I had dinner for the first time in… FairchildI didn’t even eat On Fairchild. It was a little takeaway dinner with my wife in the heart of this very strange summer of 2020. Fairchild was only open for a few weeks before everything in the world fell apart.
This year, with relatively few restaurant attractions, I found Fairchild’s shrimp chips with rhubarb nước chấm one of the best dishes I’ve ever eaten, and I swore that if the opportunity arose, I would enjoy them at Fairchild’s indoor bar, with a cocktail, one day summer day on the road.
Fortunately and for the seasons, neither shrimp nor rhubarb chips were on the menu during my review. In fact, I’ve never even managed to eat at the bar because of how busy Fairchild is, even on a Wednesday night. But holy cow, was it nice to eat Fairchild’s food on our own plates?
There’s a lot of L’Etoile influence at Fairchild – the bios of chefs Itaru Nagano and Andy Kroeger and co-owner Patrick Sierra list L’Etoile – but the atmosphere is more casual; service is purposeful and unhurried.
This menu is sure to accommodate an after-work drink and snack, as long as there’s an open stool. Booking through Resy is the best way. Snacks, entrees and side dishes are listed separately. You can prepare any meal from them alone.
The halibut rillettes won over the salmon, and the crispy arancini with mushrooms was also not a snack. The unseasonably sultry weather in early November allowed me to enjoy moonlight pears with honey and blue cheese in the moonlight at an outdoor table while the dining room required an hour-long wait.
Late autumn and winter are the perfect time to enjoy nutritious side dishes, such as rye dumplings with cabbage and apples or Brussels sprouts with onion and a lot of pork. I found myself wondering how the homey, sour/funky/fatty flavors of Brussels sprouts would fit into Southeast Asian cuisine.
Portions are generous, so unless you really overindulge, you probably won’t be able to eat all sections of the menu in one meal. But you can try! You can order a gigantic pile of blistered shishito peppers, sprinkled with bonito flakes that curl and wave as the heat rises from the plate, and then cold your palate with Dreamfarm goat cheese and delicata squash from the snacks section, before moving on to the main course, beautifully fried and sliced pork tenderloin with tomato butter and a skinny slice of smoked pork for contrast. (Don’t get too used to one dish; Fairchild changes the menu frequently.)
Each main course can contain enough creativity and contrast to stand on its own. The red snapper has more chunks of this goat cheese – an unusual combination, but one that combines the crispy fish skin and velvety romesco sauce in a really fun way.
I haven’t even mentioned the pastas that are made on site. Smooth pappardelle with sizzling lamb ragu and cauliflower? It sounds great, it’s great. A billowing bell tower grabbing peas, mascarpone and pine nuts as if it were a pasta salad? Wonderfully nostalgic, but not fancy. And when, after ordering tagliatelle with manila clams and chorizo, I washed it down with a fresh pint of Dos Equis, our host and waiter seemed ready to answer not just “Yes,” but “Hell yes!”
Fairchild is having a good time, both customers and employees. When our waitress delivered our diminutive cube of carrot cake with blue cheese frosting and beef fat ice cream, she joked that it was a diminutive dessert on a huge plate, “just like they love it,” and nodded smilingly toward the kitchen.
The cake was unique and intense, the dessert was sizzling, similar to salted caramel, but much more funky. The beef fat in ice cream gives it its richness, not its steaky flavor, and is sufficient in diminutive amounts. On the other hand, on another visit, the ethereal blueberry cobbler filled a diminutive cast-iron skillet, and I could have eaten three if they hadn’t run out of them and required advance notice to be ready to order.
One day, hopefully soon, we will be able to talk about restaurants and marvel at the product on those plates, gigantic and diminutive, and not reduce it all to a statement of wonder at its mere existence at the end of a global pandemic and ongoing staffing crisis. There are restaurants in Madison that truly deserve to rise above the hard circumstances in which they were founded, and the unique Fairchild is certainly one of them.
Fairchild
2611 Monroe Street
608-819-6361; Fairchildrestaurant.com
16:00-21:00 Wednesday-Sunday.
$5-38
