Not wanting to drive down to Chicago and back the same day, especially after a fancy dinner, I turned the event into a weekend trip. I used some Marriott points to book a room at the Blackstone, which is downtown near Millennium Park. We drove down Saturday morning and stopped at Superdawg, my first time there, for lunch along the way. We then checked into the hotel, got into our fancy clothes, and caught a cab to the restaurant.

Tru lives in the ground floor of a large, nondescript building across from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The restaurant’s entrance is very dark and black, and no fewer than three people greeted us there. Without hesitation, the staff wished Ross a happy birthday and took us to the table.

The dining room was very austere: black carpeting and seats against white tablecloths and walls. Tables were spaced far apart, and diners kept their conversations to a murmur. An abudance of formally-dressed waitstaff stood throughout the room like prison guards at watchtowers looking for escapees, or a dropped fork.

Our waitress greeted us and offered options from a small, yet incredibly overpriced list of pre-dinner cocktails. An example: $18 for a “punch” of Pernod, Bacardi rum, and orange. Not even top shelf rum and it’s $18? Not having heard any rave reviews of their cocktails, and wanting to focus on wine anyway, we opted out and began reviewing the menu.

Their menu offers a number of prix fixe tastings (called collections) as well as a la carte options. For any of the tasting courses, they offer the option to swap it out with something from the a la carte menu as well. We opted for the grand collection at $110. Our waitress inquired about food allergies or aversions and we both replied that we’d prefer not to have any onion. The grand collection included a course of onion-poached fish and we asked what could be done about that. We were offered a choice from the a la carte menu and both settled on the same non-onion fish course from that.

Not wanting to get a single bottle of wine to cover a six course meal, we inquired about how wine pairings for each course might work. Often enough, restaurants offer a set price for such things. Not Tru. Their sommelier pairs half glasses of wine with each course and the price is whatever it turns out to be at the end. Oddly enough, as we received each glass of wine later on, it was mentioned that these were the regular pairings for each couse. Why not give that price ahead of time if you know what it will cost? I certainly wasn’t there to save money, but when you don’t want to spend $100/person on wine, why not at least say “No problem, our recommended pairings for your selection is about $50/person”?

The first bit of food brought out was a sphere of cauliflower, sea trout roe, and salty-sweet orange. It was my first time trying a “sphere”, and it was quite interesting. Served simply on a spoon, with waitstaff standing by to collect it, the sphere was a orb of gelatin (?) wrapped around a pureed cauliflower broth. It exploded in my mouth and was kind of fun to eat. I can’t say the taste was amazing, but it was an interesting way to serve such a thing.

The amuse bouche was a simple mound of “nigella seed” cured salmon, cucumber gelee, cucumber skin emulsion, and candied lemon peel. The cucumber gelee had mild cucumber flavor, yet the cucumber skin emulsion, despite its deep color, didn’t offer any sort of flavor. The salmon, while of good quality, had a straightforward salmon flavor with just a hint of saltiness. Altogether, it was a satisfying couple bites, but nothing noteworthy or really amazing to set the tone for the rest of the meal.

The first real course was smoked sturgeon “caviar”, avocado, and hazelnut. Beautifully presented in a caviar tin atop a mound of salt, the dish had two problems: 1) no one took the time to explain what the dish was, especially the “caviar” part 2) it tasted strongly of onion. The top was some sort of cheese-textured white goo, and the bottom was pureed avocado with flavors I can only describe as resembling guacamole with red onions.

Ross, not wanting to be a whiner, ate his. I, on the other hand, not wanting to have a single course to regret, mentioned the strong onion flavor to the waitress. She apologized and said that the dish was not to have any onion in it. She came back a few minutes later to admit that the avodcado does include shallots, oops, her mistake, and that it’s usually not such a strong flavor so the chef might have been a little heavy handed tonight.

As a peace offering, we were given a replacement first course (directly from the chef’s collection menu) and paired wine. This time it was a frog leg with roasted garlic, carrot, and watercress. The frog leg was fried, seemingly in panko, and placed atop cubes of carrot. The whole thing was swimming in a pond of watercress puruee, with dollops of roasted garlic puree acting as islands. I’ve not had frog leg before, so I was excited at the prospect. Disapointingly, the frog leg was fried. To me, that’s an incredibly boring, perhaps safety-net way of serving frog leg. Maybe they don’t want to scare diners away by serving it in a manner which allows you to truly taste the meat. The watercress puree was actually good, but I’m not sure the garlic islands were necessary. Overall, I can now say I’ve tried frog legs, however I can’t say they did anything special to it to make me want more.

The next course was a disaster all around. Perhaps each element of the dish was excellent by itself, but everything together was a mess. The menu calls it “peeky to crab salad, prosciutto, pequillo, cantaloupe-cava-consomme.” I love crab, I don’t get to eat it enough, so this was something to look forward to. The consomme was great alone. I would eat a bowl of it on a hot day. It was also very sweet, like a dessert. The grab, was sweet too, which is usually a good thing. The problem was, the consomme was much sweeter than the crab. When you ate everything together, all you tasted was the soup. Why bother serving crab, the focus of the dish, when you can’t even taste it? The accents of prosciutto and pepper sauce were there, but equally untastable as a result of the sweet broth.

Mechanically, the dish didn’t work out either. The crab was flaked and mounded beneath a disc of prosciutto, which had pepper sauce and a green herb atop it. The dish was bigger than just a single bite, and you want to taste everything together, but prosciutto is difficult to cut. As a result, the prosciutto falls into the broth and gets coated in sugar and the pepper sauce atop dissolves.

“House-made porcini tagliatelle, condensed tomato, asparagus cream, parmasan” was the third course. Yes, my printed menu they give to take home says “parmasan”. The aspargus cream was unique, although a bit under seasoned. The tagliatelle was laughably delicate and soft. It fell apart into a mush when preparing bites. The condensed tomato was floating, similar to the garlic in the frog leg dish, in an island amid the asparagus. Because of the way it was served, I’m not sure I even tasted it. The parmesan, albeit of good quality, got lost in the asparagus puree. Stylistically, similar to previous dishes, the featured item was served amid a pond of puree just like the crab and frog leg dishes. For us, that made three dishes in a row served in that manner.

Somehow we don’t have a picture of the fish course. Remember, we had swapped out the onion-poached fish for something else. Instead we opted for the “Hawaiian ahi a la plancha, radish, leek, sauce provencale”. The tuna was shaped like a slice of Spam. The edges were seared white, and the middle was still slightly pink. Maybe I’m too much in the mindset that tuna should be eaten raw, but the fish was dry and oddly textured. In fact, it had very little flavor. The sauce provided all the flavor. And luckily there was sauce because the fish was underseasoned – perhaps not seasoned at all.

Finally a dish we could rave about (only 5 courses in!). “Duet of lamb, daikon, watermelon radish, olive, star anis” was presented on a long rectangular plate. The right side was a medallion of lamb, topped with, if I remember correctly, confit lamb. Both were topped with the same sauce. I’m unsure why they decided to serve two styles of lamb but sauce them the same, though. In any case, both preparations were perfectly cooked and tasted great. The olives were more of a tapanade, and provided a salty flavor, while the radish paired better visually than by its flavor.

I should mentioned that between courses we were offered an array of breads. Each extremely good. I’d say better than most of the courses we ate. Just before the lamb course we were offered some more bread. Ross took some and put it on his plate. Within seconds, waitstaff appeared, and without a single word removed the bread plate (no bites taken of the bread) and butter and cleaned up the table. The lamb came out and suddenly bread plates and butter reappeared. Minutes later a waiter came to offer more bread, and Ross chose exactly what he had just ten minutes before. Was it poor coordination or being overly formal, I’m not sure.

Now we moved on to the desser courses. Since Rick Tramanto seemed to have failed with his portion of the meal, we were hoping Gale Gand could make up for it with hers. The first dessert was a small bite of mandarin gelee, mandarin curd, and blackberry. Eaten altogether, it was excellent. Acidic, creamy, chewy, you name it, this bite had it.

The formal dessert was excellent as well. An almond-violet mousse served atop lemon sponge. The mousse was soft and airy, with a deservingly-strong almond flavor. The lemon spone was a good complement as it provided some citrus flavor but didn’t overpower. The whole dish went well with the coffee (a blend from Intelligentsia). I skipped the photo of this as it was too blurry to make out.

Between this and the final round of desserts, the waiters discreetly brought out a small bite of chocolate cake with three candles in it. Written on the plate in white chocolate was a birthday wish for Ross. It was a nice touch, and wasn’t tacky by any means.

A more exciting part of the meal had to be the mignardises. The waitress rolled a small cart over and described each of the 8 bite-sized treats on it. Asked which we wanted, we responded one of each. While I don’t remember the details of each one, I can say that you won’t be disappointed with any. Gale definitely lived up to her reputation with these.

I mentioned wine above but didn’t mention any details throughout. The pairings went decently well, but I can’t say the selections were perfect. You expect the wine to bring the food to a different level, and I can’t say that was the case at all. One course I can specifically remember was a slightly too sweet riesling being served with the tagliatelle. For certain, each wine was good on its own, however only two stood out with the food: Passopisciaro from Sicily served with the lamb and the dessert wine served with the mousse.

The dessert wine was a moscato d’asti that had been “aromatized” by the sommelier. His trick, he had let us know earlier, was adding a few drops of Peychaud’s bitters to the glass before pouring. Having forgotten this, we were close to sending our glasses back when we noticed a bit of liquid in our supposedly clean glasses before the wine was served. In any case, it’s not often wine gets mixed with anything, but this blend was acceptable. It gave a bit of savoryness and complexity to an otherwise simply sweet and bubbly wine. Give it a shot next time you buy some asti.

While not directly related to the food, I should mention the bathroom fail. They tried to get all fancy with their sink and faucets. The “sink” was a long flat slab of glass angled downward towards the wall, where water would drain out of sight. It had no edges or “sides” to it. The problem was that the faucet wasn’t placed high enough above the slab of glass. As a result, you can barely get your hands underneath to wash them. In fact, the cuffs of my jacket ended up getting wet because of how you have to maneuver to get under the faucet. For a restaurant that requires a jacket, which all have long sleeves, this isn’t a good thing.

Overall, as you can tell, I was disappointed. I was hoping for a top 10 meal and got something along the lines of a top 100. The food was OK, but nowhere near revolutionary or life changing. The service was over attentive yet mistakes were made. The menu you take home not only included a misspelling, but neglected to indicate we got a replacement first course. Maybe it was just just our luck that night, who knows. I won’t be heading back at least until I’ve exhausted the list of other fine dining establishments in Chicago.

To make matters worse, I had a top 2 meal at Cyrus in Healdsburg, CA recently. Service there was attentive, but not overbearing. The food was amazing, unique, and not floating in rafts of green puree, and the wines elevated the food to another level. Having something like that to compare my Tru meal to only helps to justify everything I wrote above.

The concept is new to Madison.  In Japan, it’s called a yakitori restaurant.  You sit in a loud, smokey, dining room and order small skewers of meat and vegetables.  Ideally, this is all accompanied by a large volume of alocohol.  Sake, shochu, or beer are all fine.

Muramoto’s interpretation of this concept is very different from its roots, though.  The dining room is quiet, dark, and trendy.  It feels more like a PF Chang’s than an after-work hangout.  For $1.50 skewers of food, I’m not sure that’s appropriate.

When we first got there, the place was empty.  Completely.  We were allowed to sit anywhere we wanted, so we grabbed a table against the wall.  There was one bartender and one waitress, that’s it.  I thought more staff would come as the meal went on, but that wasn’t the case.

Instead of starting off with a description of the concept or going through the menu, the completely unbusy waitress just moved right to ordering our drinks.  They have a large variety of sake and shochu.  I had an $8 glass of Wakatake, which was great.  The beer selection is smaller, but they do have Kirin Ichiban and Sapporo on tap.

Again, offering no explanation, the waitress took our meal order.  We got about eight skewers of meat and vegetables and an order of the satsuma fries to start.  The fries, crispy sweet potatoes served with a spicy aoli, were excellent and probably the best thing we had all night.

The skewers were acceptable, but small.  Everything had a char on it, especially the beef.  Char is good, but not when the meat is so small that the char is all you taste.  The mushrooms left much to be desired as they were very, very dry and too light to even feel like you were eating anything.  The nonspecific gizzards were chewy, charred and too small to taste as well.

You get four sauces to accompany everything.  The best for the beef was a Japanese style sweet worchestershire, but the spicy miso mayo went well with everything.  Somewhat out of place was the curry cream.  The last, a spicy sauce, was good, but splattered all over when I squeezed it from the bottle.  Perhaps serving the sauces in small dishes or small bowls with spoons would be better.

After another round of skewers we were still hungry so we ordered a spicy miso pork rice bowl.  Very simply, it came with just bits of pork over rice.  The pork was great, but not spicy like advertised.  The rice it was served over would have been better if the sauce didn’t break it apart and make it difficult to eat.

Even after that, we were still hungry.  With nothing else left to order, we decided to call it a meal.  While we were eating, the place filled up and no additional servers came on.  As a result, the service was miserable, so we left only a basic tip.

I overheard the bartender answering the phone a few times.  At least half the calls were people looking for the other Muramoto restaurants.  A few diners stopped by to ask for directions to the other muramoto as well.  The group that sat next to us asked if sushi was served.  It’s not.  Kushi != sushi.

Turn up the lights a bit, promote large bottles of Kirin Ichiban, and make the portions larger and you’d have a restaurant I’d come back to for sure.  I’ve been saying we need a Gyu-Kaku style restaurant here for a long time.  Kushi Muramoto is the closest thing to that, but doesn’t pull it off.

For reference, here’s the food I got at a yakitori place in Tokyo:

I got there at about 6:30 and the place was moderately full.  A few chairs were scattered around, but not enough for everyone to sit on.  I guess that’s ok, as most of the time we were standing anyway.  They started with a little overview of the store and mentioned the things we’d be tasting: caprese salad on toast, basmati rice, roasted vegetables, fruit salad, and a tart.  They also had (tiny) wine tastings.

The goal was to take each of those foods and try the different oils and vinegars on them.  The toast was very good wtih balsamic vinegar as well as a white truffle oil.  For the rice they had us focus on nut oils.  I found that the pumpkin and almond oils were best (and you needed to add a bit of salt to really taste any of it the way you should).  For the vegetables, they didn’t put enough out right away for everyone to have some.  So, by the time I got some, everyone else was milling around waiting for the next course.  Nonetheless, just about any oil or vinegar was good on those.

The fruit salad was very simple: oranges, pineapple, melon, strawberry.  A honey vinegar was really good with the orange slices, and an older balsamic was great on strawberries.  The tart was served with a scoop of ice cream.  The tart itself was perfectly fine without adding anything to it, so I added a bit of three oils to the ice cream.  It sounds odd, but oil on ice cream is actually very good.  Pistachio oil ($19.99/100ml!) was amazing on it.  It made the plain vanilla ice cream taste like pistachio ice cream.  I wanted to buy some right there, but held off.

They provided a gift bag before we left as well.  It included a sampling of three oils (including the pumpkin oil), three vinegars (including an excellent fig one), some chocolates, a recipe, and a 10% off coupon.  I enjoyed the experience enough to go back for another tasting at some point.  They have some specialty spirits (whisky, grappa, eau di vie) that I’d love to try, and I wouldn’t mind another gift bag either.  If you get the chance, I suggest stopping by at some point to check it out and try some things.

I wouldn’t look forward to seeing it stateside.

• Someone returned a sandwich because they put it on the wrong bread (whiner).  First they told the guy to keep the mismade sandwich and they’d make him another as well.  He didn’t want it so he gave it back to Milio’s.  The sandwich-maker decided to keep it on the side, saying ”Someone will eventually order a #1″.  I have no doubt some unfortunate customer will be re-served that other guy’s sandwich.
• Look through the little window area where you should be able to see them making your sandwich.  Yes, your view is blocked by the case’s cover, but look at the edge area right by the window.  Notice how dirty it is?  Exactly.

We were lucky enough to find two parking spots directly out front, so things did start off on a good note.  That didn’t last long, however, as we found three grungy pieces of silverware before the waitress even came.  When she did come, she didn’t introduce herself or take us through the menu.  She simply asked if we wanted something to drink.

On the table was a small plate of olives, a glass of bread sticks, and two smaller carafes of spiced oil and balsamic vinegar.  I have a feeling the bread sticks were made by Alessi, and stayed there between guests at the table.  The olives were decent, but not refilled once during the meal.  A bread basket eventually arrived at the table, but was full of bread that was no doubt frozen just an hour prior.  The butter accompanying it was well-flavored, but it wasn’t obvious that the butter was better suited for the bread sticks by the way it was served.

We ordered scallops as an appetizer, and were served four U-10 (that’s what the menu said at least) scallops.  The waitress neglected to bring appetizer plates despite our bread plates being littered with breadcrumbs and oil.  The scallops were cooked correctly, but lacked seasoning.  Someone had neglected to salt them it seemed.

After our appetizer, a long wait for dinner began.   It was at least a half an hour before our entrees were served.  The waitress said nothing about the wait, and certainly didn’t apologize once our food arrived.  It was as if it should always take a half hour between courses.  Was our bread refilled during that time?  No.

The entrees proved to be just as saltless as the appetizer.  I’m not one to smother my food with salt, and definitely not the type to reach for salt right away at a restaurant.  I had to this time.  I ordered duck ravioli with duck sausage.  The sausage was great, the ravioli was pretty good.  The pasta tasted fresh and the cream sauce was well done.  It just lacked salt.

My dad’s osso bucco was decent, but was lacking the vegetables advertised on the menu.  Well, not completely lacking, there was just a scarcity of roasted vegetables and to not have that many is disappointing.  My mother’s meal was an atrocity.  She didn’t say much about it at first, but eventually let me try it.  It was disgusting.  She ordered pappardelle pasta with seafood in a butter sauce.  The pasta tasted like it had never been drained and no sauce had been put on it.  It was that watery.  It also lacked seasoning.

The waitress did come back at some point to ask how things were.  I said so-so, but she didn’t inquire further.  So-so?  Wouldn’t you wonder why?  Apparently not her.  When the hostess came over, my mother let her know that her pasta was pretty gross.  The hostess said “Can we re-toss it?” and my mother declined.  No other option was given.  When the waitress came back over, my mother let her know what she had told the hostess.  The waitress said “Aww, I’m sorry.” and basically moved on.

When the waitress asked if we’d like a dessert, I replied that we didn’t want to risk it.  She didn’t inquire further and went to get the check.  No offer was made for a free dessert or even a discount on the meal.  No effort at all was made to make up for the the quality of the food or the service.  Needless to say, she got an extraordinarily small tip.

I won’t go as far as saying that I was disappointed by the meal.  Perhaps I would have been if I paid for it.  To be disappointed would imply that I expect every meal to be excellent.  I don’t.  I realize that some places are better than others and that certain places just aren’t good.  I expected Third Ward Caffe to be good, I realized quickly that it isn’t.

Afterwards, I took a few pics with my new camera.

Boo to the AP for this sentence, however, “Victoria & Albert’s is Walt Disney World’s only restaurant with an AAA five-diamond rating,” as if a five diamond award is easy to come by.

The prices have gone up since I went ($125/person, $60 for wine pairings), but I still have a hankering to return.  Check out some example menus here.

It was quite crowded when I first got there, and I actually thought I might not get a table.  They were nice enough to take my name and cell number and called me when a table was available.  That’s so much better than one of those JTech pagers that other places give out.  Ross and I headed over to the mall area to wait in the meantime, and were called about twenty minutes later.  Not bad.

The restaurant isn’t that big, and I wish it was bigger.  It’s very loud and the tables are close together.  The food makes up for a lot of that, but not all.

We started out with a crab cake appetizer.  It was served on top of a curried pumpkin.  Instead of serving it on a plate, they served it inside a deep bowl-type dish, making somewhat difficult to eat with chopsticks.  It tasted great despite that, though.

The menu features both sushi and a few regular options, very similar or the same as options on their downtown menu.  Ross had the black cod, which was equally as excellent as when we had it at their downtown location.  I had sushi.

I can finally say I’ve found someplace to eat sushi in Madison.  I’ve been to Takara, Wasabi, and Edo, but none of them quite hit the spot.  Muramoto did.  They offer a selection of nigiri, sashimi, and rolls, but also offer specialty rolls.  The nigiri/sashimi section is an expanded section, offering even more than places I’ve seen in Hawaii, including three different types of maguro plustoro.  What’s interesting about their listings is that they tell you where the fish comes from.  I had no clue all the different places that the fish were sourced from – I wish everyone did that.

I had an order of yellow-tail (from Brazil?) and unagi (from China), then a spicy tuna roll and the specialty Ecuador roll.  The Ecaudaor came with tuna and avocado, but also included a jalapeno and the whole roll was rolled in crunchy things.  It was excellent.  The spicy tuna roll was perfectly spicy – not overwhelming at all.  The tuna, which I always look forward to, was great.  I would come back just for the tuna.  And, at $5.50 an order, it wasn’t that expensive.

The disappointing part of the meal was the douchebag (DB) sitting next to me.  He was part of a party of three, and was clearly the expert on sushi.  Every time his male friend would take a bite he would annotate the experience like he was his coach.  It got quite annoying.

The worst part was that he wouldn’t let the other guy just eat.  One time the friend made the faux pas of not dipping the sushi in soy (wasabi-laced soy, that is, per the DB’s instructions) and the DB just about died.  I skip soy on probably half of the sushi I eat, but apparently this guy knows what he’s doing.  When the friend didn’t dip it, the DB corrected him quickly, then commented, almost rhythmically, on the process “Dip it, dip it….now soak it, soak it!”  It was kind of creepy.

I wouldn’t be telling you this had I just eavesdropped on their conversation*, but the guy was LOUD about it.  He wanted people to know he was a sushi expert.  When the food came out at first he told his friends “This is the gold plate, this is where the money sushi is at.”  Apparently that was the plate where all the good sushi was placed.

Having my camera with me, I did go as far as recording a video of the very end of their dining experience.  I’m not sure this is 100% accurate, but this is what I got as far as a script:

DB: Not on it!

Male: [moves pickled ginger off the sushi]

DB: Dude don’t, it’s still tainted.  Ginger [garbled].  Get it off the sushi.  Ohh my god.

Male: [Walks away]

I’m not sure if he walked away in frustration at this point or not, but he did walk away leaving the sushi that he was going for untouched.  I probably would have too.

[MEDIA=7]

*OK, I probably would still tell you.