Longtable Beer Cafe — Restaurant in Middleton

My girlfriend and I arrived having very high hopes for Longtable as when we’ve passed by it’s always seemed packed. Unfortunately not only did it fall below those expectations but was probably the poorest dining experience I’ve yet had in greater Madison.

After we grabbed a seat I went up to the bar to order a beer. I waited there for about 5-6 min before any staff acknowledged me despite it not appearing busy. Before having the beer poured I presented them a “pub pass” which is a coupon book of sorts that gives you a free beer at certain bars/breweries in the area. When I showed him this, he told me can only give only $7.50 off a beer. Surprised, I didn’t complain and instead just downsized my beer order. While I ended up paying just dollar difference, they really should not participate in a promotion like that if they can’t honor it. No other establishment I’ve been to with the pub pass in Madison has done that.

After waiting about 25-30 minutes, me and my girlfriend’s food came out. We ordered the Nashville hot fish sandwich, and the bear burger which is where things really went downhill.

The bear burger was incredibly small, the patty was maybe a little larger than the size of single McDonald’s patty which was especially discouraging considering it was $17 for the burger plus another $3 to upgrade to fries. I can understand small portions at that price if the quality is amazing but this was not the case either. The burger itself was very very dry and overcooked and the provolone “crisp” in the burger was obviously cooked off that morning and had a stale quality to it. While the brioche bun was decent and the fries were passable, they hardly salvaged the burger in its entirely.

Even worse though was the Nashville Hot fish sandwich. Now I don’t mind fried foods being a little greasy, I used to work as a fry cook and understand it’s the nature of deep frying sometimes. That said, this fish was not just a little oily but was leaking grease like it had blown an oil gasket with a very thick coating of batter. To the point it tasted less like a piece of fried fish and more like the most terrible doughnut you can imagine. The oil pouring out of the fish leaked so much, that the bun started falling apart from soaking it up. Additionally it was missing the sauce it was supposed to come with. Eventually we gave up and picked it apart to try to salvage our losses.

All in all, I would never willingly return to Longtable, there’s a million other burger and bar spots in Madison with cheaper drinks, better service and properly...

We have been to this restaurant a few times before and love the location and atmosphere and idea of it but this is the second time we have had very bad service. Tonight was one of the worst restaurant experiences we’ve had in a long time We appreciate the menu and for the most part think the food is good, but not when it is supposed to be hot and it is served room temperature or cool We arrived early at 5:30 and There were still 3 to 4 open tables outside and three inside. We gave our food order as soon as we could to the waiter when he had time. We ordered two hors d’oeuvres and he said do you want them before the food and we said yes An hour later, we asked about the soft pretzel and he said oh I think I see it coming out and was finally brought to our table. Five minutes later three out of four meals came and the second hors d’oeuvres came and the waiter said to me oh, I thought you Asked for this with your meal and I said no I didn’t. Which is odd he would even bring that up when I didn’t ask about it-so seems he must’ve known it should have been brought earlier? . Both hors d’oeuvres were cool and were both supposed to be hot- as the second hors d’oeuvre was goat cheese puffs, which are fried. Three people had ordered burgers and fries and the fourth a bowl of their staple beer cheese soup on their menu at all times. 5 to 10 minutes after those that had burgers were eating them our waiter came and said oh I’m sorry we ran out of the beer cheese soup. After waiting for an hour and 20 minutes?! He asked if I wanted to order a different meal and I said no. We waited an hour and 20 minutes for our meal and no one wanted to sit there for another hour for a meal. So for Mother’s Day celebration, I had a few goat cheese puffs😥 One of the burgers was ordered medium and came well done and dry. After paying our bill, the waiter said The new batch of cheese soup was ready and did I want some and I said no we were leaving, but I would take a cup to go. He said he felt bad and wouldn’t charge me which was six dollars but I opened the container when arriving home and it was about 2/3 of a cup of soup🤷‍♀️ Also, they bring no receipt just show you the total for the meal was $140 which seemed high but with no receipt how would you know? Really sad about this as shouldn’t have this kind of dining experience especially for the price. Always happy to pay the price for quality and service though. Would be hard to go back after an experience like this, even though we think their...

We went in with relatively high expectations given the prices and were very disappointed. There were a lot of beer options, which was about the only positive.

I rarely care about the quality of service, but our server was rude, inattentive, and had virtually nothing to say about the menu items. We also overheard him giving short and very surly comments to other people simply asking for any additional menu and taplist details. It appears that we got the bad one that night, because other areas of the restaurant had much more attentive service, but regardless, no place should have staff that hit-or-miss.

The food was honestly awful. If one or two things were bad, I would chalk it up to an off night, but almost every element of everything we tried was at best sub-par. The frites were fine (how bad can fried potatoes be?) but the sauces were sad. The garlic aioli was very bland, but the beer cheese "sauce" was watery beer cheese soup. The consistency was so thin that you couldn't use it as a sauce, and it had almost no flavor. The people next to us actually complained about theirs, and a server gave a (non-sensical) explanation of how "when it's fresh, it's watery" and then offered a replacement. Sadly the frites were the best thing we tried, because the entrees were awful. Half of the nacho toppings were cold, the brisket was almost non-existent (and also cold), the "cheese sauce" was fresh-from-the-package Velveeta (also cold) and the other toppings were clearly prepared long before the plate was served. The veggies at Chipotle are significantly fresher than what they put on the nachos here. The Philly Cheesesteak was fine, but had the same mediocre (and room temperature) cheese sauce, and a very plain bun. All of this would be somewhat par for the course if menu prices were half what they were, but for almost 20 a plate, it was unacceptable. We talked about mentioning any of this to the management, but given the bad service mentioned above, we simply wanted to get out as quickly as possible.

We had been meaning to try this place for a while given its great location and taplist, and were sorely let down. We will not be giving them a...