Sardine is the Madison restaurant that checks every box: the patio has a great view of Lake Monona, it’s the perfect place for a first date, and the French food is all excellent. Stick with Sardine’s staples, like the moules-frites, duck confit frisée salad, and the slightly unexpected gruyère-draped hot dog, which you can only get at the bar. Speaking of the bar, we love hanging there for Happy Hour when they do $5 Kronenbourg and discounted East Coast oysters.

Before 2020, if you wanted a fancy dinner, you’d probably have a fine time at L’Etoile. But then Harvey House opened in 2021, and became Madison’s best spot for fine dining. It nails the restaurant Holy Trinity: flawless (but not in-your-face) service, incredible food, and an atmosphere where you can feel comfortable wearing Levi’s or Loewe. The dinner menu has high-end takes on Wisconsin supper club classics, like Lake Superior walleye or a crispy chicken schnitzel.

If there’s one restaurant that celebrates the best of Wisconsin, it’s The Old Fashioned. The space is covered wall to wall in vintage photos, illuminated Schlitz and PBR antique signs, and a taxidermied lake fish or two. You should come here for a casual lunch or dinner to eat cheese in almost every form, and sip one of the 150-plus Wisconsin beers. The fried cheese curds and walleye sandwiches are so good and cost less than $20 (along with most other things on the menu).

A Pig In A Fur Coat isn’t for the salad crowd. Come to this cozy, dimly lit Willy Street spot to have a heap of beef tartare served in a marrow bone, or funky gnocchi made from huitlacoche and topped with hedgehog mushrooms. Dishes are rich and the portions are large, which makes them great for splitting with a date. Go heavy on appetizers and pastas, definitely get a cocktail, and skip dessert for another cocktail, like the balanced, bitter, and spicy My Maria.

Fairchild, with its massive back bar and homey decor, reminds us of a Cheers-type of establishment where everybody knows your name. The key difference is this is one of the best places to eat dinner in the city, and the menu has more interesting stuff than a standard pub burger. They do dishes like cured hamachi, a bunch of excellent pastas, sweetbreads with sunchoke, and corn panna cotta that are plated like a Rothko painting.

Ahan does pan-Asian dishes made from locally sourced ingredients, which might mean your kung pao is loaded with asparagus and the coconut sticky rice gets topped with honeynut squash from a Madison-area farm. If we had to pick our perfect meal, it’d include the huge beet and tofu vegetable egg rolls and praram long song served with crispy tofu and a side of peanut sauce. Ahan is a great casual lunch and dinner move, and you should definitely stick around for the excellent dole whip.

Mint Mark is a low-pressure spot that’s great for first dates. You can order as you go without having to commit to a full meal, in case the person across from you is a total weirdo. The small-plates menu changes week to week, but make sure to tack on a housemade pasta when it’s available, the cauliflower with bagna cauda and golden raisins, and the garlic-honey biscuit, which comes out warm and topped with a golf ball of whipped butter.

Mickie’s Dairy Bar is a spot with a retro interior where UW-Madison students, alumni, and families go before heading to a Badgers game (which also means there will be long lines on Saturday mornings). If that’s not your scene, just swing by for breakfast or lunch on a weekday. The best thing here is the scrambler: a mound of fried potatoes, eggs, meat, and cheese smothered in gravy.

The Square is Madison’s unofficial restaurant capitol, which can make it hard to find a table if you’re with a group. When you’ve got a lot of mouths to feed, head just off the main drag and get dinner at Little Palace, a large spot offering a range of American Chinese dishes. They do shareable stuff like Peking shrimp, moo shu, and crab rangoon, along with a fun selection of tiki-inspired scorpion and volcano bowls. It all makes a meal at Little Palace feel like a total party.

For the best Neapolitan pizza in town with a perfectly wood-fired crust, come to It’s Good for You. After years of slinging pies at the Northside Farmers Market, the owners set up shop in this small, mostly takeout space on the city’s near-east/north side. The best choices are the classic margherita, mushroom trifolati, and one of the special pies they’re doing that day. Make sure to grab the budino de caramello, which is basically the best butterscotch pudding you’ll ever have.