Cafe Mado — Restaurant in New York

We really wanted to like Cafe Mado and had high expectations - especially having enjoyed dining for a previous birthday dinner at its predecessor, Oxalis.

Since the price point of Cafe Mado is also on the higher end, we decided to hold off until another special occasion to try it out.

I’m afraid to report Cafe Mado left us incredibly disappointed with uninspired, flavorless, and poorly executed food with a distracted service staff to boot this past Thursday.

Our dinner was comically bad, and basically left us feeling robbed.

The only thing this place has gotten right are its drinks menu, enticing on paper and perfectly executed.

SERVICE Timings were really off at the start. We were sat at our table without water for 10 minutes, watching the hostess, multiple servers, and the owner/manager walking hurriedly back and forth past us, before our server showed up.

We easily could have walked out of there, nobody would have noticed, and I wish we did and had spent ~$150 elsewhere.

We had in mind two appetizers, an entree, and a side of fries, and said we’ll see how we felt after that. The server explained he had to put our entire order in all at once, and that we couldn’t add anything later on. That’s fine, but then he went on and detailed each dish by listing how many bites/pieces there are, and suggested we add another dish. He then critiqued our choice of fries as being “too heavy” and that the wild rice dish would be better with the beef. Even if that is the case, we simply wanted fries that night, not rice. We felt pushed again to add a dish to our order on his recommendation, so we caved and added a third appetizer.

FOOD Grilled Bean Purée - this is a bland all beige dish, looks like cat throw up. This was the dish we didn’t want in the first place.

Asparagus - three pieces of boiled asparagus cut to make the plate look more substantial. Our main complaint here is that it was also bland and lacked seasoning/salt. They were trying to rely on the same flavorless dressing used in the bean appetizer which was reintroduced here as foam which deflates within minutes.

Mussel Toast with Harissa - a sorry sight of mussels on a raft of soggy bread afloat in a repellent vinegary and watery sauce.

Beef - 6 square slices (actually instead of the 7 as forewarned by our server) of fatty beef with an overly sweet vegetable purée, topped with a few sprigs of undressed greens, reminiscent of a stereotypical tv dinner.

Fries with Herbs de Provence and Garlic Aoili - over fried and over salted. The garlic aioli tasted like plain mayonnaise squeezed straight from a bottle. We actually couldn’t eat these and left them untouched. The server didn’t say anything clearing off the full bowl of fries when we asked for a check.

We feel like this restaurant is coasting off the success of Oxalis and is finding it difficult to create a menu with its new identity. We ran out of there after paying the bill.

Although we tried to make light of it all and joke about how bad it was, it still is shocking to us to have spent this amount of money and not having enjoyed one dish. Save yourselves from this overhyped...

I’m such a huge fan of Oxalis and I can’t wait for it to reopen so it’s no surprise that I ended up loving Cafe Mado!

The menu seems super understated but I promise everything is more special than it seems. My favorite were:

Pici Pasta with Fava Beans & Mint: Super lemony and loved that the fava beans were kind of the highlight. The intermittent bites of mint were great too.

BBQ Tri-Tip with Dried Chili: This one surprised me. The beef was so tender and I loved the chili sauce it came with.

Grilled Mushroom Toast with Egg Yolk: I honestly love anything with a runny yolk and the grilled lion’s mane was super umami and made this mushroom lover extremely happy

Blackened Yuba: This was like tofu skin soaked in some chili tomato situation and I wanted more.

Don’t sleep on the desserts either. I know they sound kind of uninteresting: Swiss Roll with Huckleberry and Strawberries with Chamomile, but we liked them a lot more than we assumed!

Wasn’t in the mood to drink so I got the two nonalcoholic options: the Grand Fir and the Jasmine & Pear. The Grand Fir was flavored with pine and was the “drier”option, while the Jasmine & Pear was floral (lol surprise) and slightly sweet. Both were carbonated. I really liked both!

Service was friendly as ever. The servers seemed like they were excited to share what their favorites were and it made me excited as well. The dining space was the bar area of the old Oxalis; they’ve remodeled the tasting menu area into a daytime cafe. Need to try that out as well.

Overall: I want so badly to gatekeep this place but I think everyone should try it! Will...

I am very skeptical of brunch and have maybe never been to a brunch spot that really inspired me. Until now. We love their sister restaurant so we were excited to try this. We loved everything.

The menu isn't terribly large so I was a bit nervous. A table nearby got the pomme paillasson, which we probably wouldn't have gotten without seeing first how delicious it looked. It's a fancy hashbrown, fine. But the aioli is outrageous. I would've bought this by the pound. And we subsequently put it on everything else we could.

The Caesar was one of the best we've ever had. Each leaf was delicately dressed in the flavorful dressing. Lovely texture to each of the leaves that we could individually grab and enjoy.

Turkey, poblano, avocado was nice. Probably the least interesting but still so good. Not a HUGE focaccia fan but, again, with the aioli from before it was great.

Ended with the sausage, egg, & cheese sandwich at the recommendation of our waiter. This was lovely. The sausage was not your average sausage and had really nice kick to it.

The drinks were delicious, maybe even better than we were expecting. The place itself has such a nice ambiance that's not overwhelming despite having a ton of tables. Dropped by Laurel on the way out, of course. While again the menu wasn't so extensive, if we needed brunch in the area I would consider...