On the Road Again: Canterbury Garden Cafe in Fennimore, WI

On the Road Again:  Reviews and notes from our group travels outside Madison.  Always within driving distance!

Short Summary:  The cutest little tea house and cafe along the Mississippi River!

Location:  1080 9th St., Fennimore, WI
Website:  http://www.canterburycafeandrosegardenflorist.com/

Fennimore, for those that don't know, is a little town about a little more than an hour west of Madison as the Google flies.  We stopped there purely by chance on our way to an Iowa bed and breakfast -- clearly there's a god that looks after travelers and restaurant reviewers.

The Canterbury Garden Cafe is just a block off the main drag as you take Highway 18 through town.  It's conveniently marked with an old hand-painted sign on 18 advertising a "Victorian Cafe - 1 Block" or something like that, and it's well worth stopping for.

The restaurant (and gift shop, and ice cream parlor, and florist, and maybe some other business ventures wedged in there too?) is housed in a massive old Victorian house.  Each of the three or four little dining areas has its own decorative theme; we sat in the airplane room with a view out over the front porch.  Tables are laid in fine restaurant style -- multiple spoons and forks, crystal glasses; heavy brocade tablecloths in rich colors.  The owner/operator (who chats with all her guests) has years of restaurant experience and it shows everywhere.

Food is exceptional and, for Madisonians, fantastically priced.  For about $10 a head we got massive croissant sandwiches in varying kinds (the country fried steak sandwich was out of this world), bottomless cups of the tea/coffee of the day, soup, potato salad, green salad, apple slices drizzled in caramel, and a dainty little scoop of Chocolate Shoppe ice cream garnished with mint for dessert.

Wow.

Throw in very personalized service (including hot hand towels before and after, and an owner who gave us a couple of her farm-fresh apples for trail snacks when we mentioned that we were hiking that afternoon) and you've got a must-stop treat for anyone traveling along US-18 through Fennimore.  Or maybe make the town and it's toy and doll museum your destination for a day trip?  Up to you -- but stop at the Canterbury Garden Cafe.  We were floored.

Dumpling Haus at Hilldale Mall

Short Summary:  Generic potstickers and dumplings in a generic setting.  Better than your average mall food, but you can do better at Hilldale.

Everyone who works on this blog is majorly into dumplings, tacos, and just about anything else in a dough wrapper, so it's a wrench to give a dumpling-focused restaurant the thumbs-down.  But none of us found much to recommend the Dumpling Haus. 

"Bejing Style Dumplings" top the menu, and we tried the house ("haus") varieties steamed and fried ("stickers").  There's a little round ball of ground pork and spices in the center, pretty much like you'd get at any Chinese buffet.  The wrappers were gummy and bland.  Frying gave the potsticker version a little more crunch, but they were so dripping in brown grease that it didn't help much.  Even our dedicated unhealthy-foods-lover (Geoffrey) couldn't get into them.

The "Haus Bao Zi" puts the same filling in a thicker, mushier dough.  It sticks to your teeth less and is a little more filling.  You also get less of them, so it all about balances out.  The "taco style" they offer is probably your best bet, since you get a slightly more balanced dough-to-filling ratio that way. 

We'd like to love this place as a shopping mall secret, but we can't.  It's forgettable Chinese food court fare, and it can't stack up to some of the other offerings at Hilldale. 

The Great Dane (Downtown)

Short Summary:  The default Madison dining experience.  Take the relatives, the out-of-town guests, the first date; the guys from work.  Craft beers plus from-scratch cooking in a wide range of styles equals something for everybody.

Location:  123 E Doty St. #1, Madison, WI 53703

Hopefully most Madisonians already have one of the Great Danes on their radar as a safe go-to supper location for just about any event.  Their menu is broad and plays around with a number of modern updates on supper-club fare.  The franchise is up to four locations in the Madison area, with a fifth in Wasuau, with slight variations in beers on tap and nightly specials from one to the next.  The main menu remains the same for all of them, however, and we've found the preparation to be reliably consistent from one to the next.

All the Usuals, Updated

The Dane's menu is a lot of familiar faces with some gentle twists.  You've got burgers with a variety of toppings and sauces (and, for the fans of excess, one with a 1/4 lb. bratwurst patty added in), fish fries, tex-mex staples like quesadillas and a killer vegetable burrito, and the occasional foray into Cajun and soul food.

As good as the burgers are (especially the buffalo patty Sustain-A-Burger with mushroom gravy), I usually find myself straying toward the dinner plates.  The "Smothered & Covered Fried Chicken" is a masterpiece of gastric indulgence:  a breaded chicken breast topped with andoullie sausage and butterflied shrimp in Cajun butter sauce.  Some odd fusions like the "Southwest Tortellini" pay off; others, like the "New Orleans BBQ Shrimp" fall a little short of the variations you can get at other Madison joints.

A couple of sour notes in the general high quality:  the pizzas are hit or miss, with a tendency to dry the toppings out and a crust that needs more sauce or cheese than they're willing to give it.  The BBQ ribs are forgettable, as is the pulled pork sandwich -- it's either Sweet Baby Ray's or a close imitation, too sweet and overpowering to do the meat any good.  But for the most part you can expect ample portions of good, strongly-flavored supper club favorites at any of the Madison-area Danes.

Oh Yes, They Also Brew Beer

Their own beer, in fact, and it's very, very good.  You can't get it in bottles, so it's less well-known to Madisonians than offerings from Capitol Brewery, Ale Asylum, or New Glarus, but the Great Dane's beer can easily match up to any of them.  There's always a variety on tap to please everyone from the American lager drinkers to fans of bitterly dark porters.

We particularly recommend the "Stone of Scone Scotch Ale" as an impressive local offering that won't be like other craft beers your guests might have tried.  It's got everything a beer drinker wants:  hop, malt, and a smooth creaminess that goes down dangerously easy.  But you won't go wrong with anything off the tap, so go nuts.