The Wonder Bar

Historic, fun, cozy spot with well made cocktails and great food. When you have a hankering for one of the best steaks and hash browns, this is the spot. Staff is knowledgeable, friendly, and courteous. Glad Madison still has this special spot serving up a great experience.
5 7 years ago (22-04-2018)

This place was a historic gem! I wish we would've visited sooner. It was my husband's birthday and I wanted to go to some place unique. Atmosphere was quaint & cozy with mood lighting & fireplace. It was a little cool if you weren't near the fireplace though. The staff was friendly with smiling faces and very tentative. The rolls and butter, salads (wedge & hot bacon) were delish! We had salmon and the scallops. The scallops stole the show...We weren't hungry enough for steaks & didn't have time for dessert but are looking forward to going back.
5 7 years ago (07-02-2018)

My experience here was by far the worst experience I have had at what is rumored to be a “good” steak house. Our group made reservations, and were seated quickly. Placed our order and received our appetizer and salads within 20 minutes of being seated. Roughly 30 minutes after finishing our salads we asked our server how much longer for our steaks and she replied that there was two tickets ahead of ours; 40 minutes later we asked for a manager as our steaks arrived. The man who came over was very rude with no simpathy that we had been waiting for about and hour and a half for our main course. The only good thing he did was not charge us for our steaks but simply took them back. My suggestion is if you are looking for a good steak house go to one of Madison’s other fine restaurants that serve food in a timely matter.
1 7 years ago (04-03-2018)

Edit 6/7/18: After months of no response, finally receiving a response from the "service coordinator" seems to really clear up exactly what my review initially stated, which is this place has absolutely no class or service quality. I guess the fact that this person doesn't even utilize close to proper grammer might help show his inability to be "managing" a restaurant (especially a high-end one at that!). I can assure you that if we were the type of people looking to get free food, we certainly wouldn't be choosing a steakhouse for a dinner choice. Interestingly enough, I read through at least two other reviews (not from our table) stating similar concerns of terrible service that, upon complaining, lead to some weird misconception that they wanted free food. I hate to break it to you, but not everyone is looking for a free meal, some of us just want good service, especially when paying hundreds for that service!! For future reference, if a table is upet about waiting 2 hours for their food to arrive, maybe be accomodating and willing to compensate that inconvenience. In case you need some further help/training, it may look something like this: Table: "we have waiting an extensive amount of time for our food, 2 hours to be exact, and at this point don't have the time to actually stay and enjoy the food therefore, it doesn't seem fair for us to pay hundreds for steaks that we'd take home and reheat" "service coordinator" (that's you apparently): " I am so sorry for this inconvenience and I want to make sure you are still satisfied with your service, how about I remove the drinks/salad/soups and you guys can be on your way" OR "I will go ahead and offer a 15% discount to your bill tonight if that will help offset the fact you are reheating these pricey steaks" OR "I am so sorry this happened to you, please allow me to at least provide you with a coupon so you can return another time and give us one more chance to make it up to you!" Hope this helps you!!! Response from the owner: Just wanted to clarify a couple things and to be fair I could copy and paste this response to all four of the 1 star reviews that came from your table. When I approached the table I asked what could i do to remedy the situation, you stated "we don't feel that we should have to pay for steaks that you would have to take home and would have to reheat. I wholeheartedly agreed with you and took them off your bill and removed the steaks from the table. What you may not know is I personally paid after checking my bank account just to fact check 73$ to the business to cover the costs of you not wanting to pay for said steaks. Now you may have left hungry, but that was on your own accord. I literally did what you asked for and if you had the idea I was going to comp said steaks and let you eat. them, you've got us pegged for another steakhouse. I would rate 0 but it's not an option. I visited here for a double date with my fiance and and a friend with hers. We made a reservation for 730 and arrived just before. We had a drink and were seated on time however by 9pm we still had not received the food we ordered around 740pm. Around 830pm we were told they were busy and had about 2 tickets ahead of us but 30 mins later still no food. Finally at 9pm we asked them to just bring our bills and if our food was ready, to box it up. 10 mins later food in boxes came and we asked to speak to a manager since we were upset. The "service" coordinator came to talk to us and we said it was not right for us to be paying hundreds for a nice steak dinner that we weren't even eating fresh so we'd rather give up the food and just pay for our salads. Without hesitation he took all of our boxes and made sure to charge us for the salads/soup. So really 4 steaks in the garbage and an over priced side salad was what almost 2 hours at this place gets you. It might be time to hire a new service coordinator who confronts upset customers with actual solutions that leave them at least satisfied with the service if nothing else. Very poor experience overall and I would not recommend.
1 7 years ago (07-06-2018)

Steaks are amazing. I wasn’t impressed until the stakes got here, but their steaks are one of the best I’ve ever had. Medium is perfect- meat is soft and tender. Well done seemed too dry.
5 7 years ago (14-02-2018)