old enough?

Let me begin this week’s post with some humble advice. For those of you out there engaged or about to be engaged or for that matter ever plan on getting engaged allow me to highly recommend a short engagement. There are a number of reasons for this but as it relates to this blog I recommend this course of action because planning a wedding will HIGHLY affect your day off.

After a tiring morning and afternoon of looking at potential reception sites it was time to turn the corner and have fun. We headed over to Greenbush Bar on Regent St. We had just been there a few days ago with other members of my family only to find out that since they are a bar everyone in the party needs to either be your child, spouse or over 21. The annoying thing that night was that they first seated us and then a few minutes later asked to see our ids so we had to leave and ended up heading to Nam’s down the street for a great meal.

On Monday night we sat down without a problem next to a family with little kids and a young college couple and ordered a couple of beers. We tried to drown out all wedding conversation with a plate of garlic cheese bread that was good and would have been amazing if the marinara sauce would have not been cold and then came our garlic, pepperoni and green pepper pizza. Overall all the food and drinks were good but the service was lacking and the prior experience left me with a B- impression of Greenbush BAR.

(wrong barriques)
After dinner we headed over to Barriques on Monroe St. for a couple of loaded drinks and the chance to just sit back read, write and talk. The place was busy compared to many of our Monday night experiences and for good reason. It is a great place to get a drink with friends whether your prefer tea, coffee, beer or wine. Or you can plug into an ipod and read. Mary and I stayed there till close and thus ended another night of exploring a couple Madison’s many options.

an easy stroll down memory lane

my apologies for the tardiness of this blog. so let's just get to it.

february has been crazy for us. we figured out that between the two of us, we had a total of 3 unplanned evenings in a total of 28 days. the middle of the month found us in the twin cities at my best friend's wedding. from friday to sunday, we enjoyed a near-hourly booking of our time. so you can imagine how we felt sunday night when we arrived home to another packed evening of events yet again.

i had to work on monday, which i did with little enthusiasm (traveling to stand up in a wedding should never count as vacation-time. there's very little that screams "relaxation" in that). so monday night, when jon invited me over for stir-fry, i couldn't have been happier.

we don't do meals at home very regularly because 1) we both have roommates who are often at home, leaving us with little privacy and 2) we feel an obligation to get out and try something new for the sake of exploring date night options in our fine city. but tonight, it was exactly what we needed.

afterwards, jon drove us out to campus. first stop? memorial union. and this is how jon knows me so well. i went to russia last year and was able to bring back a few pieces of old russian propaganda. they hang on my bedroom wall, reminding me of my love for that country, their fascinating history, and my desire to go back again.

so what else did my wonderful fiance find than memorial union's exhibition of soviet propaganda posters? incredible. the website notes, "This exhibition presents a glimpse of propaganda art created in the Soviet Union to express and disseminate Communist ideology. The images, which date from 1917-1977, include work by leading artists, such as Dmitrii Moor, Irakhlii Toizde, and Viktor Ivanov, who used visually stimulating techniques in order to convey the goals of the Soviet regime to the masses." the gallery exhibition ends march 6th, so i highly recommend you get down there.

after walking through nearly every nook and crany of memorial union, our night continued as a stroll down memory lane. i know this can't be for everyone, but for uw grads like us, spending an evening walking by our old dorms and apartments, sharing stories of being chased down the sidewalk outside the physics building by a friend's car small enough to maneuver that pedestrian path, illustrating moments of roommates who got nauseus and puked on lakeshore path on their way up to van hise for spanish class, and marveling that boys are actually LIVING in liz waters, made for a great evening. the weather was warm enough to stroll from memorial union down observatory, back behind ag hall and down university.

and any college student knows that if there's one constant along all of those drives it's going to be the pizza delivery guy ... and if seeing that guy everywhere doesn't fuel your hunger for papa john's breadsticks with garlic and cheese sauce, i don't know what will ...

and i still can't believe we finished off ALL those breadsticks between the two of us.

YUM.

i love restaurants with good lighting.

sunday afternoon, in between hours at the job, i snuck into borders for some quick reading and snagged a copy of madison magazine, whose cover suggested an oodle of cheap eat options inside its pages.

i suppose madison magazine's readers make substantially more than i do.

still, the mag managed to highlight a few spots i figured i'd keep in my pocket for a cold winter's day. with a list of 6 or 7 taquerias in madison featuring $1.50 tacos, testing out a new place was an obvious no brainer. so come monday, jon and i went out on gammon past the beltline to visit el cabrito for lunch. it's kind of a clean hole in the wall, sitting at the end of a mini-strip mall, next to a laundromat, which is next to a supermercado. i had potato tacos, i think, which were surprisingly yummy, but jon was less than thrilled about his el pastor and steak tacos. the long and short is that it's not exciting, but it's a lot of food and it's decent. it's not necessarily cheap (i think our meals were about $15 total) and i'd be just as happy to visit chipotle.

but again, this isn't part of the real date night. so let's move ahead to the evening.

at about 6:30, jon picked me up to head up to cafe porta alba (yet another feature in madison magazine's cheap eats issue), on butler street up near the capitol. i immediately recognized it as the old espresso royale, though the waitress shared that it had been through numerous different hands since those days - a few more coffee shops, a pizza spot, and finally cafe porta alba. the decor was just what i wanted. relaxed, warm, totally unpretentious, and simple. the warm track lighting on the ceiling, the large wood-fired pizza oven in the back of the dining room, and the size of the room all contributed to a feeling of intimacy. it reminded me of my favorite spots in chicago - it may be a little out of the way, but once you're there, the vibe is quite obviously this: stay and linger and enjoy.

i ordered the margherita pizza, which was excellently light on the sauce, just the right amount of cheese, but a little too stingy on the basil. jon ordered the margherita con salame, which arrived with perfectly sliced large circles of salame on nearly each slice of his pie. i devoured the entire thing.

before we left, i asked for a cappuccino which came with a few tablespoons of coffee grounds at the bottom (ugh), but i couldn't mention anything, because the waitress was so nice and friendly, i just didn't care. i drank as much as i could anyway. jon had an espresso which was - thankfully - fully ground and drinkable.

afterwards, we walked a few blocks over to cafe montmartre for half-price wine night and selected a bottle of pinot noir. i love cafe montmartre but it always makes me feel a little self-conscious, like i'm suddenly exposed in the view of all the trendy, hippie-ish, 20-somethings in madison, caught wearing my grey wool sweater from gap's 1998 fashion line. i shake my head at myself, throw back the last sips of wine, and pour myself a fuller glass. i really like montmartre, but i HAVE to remember to get in the zone before i go, otherwise, my emotions begin to run high, and pretty soon jon is left with a silently crying mess of a fiancee.

maybe it was just the wine.

overall? cafe porta alba is DEFINITELY a place to visit again. i'd be a regular there if i could.
and cafe montmartre is always a good bet - just make sure you call forth your inner hipster before you enter the doors.