Dining in Madson

Dawn got back in town last night, which was a couple of days earlier than she had originally planned. To celebrate her return we decided to go out and try someplace new. Pauli’s Bar and Grill in Madison has recently opened a “Tapas Parlor“ called Vinotini next door to their existing restaurant.

The food was pretty good. The current standard bearer for tapas in Huntsville, as far as I know, is the Chef’s Table. I’m not prepared to say that what we tried matched Chef’s Table offerings. However, it’s hard not to be proud of Maidson, after all, we have a wine bar AND a tapas restaurant now. Dawn ordered some crab cakes which were very tasty…they just were not over the top. I had a martini, some marinated artichokes, olives, red peppers with a side order of spicy pecans. The marinated veggies were standard fare (the ones you get served at the Chef’s Table when you sit down are better). The spicy pecans were really good and I’d order those again. Obviously we were out to eat light.

The vibe of the place is really cool. I’d definitely take friends there to hang out. It feels more like a martini bar to me. Speaking of which, they have a pretty good martini menu if you like fru-fru martinis.

I have both cheers and jeers to hand out for the martini I ordered. I’ll start with the cheers. The martinis come in small martini glasses with a sidecar. The sidecar is a giant snifter filled with water and ice with a little Florence flask in the center holding the rest of your martini. I really like this set up compared to the giant-ass meniscus testing martini served at Surin. Having the assorted glassware on the table in front of you makes you feel like a bistro chemist performing a tasty tasty experiment. Science can be fun. On the practical side, it ensures that the second half of your martini will still be nice and cold when you get to it. That’s something that can’t be said of the giant single serving.

It was a tasty martini, perhaps a tiny bit watered down. That may have something to do with the fact that instead of shaking or stirring their martinis, they muddle them in ice (which is kind of fun to watch.)

My biggest jeer has to do with the wording of my martini on the menu. It said something like:

Classic Martini: Think James Bond.

I found this to be confusing, is the martini gin or vodka? A classic martini would be gin, but James Bond always drank vodka martinis…. I had to ask the waitress if the classic martini was a gin martini or not. It turns out the classic martini is a gin martini. She agreed with me that the menu was perplexing and the wording bothered her as well.

All-in-all Vinotini was a fun experience, but it’s kind of hard not to have fun hanging out in a “parlor” discussing the onomastics of martinis.