What’s the best Madison-area fish fry? Ask the guy who has reviewed 1,500 of them

Seidel, 42, of Middleton, said he’s reviewed the fish fries of about 500 restaurants and bars for his website, madisonfishfry.com, and has written about 1,500 individual reviews.

He’ll often have a fish fry for lunch on Fridays, too. “You only get 52 Fridays a year,” he quipped.

He ranks fish fries on five components integral to the overall experience: 1—The fish; 2—The potato; 3—Tartar sauce; 4—Bread; and 5—Miscellaneous, including coleslaw.

“You can tell the places that have put something special into their breading or into their batter,” Seidel said. “First and foremost, if you can get fresh fish, that’s amazing. Obviously, that’s pretty rare to see: a good, high-quality fish and a unique seasoned breading or a real flavorful beer batter.”

Seidel said some secret-recipe batters apply condensed milk or beer from cans opened two days in advance.

Unusual sides are always a plus, he said. “If you can find good potato pancakes, that’s a huge boost in my book. I love good hash browns with cheese and onion. That’s an added bonus. Even hand-cut fries can be a great addition over a standard freezer-fry kind of thing.”

Seidel said he also appreciates a good, bulky, stout tartar sauce, which he calls “supper club-style tartar.”

“I think that can make or break a fish fry at times,” he said. Rye bread earns instant points, as do the little loaves of bread some supper clubs serve. His fish fry experience can be ruined if there’s no bread.

Seidel, a geographic information systems specialist working with mapping and spatial data, grew up in Viroqua, 100 miles northwest of Madison. His family lived about a mile from a supper club, where they often went for fish on Fridays.

In that part of Wisconsin, fish fries generally mean cod, he said. “So, I grew up eating a lot of cod fish fries and kind of just got sick of it at some point.”

When he got older, he began ordering a non-cod option, if there was one. He said he tends to gravitate toward fish with more flavor. Seidel lists his top 10 Wisconsin fish fries on his website, and only one of them is cod.

Seidel began reviewing fish fries in 2004 when the internet was juvenile and it was harder to find out where to go.

He and his friend Gabe Krambs had been going to the same places repeatedly and started hunting for fresh ideas. They began keeping track on paper, then ranking them and sharing their findings with others. They eventually catalogued them on a spreadsheet.

“My buddy’s, he’s a computer guru,” Seidel said, “so at some point we decided to convert everything into a database and a webpage and away it went.”

Picking an all-time favorite fish fry is tough, Seidel said, because there have been so many great ones over the years.

“If I had to pick my favorite place, period, based on all the fish available, I’d probably say Toby’s. Just overall, I think they do the best job of everything. But, I mean, the Dorf Haus is impeccable.”

A huge allure at the Dorf Haus in Roxbury, 20 miles northwest of Madison, he said, was its all-you-can-eat fish fry, which the restaurant discontinued at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and hasn’t brought back. Crawfish Junction in Milford, between Lake Mills and Watertown, is also a favorite, he said. It reopened last month after a fire.

Sister Bay Bowl in Door County and Wendt’s On the Lake in Van Dyne, in Fond du Lac County, are both phenomenal, Seidel said.

On March 13, 2020, he found himself at Dexter’s Pub on Madison’s East Side, just as restaurants were beginning to close because of COVID-19. He had reviewed Dexter’s 57 times before that, and on this visit found the smelt to be less than ideal.

But when he returned Wednesday night with his wife and 9-year-old son, he found the smelt outstanding. He posted his gigantic plate of food on Facebook and Instagram. “I have a lot of jealous followers right now, I can tell you that,” he said.

“I hadn’t been there for three years,” Seidel said. “It was a very welcome rebirth, if you want to call it that. It was awesome.”

Nick Zabel, who has owned Dexter’s for 15 years, said the bar buys sustainable fish and shrimp. “We’ve never tried to put an inferior product out there and pass it off. People get it, people know it. You can’t fake food, and once you do, it’s hard to get the trust back with people.”

The past two Fridays have been particularly busy because of Lent, Zabel said. By 5:30 p.m., customers can expect to wait about an hour for one of Dexter’s 80 to 100 seats. Last week, Dexter’s seated its last customers around 9:30 p.m.

The tradition in Wisconsin, and elsewhere, of eating fish on Fridays evolved because Catholics are prohibited from eating meat on Fridays during Lent, the 40 days that lead up to Easter.

Besides great breading, tartar sauce, slaw and rye bread, Seidel said he pays attention to the presentation and atmosphere. He likes a neighborhood feel or a supper-club vibe.

Fish fries are often found in unexpected places, and two of Seidel’s favorites in that category are Brennan’s Market on Madison’s West Side and Athens Grill in the town of Westport — Brennan’s, since people generally associate it with groceries and its deli, and Athens because most people think it’s mainly gyros, he said.

There are no ads on madisonfishfry.com. Seidel said he’s just trying to “spread the love.”

“Back in the day, monetizing a hobby website wasn’t really a thing,” he said. Now that social media is full of influencers, Seidel said he’s often asked how much money he makes from his website.

And his answer is always, “Not a dime.”