I had a nice dinner at the Madrigal recently, or more accurately maybe a large snack with drinks. It’s a newish restaurant on Van Ness near the Civic Center from the Hi Neighbor group, which also runs Trestle and The Vault. Madrigal felt to me a little more like a cocktail bar with food.
First the drinks:
GOLD BLOODED ($15)
control c pisco, espolon, date-honey, orgeat, lime, peychaud’s
This was a tiki style drink with pisco and tequila, nicely balanced and not too sweet.
THE FRENCH FIT ($16)
suze, yellow chartreuse, espolon, cocchi americano
Stirred and stronger, with herby-ness from the Suze and Chatreuse and some quinine bitterness from the cocchi.
raw OYSTERS, hot pepper vinegar mignonette ($4 each, min 2pcs)
For food I started with a half dozen oysters, not sure what species they were and I neglected to ask, but they were good. Just a few errant shell bits.
grass fed BEEF TARTARE, oyster cream, fried oyster, nashville hot oil ($18)
This was quite good. The beef looked and tasted hand chopped as it was in small chunks rather than having a machine ground beef consistency. Nicely flavored with a slightly spicy oil and garlic and shallots. It was gilded with a warm fried oyster and accompanied with a couple pieces of good grilled toast.
crispy PATATAS BRAVA, beech mushroom escabeche & uni aioli ($13)
Quite good as well. Chunks of crispy fried potato. I didn’t really taste the uni in the aioli but it was nice nevertheless. it was topped with a slightly spicy tomato sauce as well, and some untraditional (I think for bravas) mushroom escabeche that also were nicely cooked and had a little acidity to balance out the aioli.
More pictures:
