Nostrano

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For our pre-race dinner, Adam made reservations at a Northern Italian place near the capitol square in Madison called Nostrano.  Given that we both had races the next day, we were immoderate in our food consumption. Here's what we had:



Appetizers:
--Spring Radish Salad
--Yellowtail Crudo ("crudo" is raw fish dressed w/ olive oil, sea salt and citrus juice)

Mains:
--Carnaroli Risotto w/ morels and spring onion
--Braised Beef Shortribs- the side of onions were AMAZING!

Carnaroli Risotto

Braised Beef Shortibs

Desserts:
--Crema (milk chocolate cream, toasted gingerbread, cocoa nib gelato, candied kumquats)

--Sorbetto (grapefruit and mascarpone sorbets, pomelo, tarragon meringue, campari)

Crema

Sorbetto

The stand-out dish here in my book was the sorbetto. I'm not a big dessert person, but this was so light and delicious. Especially the mascarpone sorbet and tarragon meringue. Out of this world!

The cool menu

Otherwise, the apps were good, the risotto was plus/minus, the shortribs were tasty but could have been more moist (moister?). The place was cute; I really liked the menus, on wooden boards w/ custom made rubber bands. Decent ambiance, nice and casual. Overall I'd say while this is a good place for Madison, it's probably average compared to Chicago equivalents. Except for that insane dessert. So freakin' good!!