Sardine= NO LIKEY!!!

This should be fun.

Pretty much everyone in this godforsaken town loves Sardine, and so with this review I openly invite upon myself the ire of Madison's finest food festishists. Bring it on.

Now, let me tell you why I NO LIKEY Sardine.

I went with my husband. We had seating issues. Now, I generally don't like to complain about seating because I know that most restaurants do sections and that you're seated according to which server's turn it is for a table--no biggie. We arrived at 5:45. We had reservations, since this was during Sardine's insane first couple of months open where you couldn't get a table if your fucking life depended on it. Normally I wouldn't subject myself to such hype-induced dining mayhem but what the fuck, everyone kept talking about how great the place was so I wanted to try it.

At 5:45, there was one other table seated in the whole dining room. It was a two top, two middle aged women with shrill, bird-like voices. Our host seated us at the table directly next to them. Now, in normal dine-in restaurants, tables enjoy a, I don't know, minimum of 8 inches between them. This is a generous estimate on my part. Well our table was exactly 4 inches away from the shrill bird ladies. Being asian, I decided not to ask to be moved--how bad could it be? I'm sure they just wanted to make sure that our waitress could eyeball her two tables from the deepest, darkest corners of the restaurant.

But, as I tried to talk to my husband about the menu, I realized that though we were sitting across from each other, and though the entire restaurant was empty save for the two fucking ladies next to us, I couldn't HEAR HIM. So with great regret I asked our host to move us to a different table.

What about the food??? We ordered the charcuterie plate for starters--bascially your standard charcuterie comprised of salted thin sliced meats, a large portion of duck liver pate, some crackers, dijon mustard and pickles. It was fine. For entrees, I ordered the pan-seared skatewing, while my husband got the stuffed pork loin. The entrees did not work.

I'll tell you why. After eating at Sardine I finally realized why everyone loves it so much--because everything, or at least my skatewing, was coated in a beyond generous amount of Wisconsin's favorite food group, butter. The skatewing itself was fried, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, but I couldn't really figure out what it was supposed to taste like because all I could taste was butter. The side of broccoli rabe likewise had the living nutrients sucked out of it by a good old fashioned butter bath. At this point, I'm kind of frustrated, because my dinner is making me nauseous. Apparently they failed to account for those of use who don't have iron clad guts forged in the buttery fires of of the midwest. I mean, yes, the menu describes the fish as coming with a "lemon butter caper sauce". It never said swimming in a pool of its own buttery death. The fish never had a chance, let alone the handful of capers, thrown in like life preservers while we watched the ship go down.

Speaking of death, the stuffed pork loin was overcooked, tough, and dry. Enough said.

Our entrees, at $17 and $18 respectively, were miserably overpriced for the quality of the food. Plus as the restaurant filled up, it no longer mattered where we were sitting because Sardine's dining room is built like a high school gym. I could barely here my own thoughts, let alone what our server was saying.

Yeah, check please.