Sunroom
In a word: Upstairs you can salute the sun.
The specs: #0616
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at Trip Advisor, Yelp, The Culinary Adventures of Jahboh and Tossy, Dane 101, Eat Drink Madison; official web site, 
Latest Sunroom news and reviews
Erica ate the tortilla soup with a sun bun.
JM ate the ham and cheese sandwich with potatoes, a lemonade, and a chocolate chip cookie.
Jason ate the tuna melt and a chocolate chip cookie.
Nichole ate the tuna and avocado salad plate with a cafe au lait.
The bill was about $9/person, plus tip.
JM gave Sunroom a B+; Erica, Jason and Nichole gave Sunroom a B (see our grading rubric).
Fellow yoga enthusiast/food blogger Erica and her friend Jason joined us for lunch at Sunroom. The women had been to Sunroom often, but it was new to both the men. Sunroom was to all of us the epitome of a "B" restaurant - reliable as daybreak, but often, perhaps justifiably, taken for granted.
Erica went with a(n apparently fidgety) soup-and-sunbun combo. Of the chicken tortilla soup, she said it was a bit heavy on the corn and the cream, but light on spices. Ever mindful of recipe mods, she suggested that the soup's texture and nutritional content would have been improved with the addition of black beans to complement the fair amount of chicken. The sunbun, a substantial scone with green peppers, sundried tomatoes, and cheese, was glorious, per usual. Though Sunroom and Sunprint are no longer related, we're pretty sure they use the same sunbun recipe, and sampling Erica's convinced Nichole it would have made a fine breakfast sandwich vehicle at our last stop.
Jason got the tuna melt, which also eluded our camera. It was a modest sandwich of grilled wheat bread around mayo-based tuna salad and cheese. Something green and crunchy would have added a lot, in his opinion, and by the end he still had enough room for a cookie.
JM's ham and cheese (#53) was very good. We think the meat and cheese had been set directly on the grill until the cheese melted and some browning action happened, and then the whole deal was served up on dry wheat toast. There was a side of oven-roasted potatoes as well, though much-needed condiments were hard to come by.
Sunroom's specials may draw Nichole in, but the tuna avocado salad plate - lettuce, shredded carrots, cuke, tomato (amazingly juicy today), sprouts, avocado, and a generous scoop of the aforementioned tuna mix all punctuated with a lemon slice and pita pieces - is the dish she always ends up with. She usually opts for the trustworthy house cucumber yogurt dressing and to date hasn't been let down.
The chocolate chip cookies that JM and Jason got for the table were chewy and moist. A point of disappointment were the beverages; both the lemonade and the coffee were weak.
Seating during rush times can be tricky unless patrons obey the unwritten Copernican law about not claiming a table before ordering, otherwise known in the biz as "pulling an eclipse" (not really, and with apologies to Noodles & Co. for appropriating the cosmic theme of that one cute waiting-area poster of theirs). Even so, the tables turn quickly, making Sunroom a solid choice for a fresh lunch.
During my last two years of college I would make a point of scheduling a break between my early morning classes so I could go to Sunroom at least once a week. Compared to my usual breakfast of coffee and toast the veggie scrambler with those delicious roasted potatoes was absolutely heavenly.
Posted by: Bruce | January 05, 2011 at 01:58 PM