State St. Brats

In a word: Madison for those who aren't.

The specs: #0611  
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at Taylor Takes a Taste, Associated Content, Yelp, ESPN, Isthmus, The Forked Tongue, Eat Drink Madison; official web site, Twitter, Facebook,

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JM ate the cheeseburger with a lemonade.
Nichole ate the brat slider trio with two Madtown Nutbrowns.
Tim ate the smoked ham and swiss with a Hopalicious.
The bill was $36, or $12/person, plus tip. Thanks, Madison.com!
JM and Tim gave State St. Brats a B; Nichole gave State St. Brats a B- (see our grading rubric).

State Street Brats is touristy and drinky and so very classy but we were pleasantly surprised by the wide array of Eau Claire-based Silver Springs condiments and the brat and burger slider trios that maximized the opportunities for their use.

Our server was nice but wasn't used to as many questions as we felt like asking. We still don't know exactly where the eponymous brats are from, or why Leinie's Summer Shandy replaced Oktoberfest as the seasonal Capital offering, but we did hear the details of the "arm's length" Monday night special which was some Byzantine formula for the long-limbed to get a lot of cheap beer even cheaper.

The brat sliders were short, split, spicy bratwurst on toasted, halved white rolls. The burger was a nice grilled patty, also on a toasted roll. The ham and swiss sandwich was a big portion of meat, cheese, tomato and lettuce. All the sides were hot upon arrival and the waffle fries were amply seasoned. It was cold inside, but we suspect it gets pretty warm when it's packed with people.

State Street Brats (much like the Terrace and the Rathskeller) seems to come from the central casting version of the city: a place so obvious that if it didn't already exist, it would spontaneously manifest.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not in our own non-undergrad and non-tourist resident defintion of Madison.