Restaurant Review: Sanford

The more time I spend I thinking about my dinner about Sanford last night, the more ambivalent I become about the restaurant. Sanford was far and away the best meal that we’ve had in Milwaukee if you are counting ambience, food quality, quality of service, and relative value. I think my ambivalence arises because Sanford is this strange hybrid of fine dining and regular upscale – especially reflected in their prices, menu items and organization, and portions. Perhaps the chef has learned that s/he needs to modify the fine dining experience to stay afloat in Milwaukee, I don’t know. But I do know that Sanford’s attempt to be many things can be detrimental in more ways than one. Ultimately, Sanford is either about the worst (but cheapest) fine dining establishment that I’ve ever visited, or a very respectable and somewhat expensive upscale restaurant.

The atmosphere was quite nice. Off the beaten path in a largely residential area, Sanford has one main dining room with about 18 – 20 tables. I do not know if they have a private dining room as well. It is pleasantly and simply decorated – no giant urns, huge flower arrangements, or zebra skins tacked up on the wall. Our server was quite good and, as I would expect at any fine restaurant, he was well aware of our dietary restrictions, the restaurant having collected this information when we made our reservations. However, despite the fact that they knew I was coming, they still seemed a bit unprepared to serve me. There were menu items that were, he suggested, quite good when prepared without meat. However, there was no vegetarian entrée, although I could request something or let the chef create a surprise meal for me. I was all about the surprise meal. The chef has the culinary expertise, after all. When I go out for a pricey meal at a fine dining establishment, I don’t want to decide what to eat, I want the expert to decide.

That brings me to the next issue: the menu. The only way to have an entire meal which is designed by the chef is to either get the 7-course prix-fixee ($75 with an additional $30 for wine accompaniment) or the get the 4-course seasonal menu ($40, I think). Neither had a vegetarian option and you could only get 7-courses if the entire table did. If you don’t take advantage of one of those options you need to pick and choose from the menu. This is a huge problem, especially if you are a vegetarian because your entrée is going to be a surprise. How do you know what starter, soup and salad, and dessert to choose? On top of that, as the vegetarian options were somewhat limited, it was difficult to put together a meal in which the courses worked well. For example, there were 2 possible starters for me: a grilled pear, caramelized onion, Roquefort, and walnut tart; and a sauté of morels, chanterelles and fiddleheads. Well, I might want the tart but my 2nd course options were limited to curried lentil soup, grilled beet salad with feta, pine nuts, and a grilled pear and walnut salad. I had just made a big pot of curried lentil soup for lunch so that was out. The grilled pear and walnut salad would be redundant if I got the tart but the beet salad would not match the tart at all (moving from Roquefort to feta and walnuts to pine nuts). However, the sauté came with the seasonal menu, which Jason was getting so we would be eating the same first course which seemed like a waste. I ended up getting the tart and the beet salad and switching first courses with Jason. This, however, proved a mistake for three reasons. The tart was only average so Jason begrudged the trade. The beet salad was tasty but nothing special (we could easily have thrown together something like that at home without giving it too much thought), and my entrée ended up including the sauté of morels, etc. with grilled endive, and mushroom risotto.

My entrée was tasty, but, again, nothing special. In fact, I was a little annoyed by the risotto. At almost every moderately good restaurant in Milwaukee the vegetarian item on the menu is either some kind of ravioli or a mushroom risotto. I guess I expect that one of the best restaurants in city would come up with something that wasn’t just better than all those other places but actually DIFFERENT. Jason was not fond of his lentil soup but loved his entrée, salmon. Our desserts were great – apricot tart with apricot ice cream for Jason and bittersweet chocolate tart (the chocolate & hazelnut crust was perfect) with vanilla ice cream for me.

So, I guess it is surprising that after all of this complaining I’d still recommend Sanford. Well, I would and I will tell you why. First, we were shocked by how relatively inexpensive Sanford was (my entrée was 18.50, salad 8.50. etc). Granted, we paid for $100 of our $119 (not including tip) meal with gift certificates, but I think that I would feel the same way even if we paid for the whole thing. Except for Jason’s entrée and dessert, the food didn’t blow us away, but it is the best meal we’ve had in Milwaukee (not counting a big bowl of tortilla soup and jicama salad at Cempazuchi). Ultimately it is only a little more expensive but substantially better than a lot of well-respected mid-priced Milwaukee restaurants (e.g. The Social, Barossa) and we’ve stopped going to those places because we usually leave feeling like we paid too much for food that is only OK. Second, the portions were shockingly large. We expected the portion sizes to resemble those we were accustomed to from fine dining establishments in Chicago – where you leave a 7 or a 9-course meal feeling like you ate just enough (or maybe on the border of just enough and a little bit too much). At Sanford, we were both comfortably satiated after the second course! I couldn’t even come close to finishing my entrée (of course, there is always room dessert). So, if we went again, we could probably decrease our bill by at least a third by skipping and sharing courses. At that price, we would only have to eat at home every other time we would be likely to go out to a mid-range restaurant in order to cover the increased cost of a meal at Sanford.

I recommend Sanford if you want to have a respectable but largely standard meal, blow some money, and feel hoity-toity, but you don’t want to make the drive to Chicago and spend at least twice as much to really do it right.