Alchemy Cafe — Restaurant in Madison

A perfectly executed meal & unforgettable night. What you are about to read may or may not be classified information. For this reason, I must warn you to proceed with caution, if you choose. Date: October 16th, 2023. Meal: The Hangry Jack with Alchemy Fries. Time: Evening. Temperature: Chilly. I made my way out tonight to have a meal on my own seeing as my partner had to stay at work later than expected, much to my chagrin. Nevertheless, I am no sourpuss & refused to let my night go wasted. After placing my order, I looked out the windows at which I was sat near the entrance of Alchemy. A beautiful Autumn night. The empty chair reminded me of my partner's demanding job. Damn his employer. Damn the CIA. You see, being a Special Agent gives you many benefits like a comfortable lifestyle with the resources for a spouse like me to be a homemaker. Not all is sunshine, sadly. There are nights like these when dates cannot be kept...because of terrorism. It's been under wraps for months, but my partner was in pursuit of the head of the Q.A.E.P. (Question All Elderly Persons), a radical urban terrorist organization committed to exposing corruption amongst leaders who have held onto power for years. Unbeknownst to me, my partner had intercepted their very leader tonight. When this realization hit me, it came crashing in. Literally. In front of my very eyes, a vehicle burst through the glass windows ahead of me, struck me & threw me back onto the bar. I was in utter shock to see my partner crash his vehicle into that same car moments later, step out & pull the original driver from his vehicle. The head of Q.A.E.P. himself, Johnny John Jons. I gasped loudly as the two engaged in a violent fisticuffs before my very eyes & an audience of Alchemy onlookers. "KILL HIM! FOR OUR GREAT COUNTRY!" I screamed from the bar. After formally ending Mr. JJJ's life in cold, patriotic blood, everyone cheered. My partner then joined me on the bar & made barbaric, passionate love to me as the crowd continued to cheer. Not only had I survived, but he'd made sure I was ok. Afterwards, Alchemy comped us both a free meal & we got to end our night sitting across from each other as we'd originally planned. Superb service & highly recommended, delicious...

We were in Madison for the day only for work and wanted to try a local place - Alchemy not only fit the bill for local, helped us discover a new funky area away from the capitol building worth visiting, and we had a delicious lunch. Put this on your must visit list!

We had read the reviews so had an idea of what to order, but we had the sweetest waitress and she was really helpful as well. Service was very quick, incredibly attentive. Food came very quickly. I took the interior photos at the end of our meal and after the lunch crowd had left, but it was packed when we first sat down.

Boho vibe, lots of seating indoors and outside blocked off patio, and a bar area that looked like it could be fun at night.

We ordered the sweet potato fries to start. Neither my husband nor I are big sweet potato fans, so we were completely blown away by how tasty these were and how much the flavor was enhanced by dipping them into the blackberry jam - we would go back for this combo alone! Do yourself a favor and make sure you try these! Both of the side sauces are delicious:) For our main meal, we had the Maíz salad, tomato bisque and The House Boat grilled chicken sandwich. Everything was incredibly fresh and packed with unique flavors. Just a head’s up, the Maíz salad has a red pepper kick, for those of us that are wimps when it comes to spicy food - it will make your nose run! The tomato bisque was as good as any I’ve had anywhere… delicious and well priced! My husband enjoyed the grilled chicken sandwich and ordered the deviled egg potato salad as his side, which was a good combo and as well packed with flavor! We are definitely looking forward to returning to try some other things that looked fantastic on the menu. We ended up taking home enough leftovers that we had a full meal for the next day.

It is street parking and that can be a little bit tricky, but totally worth having to circle once or twice. This place has a casual, boho vibe with a creative menu. We definitely will...

Walked up to this place, saw people sitting outside and looked really cute. That was the last of the ‘good’ this place offered. We requested to eat inside to escape a warm day and were met with annoyance, not a single other person was eating inside the restaurant. As a group of five, they were going to put us at a table made for four with an extra chair to pushed up, to which we requested a different table since we had a few big guys with us (again, not a single other customer was sitting inside, and plenty of tables available) our waitress numerous times made snide comments ‘We fit five people there all the time’ ‘We’ve crammed 7-8 people there before’. I really don’t know why seating us at a different table was such an issue in an empty restaurant, but her comments could have been kept to herself. She went to clean off a bigger table with visible annoyance, and decided to tell us once again, that they have easily shoved five plus people there before. During her cleaning the table we walked over on disgustingly sticky floors, and noticed tons of flies buzzing around. If they cleaned their tables after a customer left the fly problem would at least be a bit better to manage, but they leave dirty dishes and unwashed tables out until a new customer wants to come in. We were very uncomfortable by this point and decided we were going to find a different place to eat at. As we were walking out of the fly infested restaurant, the rude fly keeper who was cleaning the table started to beg us to come back, ‘Oh it’s almost clean, you can sit here’. We absolutely did not sit there. Wish I could leave a review of the food, but seeing as we never even made it to a table, I cannot. I would skip this place unless you’d like your mouth to become an unwilling...