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. 

Pasqual's at Hilldale

Short Summary:  Comfortably familiar Southwestern food done better than you're used to, with a gorgeous and well-stocked tequila bar to round the experience out.

Location:  670 North Midvale Boulevard, Madison, WI 53705

In a town full of exotic fusions and hipper-than-thou concept restaurants it's sometimes worth your while to step back onto the beaten path.  Pasqual's at Hilldale doesn't have much at a glance to recommend it to food snobs:  the menu is safely Midwesternized Southwestern food, and it's located at the tail end of a shopping mall.  But for all that it's a good place for a casual evening out, and dear enough to our hearts to be the first official RRRM review.

Challenge-Free Eating

Nothing on the Pasqual's menu is going to be a huge surprise, though they do play around with small twists on the familiar cheese-and-bean smothered staples.  It's comfortable, familiar Southwestern cuisine as we understand it in our most Americanized hearts -- burritos, enchiladas; quesadillas.

The good news is that it's all done well.  The ingredients are quality and they're prepared quickly and well.  Portions are ample, and there's enough flavor in each individual ingredient that you can tell the difference between one type of meat in your burrito and another -- it's not all drowned out in a thick sauce or plasticy cheese-melt.

For the more adventurous Pasqual's does throw in a few "twists" on the conventional fare (they have a very good jerk chicken burrito with cucumber garlic yogurt sauce, perfect on a hot summer day), but for the most part you're best off sticking with the staples done right.  Start with guacamole and chips and go from there into one of the burritos or enchiladas, or try a fajita plate if you're starving.

While You're at It, a Drink

No review of the Pasqual's at Hilldale would be complete without a nod to the tequila bar, which may be one of the best in the country.  Recently expanded, the bar area has plenty of room, great servers, and a couple hundred tequilas to choose from.  Try a flight of three, if you've never experienced it as more than the lick-shoot-suck stuff of college memory.  The drink might surprise you.

Mondays and Tuesdays are half-price margaritas, which I've always found to be well-mixed and strong enough to actually taste of tequlia, rather than limeade.