Mado - Bday Dinnner II

This is the last of my "I've been too busy to cook or bake let along blog about it updates". I've actually been cooking and baking quite a bit over the last couple of weeks, so let's get this out of the way so I can share it with you - mmmkay?

So for my other birthday dinner with my girlfriends, we went to Mado, another Mediterranean inspired restaurant that uses local ingredients (sound familiar!?). I have to say that I enjoyed dinner at Mado as much as our dinner at the Girl and the Goat - without all the hype!


My friend sent me a list of restaurants to choose from a few weeks back and I chose Mado based on the description, without doing a lot of research on yelp reviews, etc. I was shocked when I went on Yelp afterward to find that Mado only has 3.5 stars. Maybe we went on a good night, but I found little to complain about with this restaurant.


The atmosphere in the restaurant is great for such a small place, low lights and candles in a brick, lofty space. We also had no complaints about the service, however that seemed to be a big contribution to negative reviews on yelp, so maybe we just got lucky.


So actually the only negative thing I have to say about the place was our starter course - we ordered the citrus cured lake perch, while it was beautiful and the flavors were there - the texture of the fish was very tough and rubbery - not at all appetizing.


We were concerned that the rest of the dinner would be a disappointment, but our fears quickly went away when we saw our entrees!

We actually decided to share entrees since we couldn't decide on what we wanted. We got:

Spit roasted chicken with marinara and chick peas

Penne with arugula and pistachio pesto

Roasted Rainbow trout

All three of these dishes were unbelievably delicious! Our favorites were split between the pesto pasta and the chicken (not to diminish the trout which so very tasty as well).

The pesto was so creamy and rich, unlike any other pesto I've had before. I have made arugula pesto and love how arugula gives it a peppery bite - but I think it must have been the pistachios that put this over the top for me. I am definitely trying this one at home soon!

The chicken - oh my god, the marinara sauce was sooo delicious, we couldn't get enough. While the chicken was very juicy and tasty, we loved the beans with the sauce on them just as much.

So all in all, this dinner was a great start to our night out and I am shocked by any less than stellar reviews I saw on this place. Maybe they just went through a pretentious stage and they're over it now!