Plate & Barrel

Woooooow — some of the best food I’ve had, and we had most the menu!
Prime rib sliders were money, as were the Thai chicken sliders. The nachos were fantastic and my friends ate every last bit of their tuna tartare and fish tacos. We had a «couple» Wisco mules and those have become my summer drink.
Service was very attentive and informative, prices were good. I just wish one didn’t have to drive so far from Madison to get there :(Can’t wait to go back, though!

My husband and I live on the West side of Madison, so a drive over to Sun Prairie almost feels like a road trip (especially with all the construction on the beltline). We managed to make the trek to Plate & Barrel for restaurant week and date night and we were not disappointed.
The entrance can be a bit hard to find as it is on the back side of a complex and is completely overshadowed by Buck & Honey’s. There’s a small outdoor seating area, but we weren’t feeling the live music and headed inside. I believe it was the owner staffing the host station and he was phenomenal. Very accommodating and polite. We got a high-​top table near the bar (I say «near the bar» but it’s a pretty small place, so nothing is «far from the bar»).
Our waitress got our drink order and was talkative and funny, but not too much so. We ordered and settled in to chat. At this point my only issue was the noise level. Given the tight quarters and the lack of sound panels, it was quite a din. But we muddled through.
Dinner was fabulous! I got the bacon-​wrapped dates (wanted to eat about 5 more), the Tour de France (amazing scallops), and the Champagne Sabayon (full of berries!). My husband opted for the stuffed pappadew peppers (little bites of herbed cheese heaven), the Tour of Latin America (definitely stole some of his potatoes bravas), and the Bourbon Bread pudding (OMG!).
I love that the items for restaurant week are also regulars on the menu, so we’ll definitely be stopping back.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the drinks! Someone at Plate & Barrel enjoys mixing because the menu is extensive and creative without being overwhelming. I enjoyed a coconut mojito and my husband had the Wisco mule. I want to try the whole list though!

Highlights/​lowlights
1) slow service
2) great food
3) nice atmosphere
I don’t usually frequent Sun Prairie but was excited to try Plate and Barrel on a Saturday night for a friends birthday. We had an 8pm reservation and the restaurant was still pretty full. Right away I knew I liked the atmosphere. The back of the bar is a big chalkboard wall with the daily specials and wines written on it. The wood floors and dark lighting make the restaurant feel intimate but lively at the same time.
I was really excited about the drink menu with some specialty Martinis and a great wine list. I understand that it was a Saturday night but it must have been at least 10 minutes until our drink order was taken and another 10 after that until we got our drinks. 20 minutes to get a drink is pretty unacceptable even on a busy Saturday night. However the drinks were great! I had the Mexican martini and it was awesome, super flavorful and not too strong. My friends got the champagne and fruit drink and really liked it as well.
For food, we decided a cheese plate and five tapas. When we ordered the waitress (who was not very friendly) informed us they were out of 3 of the 5 tapas we were planning on ordering and out of 5 items total. There are about 15 – 18 tapas to choose from so being out of 5 is kind of crappy. Since we couldn’t get the shark bites, crab legs, or Korean ribs we decided on the bacon wrapped dates, deviled eggs, pork belly nachos, chicken, and salmon tartare. We ordered two first and then three after the first plates arrived. The food was slow to get there and our waitress didn’t stop back after she dropped off the first few plates, so it was awhile before we got to order the last three. BUT the food rocked! I would love to come back and try more of the items on the menu. Everything was really flavorful and unique. SUCH a bummer the service wasn’t better because this would have been at least a 4 if not a 5 star rating.
We got dessert as well, the chocolate fondue, and it actually came out quickly. The restaurant was nice enough to bring a separate chocolate for me to dip just the fruit in (fondue comes with little cookies as well that I would assume are not gluten free).
Overall, awesome atmosphere and food but poor service. Hoping the service was just a fluke and we will have an awesome experience next time!

This place is made for sharing plates… check the menu before coming. If this isn’t for you the sister restaurant, Buck &Honey’s is! We tried the bacon wrapped dates, the beef burger sliders, beef stroganoff and short rib sliders. the only thing we didnt like was the rosemary bun for the ribs… but everything else was great. The Bacon Wrapped Dates are sinfully tasty– a marriage of sweet and savory. The burger slider was so good, it made you forgive it’s size, the shitake mushrooms and onions made a great touch. The short ribs were a nice barbeque sauce and beef marriage. It wasn’t truly St Louis nor was it Kansas style… just good sauce– we ended up skipping the buns it came on. There’s something about when you take a bite of the rosemary herbed bun… I felt the smell as you took a bit overwhelmed the subtlety of the rib. So much so we/​ve decided to come back and try other dishes. Perhaps dessert next time.

Once again, Plate & Barrel was a great choice dinner. We had the Baked Beef Stroganoff and the Chicken Roulade… both new plates for us. Both were excellent. Our usual favorites are the Plate & Barrel Salad, the Steak & Egg, the Sausage & Polenta, and the Pork Belly Burnt End Nachos. Normally we would go for a meat and cheese board and a dessert too, but tonight we just stuck to main dishes. I note this only because it made the evening very affordable. For drinks, we had the French Kiss Martini and a Julie’s Vanilla Bourbon Ball Martini – both of which were excellent. Waitstaff was knowledgeable and prompt without being intrusive. The owner personally stopped over to ask us how our dinner was. We’re already regulars, and this visit further ensured that we’ll be back very, very soon. IMO… one of the best restaurants in the Madison area… not just Sun Prairie. Wednesday nights are a good night to go. Reservations are highly recommended if you’re going on a Friday or Saturday.

Tried out Plate & Barrel for the first time last night. Not having much exposure to a Tapas or Small Plate restaurant before we were excited to try it out. Happily this place exceeded our expectations.
First, the service was very well done. We were greeted at the door with a smile and seated immediately. Our waitress was prompt and friendly and came by to check on us just enough to keep us happy and not too much to drive us nuts. Very well executed and with an authentic smile that was refreshing.
Probably more important was the food. Our group tried a number of items — it being small plate and all — and their really were no complaints. My wife had the Plate & Barrel Salad, which looked great when it came out and tasted just as good. (thanks for the taste baby!) I started with the Baked Scallops which came with Corn Bread infused with some herb. Very tasty and good. Both were good portions for being ‘small plate’ — and although maybe a little high on price, delivered with size and taste. For round two we tried a special they had for Restaurant week in Sun Prairie — Seafood Gnocchi (gnocchi, clams, mahi-​mahi, shrimp and a tomato cognac base). Very good flavor, my wife wanted to lick up the sauce.
The place also had a great selection of drinks — with a focus on wine and craft beers and specialty drinks. I tried the Left Hand Milk Stout from Colorado and it was so good I had to have two.
Lastly, the atmosphere of the place was nice — small and quite with a modern feel. Dark wood and rocks and a impressive bar with handwritten drink menu wall behind it. The only thing I can say bad about our experience was towards the end of the evening our whole table noticed when the music switched gears — and some out of place hip-​hop started playing. A bit odd but it didn’t stop our fun.
Overall a very good place that I look forward to trying again.

LOVE Plate & Barrel! They’ve managed to achieve a whole different, upscale feel compared to Buck n Honey’s. (Still love B n H’s) Very high quality food, interestingly compiled & creatively presented. EX-​TEN-​SIVE wine list. Real live tapas, right here in the Prairie. We’re going again in an hour — can’t wait to demolish another cheese plate!

REALLY good food! A bit too pricey. Date night for my fiancé and I cost us about $ 150. We each had two drinks and we ordered about 4 small tapas plates. If it wasn’t so costly we would be back in a blink.
The bourbon ball martini is exceptional! I think I would return just for this drink. MMMM!!!

Went back to Plate and Barrel and had a bit of a lesser experience this time. We had the pig, fig and goat salad again and while I love this salad they were apparently out of prosciutto and substituted plain ol’ ham. That’s ok, but you have to let customers know that before they order it and perhaps offer a bit of a discount as ham is a lot less expensive than prosciutto.
We then tried the pork belly nachos. This was a nice dish but I’m not really sure that it was belly meat. It was more like a pulled pork nacho with black beans. The serving showed once again that this place doesn’t really know what a small plate portion is. The portion was huge.
Lastly we tried the $ 24 lobster ravioli. This was delicious but extremely overpriced. It consists of four very large raviolis in a nice tomato cream sauce with a dollop of a sweeter tomato paste on top. Here again the portion is more like a regular entrée portion. While the ravioli had a few nice pieces of lump lobster I would guess that there’s maybe 2 ounces of meat. The portion on this one should be three pieces and the price should be around 12 – 14 dollars. Nice dish, just way, way overpriced for what you get.
With a little polish this place has great potential.

when i heard that plate & barrel was opening in sun prairie, i was excited. my husband and i already love buck ‘n honey’s, which is in the same building & run by the same people as plate & barrel, so i knew we’d be fans.
my husband and i joined another couple for dinner there on a friday night. we called ahead and got a table, but the small space was very full.
small plates are my jam, and the more things i can taste, the better. clearly, it was a no-​brainer to share a bunch of dishes with our friends. we all started with drinks and i love that they offer wine by the bottle, by the glass, and they have a BIG POUR option, which i definitely went with. i also tried our friend’s fig old fashioned, which is probably one of the most delicious drinks i’ve ever tasted.
definitely start with a cheese plate if you go. we tried 4 cheeses and all were delicious. it comes with crispy bread and jams, fruit, & nuts. we pretty much licked the cheese board clean.
we also tried the pork belly nachos which were of course delicious (hard to go wrong with pork belly.), the polenta & sausage, and the duck sliders. i don’t know how, but we saved room for dessert & tried the tiramisu.
there was literally not a single bite left on any of the plates when we were done. as we left we couldn’t stop talking about the other dishes that we MUST try next time. high on the list are the bacon wrapped dates, the bread plate, and the korean ribs.
highly recommended!

Once again they hit a home run, this time we had the cheese plate and the pork belly nachos… WOW! We’ve decided to come back every other Saturday to try everything on the menu. Love this place!

I am going to admit it… I’m living in Sun Prairie, but my heart is in the Madison food scene. I often take the 15 – 20 minute drive to the East side or downtown to experience my favorite restaurants, even though I have to deal with the tenacity of the rush hour traffic on East Wash. We were thrilled to discover a budding food scene in Sun Prairie when we first made the move, but options were limited until very recently. An adjunct of Buck and Honey’s, Plate and Barrel is a delicious and warming tapas bar that doesn’t disappoint. We went there on the first Friday night they were open, and the place was PACKED! That being said, we had no trouble getting seated in a timely and polite manner. Our waiter failed to mention the specials to us, but more than made up for his error with the impeccable service he gave us. I am a sucker for ambiance, and the employees (from the hostess to the bartender) all seemed to only live to make our experience enjoyable.
I sometimes go to tapas bars and develop favorite dishes right away, but one look at their menu told me I was going to be coming back and trying something different every time. At our visit on Friday, we got the cheese board with three cheese options. It came out on a lazy Susan, which was helpful, but also a little cumbersome on our tiny table. It came with a dripping honeycomb, a variety of toasted/​candied nuts, a few quinces, and a variety of fruit. Totally delicious. Next we had the burnt end pork belly nachos, which were good, but not as good as Buck and Honey’s signature nachos. The pork belly had a thicker fat cap on it than I usually like, so it would have been nice if that was cut off. Otherwise, the flavors were there.
We finished off our meal with the bacon wrapped dates. All I can say is… NOM. Best thing I’ve eaten in a while. The bacon was perfectly crispy and the dates were stuffed full of almond and goat cheese. Just when I thought I was getting a little sick of bacon on everything (well…let’s be honest… only a little sick of it…) this dish changed my mind.
Like I said, I’ll definitely be back, but would like to see a happy hour implemented. The prices are just high enough to feed two people that this will be a once in a while place for me. If there was a happy hour from 4 – 6 with discounted plates, I’d be happy as a date wrapped in bacon.
****UPDATE**** They just implemented a happy hour! 30% off everything from 4:00 — 5:30pm, much like 43North. Not sure of the days, but am assuming Monday-​Friday. This pushed my review to 5 stars. Yay!