Fish Type: Cod Price: $12.00
Overall, I would not recommend this Fish Fry.
| Fish Score: Poor Potato Score: Good Tartar Score: Fair Bread Score: Poor Miscellaneous Score: Poor |
Comment: When my wife told me our son wanted to go skating at the Edgewater's rooftop mini-rink I was thrilled to say the least. The rink is a great concept - like Madison's own little Rockefeller Center - and the adjacent restaurant (the Icehouse) was having a Friday Fish Fry special that sounded promising! "What could be better?" I thought.
It turns out, just about anything would have been better...than the Fish Fry that is. As expected, the rink was great and we really enjoyed that part of the evening, but the food at the Ice House (not to be confused with the Edgewater's Boat House or the State House) was anything but great, and it started from the moment we walked in.
As soon as we opened the door to this House you could smell the old fryer oil penetrating your nostrils and saturating your soul. It was pungent and off-putting to say the least. Not to be intimidated, we hoped for the best and trudged on since the pictures they showed on-line looked promising. Of course, it turned out the portrayal and the product were far from the same and the $12 Fish Fry "special" was composed of two pre-battered fillets, a bucket load of fries, some Sysco tartar, and a weird coleslaw the likes of which we've never seen before.
Fish Fry is really all about the fish and this stuff was pretty bad even for pre-battered. It really didn't even taste like fish since the oil was so old and laden with god-knows-what. The fish actually tasted like burned meat (like meat-meat, not fish meat) which is obviously not good. The only way it was edible was when slathered with the tartar which, as mentioned, was basic Sysco (the House Recipe ketchup clued us in to that fact).
Surprisingly, but maybe just in comparison to the fish, the fries were actually pretty good. It helped that there was a plethora of them which took the sting out the $12 price tag to some extent. The shoestring style spuds were well-fried which seemed odd since they likely shared the same bath as the fish.
While the fish was unappetizing the slaw equally as unappealing and easily the weirdest we've ever seen. Creamy doesn't even begin to describe the texture of this goo as it was about 90% sauce (mayo and some sort of spice blend) with a few shreds of radachio, and hardly any actual cabbage. It was odd, but it actually tasted alright and I wound up using it as a chunky dip for a good 1/3 of the fries. It was bizarre to say the least.
This was essentially a horrible meal that was only salvaged to some extent by the fun on the ice afterwards. We've eaten great fish, and we've eaten okay fish, but only one Fish Fry comes to mind that remotely compares to how poor of an effort this was. Overall, we don't recommend this Fish Fry, and think the only thing that stunk worse than it was the clothes we wore in there the next day. Yeesh.
www.theedgewater.com/dining-at-the-edgewater/the-icehouse/
1001 Wisconsin Place
Madison, WI 53703
(608) 535-8200
