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Monroe Street has become a great place to eat and shop again after many years of multiple vacancies and poor fits.  On a cold day or night, there’s nothing better than slipping into a cozy little pub or coffee shop to sit and sip with friends and eat comfort food. Brocach on Monroe serves up warm service, a welcoming atmosphere and hearty portions.

I was lucky enough to join seasoned blogger and expert, Brian Lee, the creator of Eat,Drink, Madison.com, for lunch. I consistently use his website as my resource for coming up with where to go and what to do in Madison-very comprehensive and super easy to navigate. These were our Restaurant Week Choices at Brocach.

 

We chose the Fire Roasted Prince Edward Island Mussels & Duck Fat Fried Fingerling Potatoes for our first course. The mussels came with a Beurre (butter) fondue for dipping and garlicky sourdough toast. Yum!  Usually mussels are swimming in the sauce, but this time it was on the side and made the dish less messy and more like lobster!  The nicely crisp, fried fingerlings had only tiny traces of bacon & shallot and came with a unecessary habanero aioli…they were super rich as it was so a lighter dipping sauce might have been better.

For entrees we chose the Seared Salmon Fillet with fingerling potatoes, garlic spinach, beurre rouge and the ultra rich Guinness Stout Burger with rashers, grilled red onion & blue cheese on a pretzel bun. The salmon was cooked perfectly, not dry but not underdone either. The burger was super juicy and paired particularly well with the onion, blue cheese and irish version of “Canadian bacon.” Believe me, the Irish are getting it right!  It was also one of the best pairings on a pretzel bun I’ve had. Everyone is using these now, but they don’t go with everything and I give Brocach credit for great balance of rich flavors and chewy pretzel combination.  I took half of this giant burger home and it was just as delicious cold!

 

 

Desserts are made in house by pastry chef Katy Radtke. We chose the Whiskey Pecan Bread Pudding with vanilla ice cream & house-made caramel sauce and the Warm Gingerbread with whipped cream and candied lemon peel. Candied lemon peel?

Can I have a whole plate of that!?  Lemon and gingerbread are great together and the little dollop of whipped cream melted into this delightful, warm cake along with my heart.  I wish more restaurants had the guts to serve gingerbread. It’s a great winter treat. So is any bread pudding that is done well.  This one was a tad dry, but had gorgeous presentation and a nice caramel sauce.  I’d like to try it with a hard sauce made with butter and something clever from behind the bar…maybe an Irish Whiskey or scotch?

 

 

 

 

My top picks for RW at Brocach:

Fire Roasted Prince Edward Island Mussels, Guinness Stout Burger, Warm Gingerbread with extra lemon peel 😉