Little Cloud Restaurant — Restaurant in Town of Montrose

It’s never a good sign when you sit down at an empty restaurant and the first thing the waitress says is, “The kitchen closed 15 minutes ago—can you put your full order in right away?” I’m not sure why a restaurant would offer an 8:00 PM reservation if the staff doesn’t actually intend to be operating the kitchen at that time. In hindsight, it would have been better if they'd simply acknowledged the reservation was a mistake and told us they were closed. It would’ve saved everyone time—and saved me the $100 I feel I wasted.

We considered leaving, but I had just driven three hours from Chicago after a long day of business meetings. I was tired and hungry, so we stayed.

We started with the buns and butter appetizer. It came with six warm buns. Unfortunately, they were very dry. The butter was good, but not enough to mask the unpleasant texture. Thumbs down.

Next was the monkfish entrée, served with asparagus, a potato, and curry sauce. The fish was rubbery and had a burnt, charred flavor. A knife should not struggle to cut through fish. The curry sauce was overpowering, the potato was barely warm, and the asparagus was slightly overcooked, lacking that ideal crispness. Thumbs down.

The second entrée was the lamb ragù, which turned out to be rigatoni in a green herb sauce resembling pesto, with ground lamb. Sadly, the lamb flavor didn’t stand out. A bed of greens with a nice dressing was placed on top of the hot pasta—an odd choice. The heat wilted the greens, leaving us unsure whether they were meant to be mixed in or just a garnish. Either way, the presentation and the flavor of the ragu didn’t work. Thumbs down.

We had considered trying dessert but gave up at that point. The staff had already begun turning off the lights in the open kitchen, which only added to the rushed and unwelcoming atmosphere.

Our waitress was kind and professional, but overall, this was not a fine dining experience. Perhaps the issue was the 8:00 PM reservation—or perhaps the restaurant just hasn’t worked out its kinks yet. Either way, I’m unlikely to return, even for an...

I would leave 4.5 stars if I could. We have been to Little Cloud twice. Starting with the most recent, the food and service was great and matched expectations. We ate outside on the patio and enjoyed the pleasant weather. Service on the patio did not disappoint, with wait staff coming by regularly (but not a nuisance). We started with the fried green tomato appetizer and it was cooked well, with a crunchy but thin breading, firm, meaty green tomato, and some little tomatos, cheese and crispy bacon adding character to the dish. My wife had perfectly cooked salmon. I had the bacon wrapped pork loin and it was wonderful. Beyond the pork, the sugar snap peas were lightly charred but not overcooked, there were some roasted carrots that were just right and the crispy fried polenta also was excellent. The sweet mustard sauce paired well with everything; I don't think anything could have been improved on my dish.

Google won't let me leave two separate reviews, so knocking a star off to account a bit for our first visit. On that visit we had some disappointments with service and overcooked monkfish, but the owners and manager reached out and made it right. Given the recovery I'll skip the details, but it doesn't seem right to say 5 stars overall when the first visit wasn't.

In summary, I would recommend Little Cloud, especially the pork loin, and the patio if you're so inclined. Paoli is a neat little place to visit,...

I was very excited to try this place out just a few miles from Madison. The food is seriously overpriced. I ordered the petite cheese they give you only two that are almost bite size pieces, sure it's really good but should be a larger portion considering the price. The servers seemed to be confused on what to do and alot of them where on the phone. When I arrived I wasnt greeted, due to a cellphone clearly more important than me. This set a bad taste from the beginning. We spent over 100 dollars for two of us the only good things where the drinks which also were steep in price. We read online and on social that Chef Ben was this amazing chef, understanding everyone may have an off night, but he looked exhausted and almost like he was on something. When we left we tried to thank him and his response wasn't a thank you just a head nod from behind the line. We wont be coming back for Little Cloud, maybe a different event but definitely not for the restaurant. If you want to have Milwaukee/Chicago pricing you need to do better with customer service from top to bottom. Beautiful location with great potential, we did enjoy our walk...