bunky’s hummus and a smattering of pine nuts and currants. Four diners could comfortably share this, but one person could just as easily fall in love and order it for a main course.
Other times, the seasoning is hidden in a Deliciouser dish name, as with the Supper Club steak frites or the Siena-rubbed pork shoulder. The former amplifies the savory depth of American wagyu alongside crisp French fries dusted with Creole Cottage seasoning — flavor on flavor on flavor. The latter is a generous helping of pork, with paprika’s Spanish flair but served with northern European accents like charred brussels sprouts and slices of lightly pickled apple.
This year’s weird fall weather allowed for late-summery vibes to persist on the menu well into October. A special of panzanella salad sparkled with juicy tomato and crisp croutons, only to be whisked back off the menu as autumn finally hit. Halibut blessed with a gloriously crisp sear and paired with corn, beans and mushrooms has given way to a black cod with kohlrabi and squash.
If the dinner menu accounts for seasonality, the lunch menu — which rolled out over the summer — has been reliably consistent. You’ll find large, slightly unwieldy sandwiches as intense as the dinner menu, as simple as a classic Parisian ham and brie, or as clever as a mushroom-focused vegetarian take on banh mi. There’s even a fried chicken sandwich; come for the juicy dark meat, stay for the chili crisp mayo.
That the fried chicken also shows up on the dinner menu feels like a reassurance that The Deliciouser doesn’t take itself too seriously. For diners who might blanch at all the spices, a tagliatelle with white sauce was quietly competent, nothing too wild.
Desserts don’t go as hard as the majority of the items on the menu, either. A simple polenta cake was punctuated by fun pops of blueberry and late-season stone fruit. There was an unadvertised but not unwelcome hit of citrus in the bittersweet chocolate tart, lending it a cannoli vibe.
Maybe best of all were the lunch menu Oaxacan chocolate crackle cookies, delivering on the spice focus of the rest of the menu while still being a nice little sweet treat. Bonus madeleines, flavored with citrus and cubeb peppercorns, arrived from the kitchen at the end of one meal and landed equally successfully.
With Old Sugar Distillery and Giant Jones Brewing as fellow anchors, The Deliciouser has made its little piece of the Main Street Industries building home. The handful of hightops and low, communal tables can give the impression of being invited to a large dinner party in a small apartment, especially with the jumble of retail shelving housing spices. But this is a proper restaurant, and the menu is fully fledged and full of flavor.
The Deliciouser
931 E. Main St., Suite 7
608- 286-1226; thedeliciouser.com
Wed.-Fri. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-9 p.m., Sat. 5-9 p.m.
$8-$42
